SO many thanks, again, to the amazing reviews and readers and the world in general! You guys are FABULOUS! ( Especially YOU! (cheesy wink)) :D
Aaand….
AnimeCookie93: Thank you! Yeah, they do balance each out well, don't they? I happen to love the two of them, their chemistry together. One thing I think some authors forget is that Al GREW UP with Ed… Al does have a milder personality, but if he was THAT mild, Ed would've bulldozed him into the ground when they were kids. Haha! Al does put up with a lot! Hope you got my long scientifical thingy about the hair…. ;)
dreamschemer: That's a good point. Which I actually address (I think…?) this chapter…. I've always loved those parts in the show!
iMac15: (laughs) Yes, that makes Ed fun to write. His 'splosion tendencies are another nice thing about him, too :DD Thank you!! Flair…. I have flair… God, I love you. A long, exclamation-point-soaked review full of caps…. (reverent sigh) Oh my God, I can just see Ed convincing himself that blowing up a building is the way to go. Mugging?! I WISH I HAD THOUGHT OF THAT!! XD …. "Too late, Al." lololololol…
:D And on to the show. In which Ed Cannot Seem To Keep His Mouth Shut. A.k.a, Al To The Rescue!
A slightly more serious note (...?) With a mention of Hughes! Huzzah!
DAY FOUR:
"So. You put on quite a little show last night, I hear."
Dear lord, how? "I don't know what you're talking about," Ed replied flatly.
"I've gotten quite an impressive amount of angry reports from police officers around the station area," Mustang murmured, disregarding Ed's attempt at indifference altogether.
"As if the military has ever cared about police reports," Ed muttered, slumping further into the couch.
Mustang ignored that too. "I quite think that you underestimate just how much paperwork you cause. You do realize that if I actually did all the paperwork I should--ninety percent of which has something to do with you--I would never leave this office?"
"Who even said it was me?" Ed demanded, glare growing sulkier and even more irritated. "And, for your information, I still have no idea what you're talking about."
"Your little message was hardly a nom de plume," the Colonel said lightly, ignoring him again, and Ed was too hungry to be dealing with this.
"You can't punish me for something that isn't there," the teenager declared, loftily. "If you were even slightly as omniscient as you pretend to be, then you would know that it's already been fixed."
"Yes," said Mustang. "Please send my thanks to Alphonse."
That earned another expression Ed seemed to use a lot when dealing with his commanding officer: chagrined disbelief. "I don't know where you get your information," Ed growled, one finger pointed at Mustang, "but when I find out--and trust me, I will find out--whoever's been telling you all this stuff is going to pay for every single annoying thing you've ever done to me."
Mustang smiled into his hands at his own personal joke. "He would deserve it."
"Yeah, he would de--Wait a minute, who are we talking about?"
"It would seem that you've taken a step in the right direction--earning money instead of begging at doors," the Colonel said instead of an answer, suddenly back to the usual business and formality.
"I already told you, it wasn't begging," Ed snapped, annoyed but not distracted. "Why would this guy deserve payback? It's not his fault you're a jerk."
"I believe that you are contradicting yourself, Fullmetal," Mustang said, mildly.
Ed ignored him. "I mean, you'd be his commanding officer, too, so it would hardly be his fault if...." He stopped; started again. "Unless he's someone close to you...."
Mustang just looked at him, eyebrows slightly raised.
"Which means he's one of your subordinates, because as far as I can tell you hate all of your superiors, and not Hawkeye 'cause you said 'he'...."
The Colonel still hadn't moved or reacted at all. Ed wondered if that meant he was getting righter or wronger.
He continued theorizing anyway. "And someone who you're particularly close to, because you said he would deserve it, which you wouldn't say unless you were on really, really comfortable terms with him...."
One eyebrow twitched up. Ed guessed that he was getting closer.
"So that leaves... Havoc...Fuery's too nice, I'm positive he wouldn't do that, and anyway, even you wouldn't say he deserved punishment for your shortcomings. But Breda...Falman...Hughes...." Ed paused. "And possibly Armstrong," he added, tentatively.
That got a smirk. Ed scowled. "Fine, so not Armstrong. Am I close?"
"...Relatively," said Mustang, slowly, as if each syllable was carefully weighed and considered before being voiced; which was yet another of Mustang's quirks that irritated Ed. How was it that the man had so much control all the time? How did he never blurt out the very words he didn't want to say, like Ed always seemed to do in Mustang's presence?
"On a more relevant note, Fullmetal," the Colonel cleared his throat, "I believe we need to review the terms of contract that you agreed to when you accepted this job as a state alchemist."
"And a fat lot of good that job's doing me," Ed replied, as sulky as a teenager who'd finally resigned to punishment. Which was, upon further thought, exactly what he was.
Mustang ignored him. "I'm sure as...competent as you are," he said, and Ed shot him a sideways drop dead glare in exchange for the obvious sarcasm, "you have, of course, carefully studied and looked into the details of your military contract...." And he trailed off, because Ed obviously hadn't. Finally Mustang continued, when Ed was appropriately uncomfortable, "but I think it quite time to remind you that state alchemists are prohibited from using their alchemy in any way to earn money outside immediate military control."
Ed glared. "I'd hardly call what I got money."
"Nevertheless," Mustang said, his voice thick with the barely-veiled smugness of being The One In Charge. "The point is that when you agree to belong to the military, you belong exclusively to the military."
"Mm," said Ed, mouth twisting into a half frown. It wasn't like he could argue with that. "You know, sometimes I wonder how on earth you got that ladies' man reputation you have. Or, more accurately, I wonder how any sane girl could manage a conversation with you."
Mustang smiled that irritating smile of his, and Ed scowled outright. "I mean, I can only imagine you taking the girl out to dinner and then saying, oh, whoops, you got quite a library fine fine there, sorry, you can't eat, but you don't mind if I order the fetuccini alfredo, do you?"
"And you, Fullmetal, have a better idea of how I should make the ladies happy?" the Colonel said, his lips twitching.
"Stay single," Ed suggested.
Mustang bit back a laugh. "Have you ever considered that perhaps I reserve such...favoritism just for you? Perhaps you should feel honored."
"Honored?" Ed cried. "Favoritism which way?!"
"Besides," the Colonel said, ignoring him again, the jerkwad, "You have even less body mass to feed than most girls I would date--"
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SMALL HE WOULD GET LOST IN AN AMOEBA, YOU SMIRKY MIRROR-OBSESSED IDIOT?!"
"Smirky?" said Mustang, smirking. Whoops. He hadn't meant to share that little adjective.
"Well....well," Ed floundered, a train in full speed run straight off its tracks.
"Forgot what you were saying, Fullmetal?" Mustang asked calmly, prying Ed's mind away again just as he was about to get back to what he was saying. "Maybe it's something wrong with your attention span; It does seem to be unusually shor--"
"I. HATE. YOU. SO MUCH."
---
Al got the better side of the deal, he thought, willing to give anything, at that moment, to not have to eat. He staggered through the streets of Eastern once again, looking around desperately for some way to get money, and more importantly, food, without getting court-martialed.
Al really had gone back to put the stage in the middle of the road back to the way it was, after the guilt had been apparently bugging him all night; whereas the thought hadn't even crossed Ed's mind--he'd slept like a baby.
But the second Ed had woken up Al had cried all of the sudden, "They won't be able to fix it by themselves!"
It had taken a very long time for Ed to understand what the heck he was going on about, sleep-dazed as he was, and by the time he had muttered a still-mostly-uncertain-as-to-why-they-were-having-this-conversation-in-the-first-place, "yeah, you should go do that", Al was already out the door.
Which then left Ed to go to Headquarters by himself, and afterward, to hunt for nourishment by himself, because Al wasn't back yet. Maybe he had fallen into a ditch. Maybe he had gotten kidnapped. Maybe he had nabbed a cute girl, as frightening as that thought could be (for Ed, that is, who felt both ancient and violent whenever he thought of a girl trying to steal Al away from him). And maybe this made Ed a bad big brother, but at that moment he couldn't bring himself to even consider looking for Al. Al could take care of himself. He was a teenager now. He was a master alchemist. He was a seven-foot dynamo made of of steel, for the love of God, he could keep himself out of trouble for a few hours while Ed got himself some food.
Well. Right now it seemed more like Al could keep himself out of trouble for a few hours while Ed starved to death and had his lifeless, malnourished body thrown into some alleyway dumpster.
Dumpster, he thought, the word sparking to life in his mind. Sometimes there's food in dumpsters....
He discarded the idea immediately. Somehow it would get back to Mustang, and he would never live that degree of humiliation down, not if Mustang had anything to say about it. The smirkiness would never stop.
No, he would get food; and he would get it with his pride still intact.
---
Or, well. Mostly intact, anyway.
After some more aimless stumbling and mumbling to himself and getting himself lost and not even caring, that was how hungry he was, Ed flopped to his knees.
"What a lame way to die," he muttered, dropping face-down onto the cement, arms flapping limply after him. "I can just see the headlines: Fullmetal Alchemist Found Dead From Starvation. Colonel Mustang Fired For Neglect." He paused, smirked slightly into the ground at the thought of the second part of his imagined headline.
Then he sighed.
"Maybe this really is all my fault," he confessed to the sidewalk, too hungry to even attempt peeling himself off. "Maybe I should just...learn to put my priorities back in line." He stopped to consider that. "Al comes first, of course. Then I guess comes me and my health. And after that is disobeying every word Mustang says." Ed nodded a little, his cheek rubbing the floor.
Then he thought about that for a few minutes.
He snorted. The snort turned into a little snicker, which turned into a laugh, which turned into all-out hysterical laughter, leaving Ed doubled up and gasping for breath on the ground, his face red and his belly aching from laughing for a change. He sat up a little and wiped his watering eyes. "Wheeew...." He let out one long, low breath, grinning hugely. "That was good. Heh... heh-heh..." Ed fell back to the ground, this time on his back, arms spread wide and his head tipped back, like a snow-less snow angel. Something big and dark stepped in front of his line of vision, blocking out the sun. "Heh...?"
"Um," said the figure.
Ed blinked up at it stupidly.
"Are you... hungry?" it ventured, after a short, bemused pause.
Ed wriggled to his knees and stood so fast that the girl took a step back and almost tripped over her own feet. Ed grabbed her arm, keeping her from falling, and asked, incredulous with joy, "Is that an offer? Please tell me that's an offer! Do you have food? Will you give it to me?" She opened her mouth to reply, warily, but Ed cut her off with a hug and an elated, "Thank you! Thank you so much! It's been days since I last ate! Well, okay... one day, but I'm so hungry, thank you, you're my hero!"
Tentatively, she patted his back, and Ed finally let go. "You're welcome," she said wryly.
She led him down the street to a small business district a few minutes from where he had been stumbling around. Ed looked up and down the street. "Do you always welcome random strangers in for dinner?"
"It's sort of my job," she said, her tone wry again. She had to be younger than Ed. She was even shorter than him. Not... that Ed was short. Because he wasn't. But she seemed pretty young to have such a smart-mouth.
And, yes, he knew that she was probably exactly what he had been--well, still was.
But, hey, she had food. Who really cared who she was and who she resembled? Ed certainly didn't.
They stopped outside a short building marked "Fifth Street Soup Kitchen." She went straight in, and left Ed looking up at the sign, wondering what they were doing here.
"Aren't you coming?" she called, poking her head back out, giving Ed a weird look. Based on the way they...met, he figured she probably thought he was nothing short of insane.
"Coming? You mean you live here....?" Even before the last word was out of his mouth his brain was slowly putting two and two together. "Oh," he murmured.
"Well?" she said, impatient.
Ed looked out at the street, weighing his options, and then pursed his lips, just a little resentfully, and stepped into the soup kitchen.
The inside was even smaller than the outside indicated, maybe because every empty corner was filled with a table or a chair. If there was a spare inch in the whole building, Ed couldn't see it. Even more surprising that every single seat with filled, with men and women and kids, all with similar ratty brown clothing and haggard was a long, stainless-steel counter lining the whole back wall, and half a dozen employees, or volunteers, whichever, were serving food on blue trays. The whole place smelled like too many flavors mixed together, like orange juice and broccoli and garlic powder, all with the faint, underlying smell of burning plastic.
But. Food was food. Ed got in line in the front counter, the girl sliding behind it to help serve food.
"Your first time in a soup kitchen?" she asked. He nodded.
"What did you do before now?"
"Well... begging. Trying to earn money on street corners. Is it just me or do all the jobs disappear right when you need one?"
She grinned. "Well, we'll help you out until you can find one."
"I hope I can do that soon," he muttered, looking distrustfully at the food on the counter.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her face seemed slightly redder than usual. "And then after that maybe you can come back to volunteer. You know. Maybe. Maybe we'll see a lot of each other."
Ed looked at her, feeling like he missed something. "Yeah. Maybe."
He moved up in line and picked one of the trays. When he moved to sit down (marveling at the miracle that was free food), she came back around the counter and sat with him at one of the empty seats on a long, but still mostly full, table that stretched from wall to wall.
"So, what's your name?" she asked, putting her chin in her hands. She smiled. "I'm Mackie. Short for Mackenzie."
"Ed," said Ed. "Short for Edward."
"Yes, you are," she laughed.
"Hey, I am not short! I'll have you know I'm exactly the right height for my weight!"
"That just means you're small all-around."
"Not small," he muttered crossly, bowing his head to eat before he he had a chance to lose his temper. He didn't want to yell at a girl. Especially not a girl who gave him food.
"I don't usually meet people my age here," Mackie mused, one hand still propping her head up, the other moving to tuck her flyaway hair back behind her ear. "But it's a nice change of pace."
"What, not having a job?" Ed blew on the beef-vegetable soup (or at least that's what it looked like) and then put it in his mouth, trying this new cuisine on for size. It wasn't bad at all. "Oh, yeah, it's a blast."
She just sighed. Her eyes wandered around the room, up around the rafters, past the long counter, around the tables. Ed followed the movement.
"Are you the daughter of the owner of this soup kitchen?" he asked, taking another bite.
She smiled wryly again. "I'm the owner."
Ed's spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. "You're kidding." He'd done this twice now within the past few days.
"Nope. I make most of the food myself. I look for volunteers. I clean up and lock the doors at the end of the day. I'm the one who does the budget balancing and donation-scrounging."
Ed couldn't help it. He stared. "And how old are you?"
"Twelve," said Mackie, a chagrined expression on her face, as if it pained her to admit it.
Al was twelve last year. Heck, Ed himself was twelve two years ago, when he signed into the military. But even that seemed like a minor burden in comparison to what Mackie was doing.
"Don't you have a family?" he asked. Only after it was out of his mouth did he realize how rude and invasive that question was.
She scowled. "That's exactly why I do this."
Ed wondered what that meant; but he didn't make the same mistake twice and ask. Instead he took another bite, already feeling the whining in his stomach begin to abate.
"Don't you have a family?" Mackie asked. She clearly didn't care about rudeness or invasiveness. Ed supposed she had the right, as she was, you know. Giving him free food.
"A little brother," said Ed, which reminded him, where was Al?
He and Mackie seemed to be on the same wavelength. "So where is he?"
"He already has a way to get food," he assured her. Truth: He's a bodiless soul trapped inside a suit of armor, so I eat for him. Somehow he didn't think that explanation would go over so well.
She nodded slowly, her eyes still on his face. "You aren't used to this kind of life, are you?"
Ed didn't know what to say to that.
"Your clothes are still pretty much new," she explains, gesturing in contrast over to the other people in the soup kitchen, who were lost in low conversation. "You're pretty dirty, but not as dirty as the rest of us. You obviously have never been inside a soup kitchen before today. And you still haven't sold that fancy-looking watch in your pocket. Is it important to you?"
"Well, now it's pretty much useless, but when I get my job back it will be really important, yeah," said Ed.
She frowned. "I thought you were looking for a job."
"I am. While I'm waiting for my other job to start giving me money again."
"Sounds like a stupid job," she commented, wrinkling her nose.
"You have no idea," Ed muttered.
"Why don't you quit?" Mackie suggested.
"I signed a contract. I can't quit until I'm seventeen," said Ed with a sigh. He had three more years to get Al's body back, or he'd be stuck in the military for another five after that. Until he was twenty-two. He didn't have time to be sitting around, playing whoever-admits-defeat-first-loses tug-of-war with Mustang.
"Contract?" Mackie murmured. "Must be a ritzy job."
"Relatively," Ed shrugged, then reminded himself of Mustang, and immediately felt like banging his head into a wall.
Mackenzie must have noticed his constipated expression because she tilted her head and said, "Where do you work, anyway?"
"Military," he said, scooping some spaghetti onto his spoon. He barely noticed when Mackie went stock-still.
"Military," she repeated faintly.
"Mhmm," he mumbled into his food, thinking that maybe she hadn't heard him clearly because of his full mouth.
But that illusion went flying out the window when Mackie burst into angry tears, and she took hold of Edward's tray and upturned it, spilling perfectly good soup and noodles and chicken all over him.
"Wh--" he managed, stunned, before Mackie took him by the back of his hood, dragged him to the door, and sent him sprawling across the sidewalk. "Bu--"
"I hope you rot, you big fat liar!" she cried, looking somehow furious and lost and betrayed all at once. "I can't believe I was flirting with you!"
Then she slammed the door in his face, something to which Ed had become all too accustomed in the past few days, but for some reason this hurt a million times more, and he had no idea why.
For the first few minutes all he could think was, She was flirting with me? Really?
His next thought was, Where's Al? And that distracted him enough to begin to get nervous.
The next thought after that was, Man, I'm still hungry.
And after that, squashed before it could really get anywhere was, I could eat the food off my clothes--no I can't, that's weird, Ed.
As it was, for once he did not have to go looking for the answers to these questions, because they came and found him. It was about time, too.
"Brother? What are you doing here? And, um, more importantly, what are you doing here, on the floor?"
"Oh, you know," he said, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage what was left of his pride. "Formulating the breakdown of cement. Contemplating the theory of relativity. Making contingency plans just in case Colonel Jerkwad really does make it to Fuhrer."
There was a pause, then a sigh. "I got you food," said Al. Ed's head snapped up.
Indeed, Al was holding a small package in his hands. Really, actually not that small of a package. A pretty big package if he was accurate about. A huge package, God, he loved his little brother-- and it smelled distinctly of food. FOOD.
Ed stood and took the package. Then he hugged Al. "Have I mentioned that I love you?"
"Not since the last time I made you breakfast."
Ed pouted. "If you were feeling neglected, you could have just said so. You know I'm an expert coddler."
Al made a little sound that sounded like phuhhh. "Thank you for the offer, but no. Besides, I've got news that will probably have you saying you love me for at least a month."
Ed perked up. "I'm listening."