AN: This is the first of several sets of two-part chapters. I'll talk a bit more about how this is gonna work out in the next chapter, but for now I'll let you languish.

Chapter title is from "They Want My Soul," by Spoon, which you can listen to here: watch?v=4YiTkknblwU

Disclaimer: Arakawa and Anno own everything that I love.


Chapter Four- "Let's get the stars to align..."

Riza has not slept enough to deal with their bickering this morning.

"I didn't know they made plug suits small enough to fit a shrimp like you."

"Oh really? I didn't know they made plug suits big enough to fit your massive fucking ego."

It's the same tête-à-tête every morning, and usually it's almost funny. Mustang holds no enmity toward the kid, but Edward has misconstrued his jabs as a call to war. That coupled with Mustang's cockiness has resulted in Edward constantly having raised hackles in his presence. At Central HQ they can generally avoid each other, but in the car every morning, they're in close quarters and there's nothing they can do but spar.

Normally, Riza is content to sit in the driver's seat and listen as the two argue over nothing, but this morning there's a headache blooming behind her temples from her lack of sleep, and the overly-hot shower she had taken that morning hadn't cleared her mind the way she expected it to, instead leaving her feeling slightly queasy. At least with Mustang snapping at Edward in the backseat he can't make fun of her for stumbling into his apartment the night before. She hadn't done that in years.

You make it sound so obscene, she thinks to herself. All you did was sleep on his couch. But for them that was obscene. Their relationship is a collection of clever silences, commonplaces that don't need to be reiterated in speech. So blatantly seeking comfort like that felt wrong. Frankly, the whole thing was a little embarrassing.

"Plug suits fit everyone, regardless of size. That's kind of the point," Riza snaps. The outburst surprises both pilots enough to stun them into a brief silence. Her patience is wearing thin, and she wonders about the likelihood of being able to sneak off for a nap in the break room. She isn't supposed to be like this. She's a rock. That's her trademark. Mustang jokingly referred to her as the Program's queen (why her and not Olivier, who has a higher rank and the snappy nickname of "Ice Queen" she doesn't know), and though she knows he's kidding, she's taken the quip to heart. Monarchs are supposed to be stalwart, tranquil, unflappable and logical. She doesn't feel like that.

Riza has had one hangover in her life, and it isn't a memory she likes reflecting on. This isn't that by any means, but her foundations are unsettled and she feels a little tender. After a night of feeling unpleasantly old, she now feels disturbingly young.

The silence doesn't last long before they're back at it again.

"Why do you have Hawkeye drive you everywhere anyway? Isn't she your superior? You should be driving her around."

"Are you questioning why I would have a beautiful woman drive me around, Fullmetal?"

Riza needs a nap. And maybe an aspirin.

"I know you're lazy, but this is bad, even for you." Before Mustang has time to retort, Riza catches Ed's eyes gleaming wickedly from the rearview mirror. "Or could it be that the illustrious pilot of the Flame Alchemist can't drive a car?"

They're stuck at a red light that Riza desperately wants to reach out the window and shoot down so they can just get to HQ and she can get out of this fucking car and away from Ed and Mustang and their meaningless cockfight, but instead she just pinches the bridge of her nose. He had to bring up that.

Riza is, she knows, one of only a handful of people in the world that has known Mustang long enough to have something to compare his persona to. To most, the Mustang that they see is simply Mustang: cocky, lascivious, cheeky, and lazy, despite being irritatingly competent and startlingly intelligent. And those attributes are true, though they haven't always been. Riza can still remember, though it's been over a decade since she's seen him, the slight young man that Mustang was, frail and awkward and fiercely serious. That is, she thinks, the difference between Roy and Mustang. They seem almost like distinct entities now. After painstakingly getting to know the boy in her father's home, after warming up to Roy, the first and last person she ever really opened up to, he was almost systematically replaced with someone new, someone self-assured and confident and flirtatious. This new man has muscles and expensive clothes and fabulous exploits to regale their friends with. He bears little resemblance to the boy Riza knew.

But, as intense as the dichotomy may seem at times, she knows that both figures exist within the one man. Roy is still there, underneath the slick facade of Mustang. He has never fully shucked his insecurities, and not being able to drive reminds him too much of being the spindly teenager who couldn't beat his teacher's daughter in an arm wrestling match and fell off the room of their house while trying to fix a drain pipe, breaking his left arm.

So, as seems to be his modus operandi, Edward has struck a nerve.

"What'd you say?" Mustang asks, turning around in the passenger seat.

"You can't drive, can you!" Edward's glee at this revelation is palpable. "Oh my god, the big, bad Roy Mustang can't drive a fucking car, this is amazing."

"Shut your mouth, Fullmetal," Mustang snarls through gritted teeth.

From the corner of her eye, Riza can see Mustang's hands tightening into fists.

Edward grips the side of Riza's seat excitedly. "Everybody at HQ thinks he's all suave, but you never told me he was such a loser-"

The next moment transpires so quickly that she's not sure Edward has time to notice it. One of Mustang's fists bursts forward, ready, she's certain, to wring Ed's neck, but before he has the chance to make it much further than the cup-holders, Riza's hand darts to her thigh, snake-quick, and grabs her gun, pointing it at the ceiling and making a rather ostentatious show of releasing the safety. As exhausted and perturbed as she may be, Riza would never actually point at gun at anyone unless she had every intention of firing. She doesn't really plan on shooting them, but she does desperately want them to shut up.

It works.

"Okay, since you apparently can't be trusted to make amicable conversation like adults, we're going to drive the rest of the way to HQ in silence, like children. And then, when we get there, I want you both to leave me alone." Her headache has bloomed into a flower of pain that now has roots snaking down behind her eyes, and it throbs with her heartbeat. Both men snap back to their seats almost instantaneously. She doesn't bother thanking them for their compliance, instead acknowledging their silence by putting the safety back on and replacing the gun at her thigh. And then, finally, what has to be the longest traffic light in Amestris changes to green, and Riza, who has never been a religious woman, thanks every god she can think of for that.


"Hey, Fuery," Havoc asks, turning in his swivel chair absently. He's been bored all morning. The Alchemists are all functioning properly, although it has been impossible not to notice that there is only one of the three pilots present at the moment.

Armstrong didn't begrudge them of it. "The young misters Elric and Mustang deserve their sleep as much as anyone! Early rising has been passed down through the Armstrong line for generations!" He punctuated that statement with a booming laugh. "And the lovely Captain Hawkeye deserves to rest, as well. We owe her so much, and she is so busy."

Havoc doesn't hold their tardiness against them either (if they aren't here he has significantly less work to do), but without Mustang and Ed's now-constant arguing and the Captain's wry humor and Spartan work ethic, HQ is significantly quieter, and also much more boring.

"What is it, Havoc?" Fuery always has a way of making himself busy, even when he doesn't need to be. He's still young, only a few years out of university, and is still trying to make a good impression with the brass. For what ends, Havoc isn't sure. He can't imagine Fuery being happy in a higher-up position where he'd have too much on his plate to spend time tinkering with communication systems. The kid's too much of a nerd for a position of authority.

"Have you noticed that the happy family is notably absent?"

"'The happy family'?" Fuery asks, eyes magnified by his glasses to an almost frightening level of innocence.

"The Captain, Mustang, and Elric," Havoc elaborates. No one in this damn HQ appreciates his knack for epithets except for the Captain and Olivier. The Captain isn't here, and Olivier scares the shit out of him, so he has no intention of bothering her.

"Oh, yeah," Fuery says, sliding his headset down onto his neck. "Armstrong is probably right; they probably just overslept. Happens to everyone."

He can't imagine the Captain sleeping. Hell, the woman's last name is Hawkeye. He imagines her constantly perched somewhere with one of her many firearms, keeping watch over her new roost. He keeps that thought to himself. But certainly, the Captain isn't one to oversleep. Mustang? Sure. They've straggled in late before, the Captain quite literally dragging Mustang in by the ear like a naughty child, but they've always had notice beforehand. (She always makes Mustang call in and explain why they are going to be late, both because Hawkeye hates talking on the phone and because she wants Mustang to be embarrassed by his transgression enough to not repeat it. He does anyway. That man has no shame. Havoc knows this for certain.)

Havoc drags on his cigarette contemplatively. "Yeah, I dunno. This is weird."

"You don't think they're late because they slept together, do you?"

Havoc splutters so hard around his cigarette that it falls useless to the floor and he doesn't have the strength of mind to stomp it out. "Fuery." Before Elric signed on with the Program, Fuery was always mentioned under the shorthand of "the kid." Now that he was no longer the youngest on the roster, he was just "Fuery," but he still held the aura of youth and naïveté in a way the rest of them didn't, so hearing him talk about that was distinctly unnerving.

"What?" Fuery asks, a flush spreading across his baby face. "You know you were thinking it too!"

"Yeah, but we don't talk about it." Havoc had had a gun raised in his general vicinity one too many times for making similarly conjecturing comments about the status of the Captain and Mustang's relationship, and so he often overstated how platonic and professional they were with each other, just to be safe. Which isn't to say that their relationship isn't platonic and professional, but there's always been something about them that seemed strange. He knows that they've known each other since they were kids, but neither of them are particularly keen to talk about their past, and so he doesn't know much more than that.

As if the cosmos were punishing him for gossiping about his superior, the automatic door to the observation deck slides open with a metallic swoosh. There, standing in the elevator, is "the happy family," looking not very happy at all. The Captain is in front, eyes steely, with Elric and Mustang behind her, looking like two puppies who got caught pissing on the rug.

"Oh shit," Havoc grimaces under his breath. He's only seen Hawkeye on the warpath a few times, but it's never enjoyable to watch. It is a sight though, like watching a tornado, something entirely out of your control and incredibly dangerous. Terrifying, but weirdly beautiful.

The Captain stalks out of the elevator, with Elric and Mustang following a few respectful (and perhaps cautious) paces behind. They make it to the row of computers before Hawkeye stops crisply, all military formality, in the middle of the floor. She doesn't turn to look at them, instead saying "Go put on your plug suits" with all the threatening quietude of the first rumble of a storm. As Mustang and Elric disappear to the locker room, the Captain takes her usual place to Fuery's left, crossing her arms over her chest.

Without gracing him with a glance, Hawkeye says, icily, "Pick up your cigarette, Havoc."

"Yes, ma'am," Havoc says quickly, scooping up the cigarette butt off the floor and grinding it into his ashtray with more force than ultimately necessary. Hawkeye doesn't acknowledge that the task has been completed, but she doesn't have to.

Havoc exchanges a few worried looks with Fuery, but neither says a word.


With his grades, Alphonse Elric had his choice of every high school in Central City. While Ed got credit for being the family genius, Alphonse is no slouch. Theoretically, he could've graduated high school and gone on to university by now, but he doesn't want to. The difference between his intelligence and his brother's is one of focus: Ed is single-minded in everything he does, often to the point of being distracted from other things, like eating, or leaving his room. His life had been absolutely consumed with chemistry from the time they were kids, and so it only seemed natural that he would've gone on ahead and graduated from university at this point. Alphonse, however, isn't interested in one thing; he's interested in everything, and with that kind of lust for knowledge, there's no way he would limit himself to just one field of study. He'd get bored out of his mind, and so his academic path has been far more traditional.

Ultimately, what his decision came down to was that Garfiel's was going to be attended by Winry. While, ostensibly, the school is known for its engineering program, Alphonse is just as interested in engineering as he is in everything else, and thinks that he'd be just as happy studying that as whatever else he could be offered.

It's amazing how quickly one can adapt to a new environment. They've been in Central for just a little over a week now, and Alphonse's life has already segued into a new kind of routine. Instead of walking in the morning to school, like he used to do back in Resembool, now he and Winry take the subway into the Central City center. The first time Al and Winry were on the Central subway (known to the locals as "the Tunnel"), they were so absorbed with sitting on the seats on their knees, peering out the windows at the occasional flashes of tunnel or light or wires, that they didn't notice the looks of annoyance from their fellow passengers.

Al loves Resembool, and knows that he always will. In his heart, when he thinks of the word "home" he can still see his family's house up on the hill, sandwiched perfectly between green grass and blue sky. But a lesson Al learned without ever really meaning to is that home isn't a place. It can be, but it is always the people at that place that make it a home. And so when Ed told him that he was going to have to move out to Central to pilot the Alchemist, he didn't think twice about coming along.

Upon hearing that her two oldest friends were moving out to the city, Winry decided (much more begrudgingly, and with no small amount of guilt) to come too. The homunculus that destroyed Ishval aroused no small amount of civil unrest among the now nearly decimated Ishvalan population. The Ishvalans were a peaceful people who largely kept to themselves, and as they lived in the middle of a desert, they rarely came into contact with other countries. But while this proved advantageous to them most of the time, it also meant they had no technology that could help them in facing something like a homunculus, and so were forced to rely on the help of the Amestrian military. But the difficulty of defeating Gluttony coupled with Kimblee going on a rampage resulted in the Ishvalans losing much of their trust in Amestris. In some attempt to make amends, Amestris sent out doctors to treat the wounded Ishvalans, including Winry's parents, but they were killed by an angry local.

Mere weeks before, the Elrics were orphaned by the Amestrian military's incompetency, and now Winry found herself in the same situation. Although they had spent their childhoods together, a bond like this was not one that was easily broken. And although Winry did have her grandmother, Pinako, the Elrics were her family too, and she wasn't about to let them leave. (And besides, Pinako was the one who had fitted Ed with automail limbs; if they were to break in Central, who else was going to take care of them but a Rockbell?)

And while Central City may have the people that made Resembool home, the two places could not be more different. While Resembool itself was quite small, the sky always felt huge and vast. There was only one school to speak of and, in general, the days of the town's people passed harmoniously. The homunculus attack is probably the only major tragedy that Resembool ever faced. Central, however, is a massive city, but the sky feels very small. You can only ever glimpse much of it from the outskirts of town, which, thankfully, is where Al lives with Riza. There the number of skyscrapers dwindles, but even then, the light pollution makes it so that seeing any stars is a cause for celebration. Everything about Central is just so much, so many people, so many buildings, so many cars and shops and schools. Everything is slick and new and tightly compact, everything jostling against everything else, and it produces a friction that always leaves an electric finish to the air.

Something is always happening in Central, and right now, what is happening is lunch. Al's phone was buzzing in his bag all during class, but he refused to check it, both out of respect for his teacher, and also because the Introduction to Aeronautics course he had enrolled in turned out to be fascinating, and he was sure that whatever stupid SnapChats that Ed was sending him could wait until he at least got to lunch.

He's mostly right. There are a bevy of selfies from the locker room, complete with Ed in his plug suit looking even more churlish than usual, although perhaps also a little guilty. From what Al can string together, Ed and Mustang got into a fight in the car on the way to HQ, and now Riza is mad at the both of them and Ed is too scared to leave the locker room. (As photographic evidence of just how much they have fucked up, Ed manages to sneak a picture of Mustang, slumped on a bench in his plug suit, head in his hands. The normally pompous pilot looked defeated.) Al doesn't know Riza well, but he's smart enough to know that you shouldn't get on her bad side if you can help it. That being said, he can't help but laugh at the situation. You may be a fancy pilot with a college degree now, but you're still picking fights with people who are bigger than you. Some things never change.

"What are you laughing at?" Winry asks when Al makes it up onto the roof. Being in the middle of the city center, the roof of Garfiel's Engineering Magnet School has a fantastic view of the rest of the city, and on a clear day like this, Al is convinced they can see their apartment building. (They can't.)

"Ed and Mustang got into a fight on the way to HQ this morning and now they're trapped in the locker room because they're too scared to face Riza."

While Al found this completely hilarious, Winry is exasperated. "What a fantastic impression Ed is making on the Program. He's getting into fights with the seasoned pilots and pissing off the woman who is letting us live with her. I'm gonna kill him when he gets home tonight."

"If he ever comes back," Al says, sitting next to Winry on the ledge that they use in lieu of a bench. Technically, they aren't supposed to be on the roof, but neither of them have ever been fond of following arbitrary rules. "Who knows, we may have to schedule visits to see him in the men's locker room of the State Alchemist Program."

Winry's glare could melt steel, and Al is thankful that it isn't directed at him (or at Ed; he should be thanking his lucky stars about now that he isn't within Winry's grasp).

"What an idiot," Winry says, divvying out the lunch that she had made the night before between them.

Al's smile is unwavering. "That's brother."

Al knows that for all the punches Winry has thrown, for all the eye rolls and heavy sighs, Winry loves Edward. And, in particular, she loves him in the most necessary of ways: by not letting her love overpower the fact that everyone can be incredibly stupid at times, and Edward is no exception to that. (In fact, as Winry would claim, Edward is even more predisposed to stupidity than your average person. Al can't argue with her there.)

It's a sunny day in Central, as most days tend to be. At least in Resembool, it seemed that there was always a pleasant, cool breeze blowing through, the kind made for ruffling clothes on lines and pretty girls' hair. Here in Central though, with all the tall buildings and concrete and steel, it sometimes feels like they're living in an oven. Al doesn't hate the heat as much as Ed does (which is his own fault, really; Ed's fashion sense begins and ends with tacky hoodies and jeans, and so he doesn't have much that is suited to the weather), but Winry thrives in it. Al is sure that she misses Resembool as much as he and his brother do-and, unlike them, she actually has family that she's leaving behind-but she looks at home here, balancing the lunchbox on her engineering textbook. Al thinks that if his brother could see her here, he'd be completely done for.

They don't notice immediately. After all, it's not exactly the kind of thing you train yourself to look for, especially not in the middle of this fairly idyllic scene. But, slowly, Al's eyes train on it, and he finds himself unable to look away.

"Hey, Winry?" he asks.

"Yeah?" she asks, taking a long sip from her water bottle.

Al points at the thing on the horizon. "What's that?"


Personally, there is not a hell Ed could imagine that would be worse than his current situation: stuck in a locker room with Pilot Asshole for the foreseeable future because he had pissed off a woman who could (and possibly would) put a bullet in his head. Of every single person in the world Captain Hawkeye had to carpool with, it just had to be Roy Mustang.

Ed doesn't know much (or, really, anything) about the Captain and Mustang's relationship. On the car ride to HQ in the mornings, they very rarely talk, although if they tried, he doubts Hawkeye could get a word in edgewise with Ed and Mustang arguing. And although most of Ed's time at the Program so far has been spent in the Alchemist, acclimating and doing tests and simulations, he hasn't failed to notice how they interact outside. Hawkeye and Mustang's interactions are...strange. They constantly seem to be next to or near each other, but they very rarely engage each other directly. If they do, it's usually so Hawkeye can scold him for slacking or generally being a jackass, but there's something strange about it, something Ed can't place his finger only word he can think of is affectionate, but that isn't the right word. When Winry or Al makes fun of him for being short, or having a tacky sense of taste, that's affectionate. Ed supposes that the way Hawkeye and Mustang interact is understanding, as if they know each other so well that they don't need to speak. It's unsettling to watch, like some sort of heavily choreographed dance.

As miserable as he is, he can't be as miserable as Mustang. He had to have sat for half an hour on a bench with his head in his hands, and since then has been doing something furiously on his phone, eyebrows knit tight. He hasn't ventured to talk to Ed since they've been stuck in there, which proves just how upset he actually is. Normally they would spat just to pass the time, if nothing else. And this is where Ed gets really confused: this kind of behavior goes way past simply offending your superior. It's almost like he pissed off his girlfriend, Ed thinks, and then immediately cringes. Hawkeye can do way better than that jerk-off.

He's gone from being miserable to simply being bored, at this point. He's running out of things to snap Al (there's no way he would snap any of this to Winry; she'd chew him out for pissing off Hawkeye for sure), and he figured that he'd be busy working and wouldn't have time to read, and hadn't brought anything, and so has started to quiz himself on how many digits of pi he can remember. He reaches the fifty-third digit when the door to the locker room slams open. Ed jumps, worried that perhaps it's Hawkeye, returning to yell at them some more, or perhaps make them go out and do something useful. It isn't.

Standing in the doorway, blue eyes wide and mustache quivering, is Armstrong. "My fellow pilots," he says, normally booming voice hushed. "There is a homunculus in Central City."