Kain was sick.
He didn't want to follow Mustang. He didn't want to witness his confrontation with Edward but Falman pulled him along, occasionally glancing over at him with sympathy.
All of Mustang's men were grieving. They were all distraught over this sudden deluge of loss; three of their comrades had been taken from them, by death or imprisonment, and their absence was like a constant ache that could not be soothed. Kain himself hadn't slept more than a few restless hours since their journey to the border, and he could see by the bloodshot eyes of his fellows that he wasn't alone.
...But Kain knew that none of them, other than Mustang, felt the loss as deeply as he did. The way that Mustang had stared at him when he'd so tactlessly told him of his wife's death haunted Kain every time he closed his eyes. And whenever Mustang looked at him, every time their eyes met across the office... he just wanted to die. He couldn't stand seeing that quiet, unbearable pain in his gaze... and then Mustang hadn't even known the full extent of his loss yet.
But now he knew. The coroner had seen to that.
Kain knew, too. He knew the dark secret that the coroner had just uncovered and revealed to his Fuhrer, a secret that he had hoped that Mustang would never have to know. Not like this, at least.
He remembered that day—god, it hadn't even been two weeks ago, had it? He and Hawkeye had been alone in the office...
Kain looked down at the calendar in front of him, trying to rearrange the monthly agenda around their upcoming battle with Drachma. They would be leaving for the border tomorrow and no one knew how long they would be there, so Second Lieutenant Kain Fuery and Major Hawkeye were responsible for completely re-working Fuhrer Mustang's agenda: canceling meetings, rescheduling press-conferences, and generally just making sure that everything was covered before they left.
He frowned as he looked down at Monday the twelfth.
"Sorry, Major..." he said as he crossed out her request for a morning off written under the date, "Cancel whatever plans you had for the twelfth, because I think we'll need you at the border."
She smirked and looked up from her own work. "I already have. It was just a doctor's appointment, anyway."
"Doctor's appointment?" Kain asked, arching an eyebrow at her, "For what?"
"Just a few tests." Her answer was flippant and she went immediately back to her work. Something about her flippancy, though, gave Kain pause.
"...What kind of tests? Are you... okay?"
She smiled again, softly. "I'm fine. I just think that I might... possibly... be more than fine."
And then, to his complete and utter shock, she blushed and ducked her head like a coy schoolgirl. He stared at her blankly, startled by the pink tint to her cheeks. He hadn't even known that Hawkeye was even capable of blushing. Kain himself flushed any time he got even just a little bit flustered—he blamed it on his fair complexion—but he'd never thought to see such modest color on Hawkeye of all people...
And what did she mean by "more than fine"...?
But then it hit him—in a giddy kind of jolt and he immediately felt his cheeks warm with a deep flush of his own.
"Hawkeye...? Are... are you pregn—"
"Shh!" she silenced him, looking toward the half-open door of the Fuhrer's inner office, where her new husband was—presumably—finalizing their Drachma attack strategy with Breda and Alphonse. "He'll hear you."
Kain's mouth went dry, then quirked up into a disbelieving grin. "Well, are you?"
She looked down at her paperwork primly, but a mischievous smile remained firmly on her lips. "If I knew that for sure then I wouldn't need the doctor to test me, now would I?"
"But you think you are."
She shrugged impishly.
"And you haven't told him yet?"
"I'll tell him once I know for sure. Until then, you keep your mouth shut, understand?" she threatened playfully, her eyes sparkling.
Kain gave her a mock-salute, his heart full to bursting. "Yes, ma'am."
She never came back from the battle, though. She was never able to go to the doctor to get tested. She was never able to tell Mustang. But Kain knew... deep, deep in his soul... what a beautiful, terrible thing that the coroner had found in Hawkeye's body.
Kain was sick.
The guard standing in front of Edward's cell looked wary as he put his key in the lock and slid open the heavy door. Mustang strode past him into the little room, his eye fixed on the figure curled up on the bed. Ed looked up as he walked in and their gazes locked. An acidic, cloying kind of tension thickened the air and made it even harder for Jean to swallow the lump in his throat.
"That will be all, Private," the Fuhrer told the guard, not looking at him.
The guard licked his lips, nervous. He knew—as Jean knew, as they all knew somehow—that something was about to happen. It wasn't that the guard didn't want to leave... he most certainly did, probably wanting to get away from that murderous coldness that Mustang was radiating... but it was his duty to guard Edward Elric from harming others and from being harmed, and the latter now seemed very likely.
"...With all due respect, sir," he began timidly, "I need to stay at my post. I've been assigned to watch Fullmetal and I—"
"I said, 'that will be all.'"
The guard looked back at Jean anxiously, not sure what to do. "You've been dismissed, Private," Jean said gently, giving him permission to go and tacitly letting him know that he would not be blamed for anything that happened in this room, no matter how terrible. "Are Miss Rockbell and the lawyer still in the building?"
The guard nodded, his eyes flicking back to look at Mustang.
"Keep them occupied for a while. I'm sure that the Fuhrer would to speak with Fullmetal uninterrupted."
The guard nodded again, resigned, then ducked his head and slunk away, back down the dark hallway.
Jean turned his attentions back toward the cell, back toward the man who had been fighting to keep himself in check the whole way here. As composed as Mustang was trying to be his hands were trembling slightly at his sides, his fingers twitching as if anxious to cast a flame. Jean didn't doubt that he wanted to scorch Edward again... or worse... but this time, Jean wasn't sure of whether or not he wanted to stop him.
Maybe Mustang deserved some revenge.
Maybe they just should have let him kill Edward back at the border.
They all stood just outside the doorway of the cell, hovering, not daring to enter but also not feeling as if they should leave. Mustang's broad, stiff back was toward them and he stood silently, just looking down at the boy in the straightjacket as if suddenly unsure of himself.
"Mustang..." Ed choked out finally. The name was slurred a little as it left his lips, as the side of his mouth had been badly damaged by Mustang's fire. The whole left side of his face was swathed in gauze and the whiteness of the bandages in conjunction with the whiteness of the straightjacket and the whiteness of the bed sheets gave Edward an eerie, ethereal glow in the rain-tinted light coming in through the window. In contrast, his one hauntingly amber eye shone as a vibrant burst of color, like a flame against a backdrop of pale clouds.
Jean shuddered.
"They're saying I'm insane!" Edward continued. His voice was strained and accusatory, both desperate and enraged. "You lied. You told them I was crazy, didn't you? You said that Al... you said that he thought I was crazy too, but that's a lie! He would never say that, he would never even think that...!"
Mustang just stood there and let Ed talk, watching him wordlessly, his fingertips still twitching.
"You have to tell them that it's not true... tell them that you were lying. You have to. Al would never say that, but Winry thinks... I-I know she thinks it's true. And the lawyer! That asshole wants to tell everybody at the trial. He wants everyone to know, but it's a lie...!"
Edward stopped, panting, drawing in stuttering, wet-sounding breaths as if he was going to be sick. Mustang regarded him silently, offering him no reply.
"...Say something!" Ed's voice cracked piteously, catching in his throat. He sat up and rocked forward onto his knees on the thin mattress, eye blazing from behind the greasy curtain of his hair. "You have to tell them before the trial! You have to—"
A sudden flurry of movement silenced him as Mustang shot forward, grabbed the injured side of Edward's head, and slammed his face hard against the wall.
"I don't have to do anything for you, Edward," he whispered, leaning in close to him, seething at his pinned him there against the rough surface just below the window. He dug his nails into the bandages on Edward's face and blood blossomed from the white gauze beneath his fingertips, the newly-healing burn tearing under the pressure. Ed shrieked like an animal and tried to wrench away, but—pinioned as he was by the straightjacket—Mustang had him completely incapacitated with just that one, frightening hand and just dragged his nails in deeper.
Ed screamed again, retching against what must have been considerable pain. Breda made as if to move into the room and stop Mustang, but Jean reached out and took his arm gently. Breda clenched his jaw didn't try to get past him; as much as he wanted to, as cruel as the sight before them was... they both knew that they shouldn't intervene.
Jean looked over his shoulder at Falman. He was watching Fuery just as closely as he was watching Ed and Mustang. Fuery himself had backed away from the door a little, holding himself and looking as if he wanted nothing more than to run back down the hallway after the guard and disappear.
Mustang tightened his talon-like grip on Ed's face again spasmodically, then twisted and threw him off of the bed. Ed hit the cold floor hard, not having the freedom of his hands to even attempt to break his fall. He just lay there, gasping, not daring to get up as Mustang towered over him, shaking with rage.
Jean had never seen him like this. Not even on the battlefield had he ever given in to his anger like this. He had always been so good at restraining himself, even under the pressures of war and unparalleled hatred. Even when he had gone after Bradley for his hand in murdering Brigadier General Hughes, Jean didn't doubt that he'd kept himself at least marginally cool and methodical. Now, though, keeping such control was a battle that Jean wasn't sure that the great Fuhrer would win.
Whatever the coroner had said to him on the phone had finally stretched his composure dangerously thin, and he knew that that delicate sheet of self-control was all that was keeping Edward alive right now.
"You have taken... everything from me..." Mustang continued, trying to maintain his cold, scathing whisper even through his own obvious pain.
"W-what about what you took from me?" Ed choked back, the defiance in his voice diminished somewhat by the pathetic way he was curled on the floor, the bandaged side of his face smearing blood across the smooth concrete. "You took my brother! You sacrificed him to that f-fucking battle just to make you look good!"
"He made his own choices!" Mustang roared down at him, "I had nothing to do with his death! But you...! You shot and killed my wife!"
Ed balked suddenly, then let his voice become soft and lamenting.
"...Th-that was an accident... I never wanted to—"
But Mustang interrupted him again, seizing him by the throat and heaving him upward. He slammed him up against the wall again, holding him off the floor by his pale, slender neck.
"Don't fuck with me, don't you dare fuck with me..." Mustang warned quietly, that gossamer veil of his composure all but dissolving before Jean's very eyes. Ed's only reply was a weak choking sound as he tried and failed to suck in air past the white-gloved hand clamped around his throat.
Mustang took a deep, shuddering breath as if he too felt as if he were being slowly suffocated, and said:
"She was pregnant, Edward."
The sudden break in that strong voice hit Jean like a fist to the gut. The world rocked for a moment. No...
He looked back over his shoulder at his comrades, horrified. Had they heard that right? Had Mustang really just said that? At his side, Breda breathed out a desperate curse and backed slowly away from the door. Behind them, Fuery gave a quiet, nauseated-sounding sob.
Falman did nothing at all, just stared at Mustang's profile calculatingly.
"You murdered my wife and my child!" Mustang rasped, grief thickening his words. "And you have the audacity to ask me to speak at your trial... and defend your sanity...?"
He gave a disturbing, strangled little laugh and released his hold. Unbalanced by his sudden release, Ed hit the floor again unceremoniously and doubled over, gulping down air.
"There's not going to be a trial," Mustang went on finally, "You don't even deserve that much of my time."
"You..." Ed protested through his gasping, "c-can't just..."
"I want you out of Central by morning," Mustang spoke over him, the words tight and shaking as they left his throat. "I don't care where you go, I just want you gone. And if you are ever spotted within fifty miles of Central again, I promise you that you will be hunted down and killed. Just pray that I'm not the one who finds you first, because I will make damn sure that it takes you a very, very long time to die."
Mustang turned from him and stormed back toward the door to the cell. His men parted for him, none of them courageous enough to look him in the eye.
"W-wait!" Ed called after him and, with what appeared to be a tremendous strain on his willpower, Mustang stopped and waited.
"I'm not crazy," the teenager insisted, as if this had been the topic of their discussion, as if not a single word of what Mustang had just said to him had been heard. "Al would never say that. Say that he never said that! Admit it!"
Mustang did not deign to turn back to him, but when he finally spoke there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he had Fullmetal's full attention.
"Alphonse Elric thought that you were a psychopath. He wanted you committed. He wanted you locked up and in a straightjacket... and here you are. At least he got his dying wish."
And with that he calmly walked back down the hallway, past Breda and Falman, past where Fuery has pressed himself back against the wall, holding himself and crying softly. Breda took a steadying breath and went after him. Falman followed a moment later, stopping briefly to put a consoling hand on Fuery's arm.
Edward stared after them, stock-still where he was slumped on the floor against the wall, bloody and bruised. His eye was unimaginably huge, filled with a distressing kind of horror as he looked over at Jean.
"He's lying," he said to him breathlessly. "He is, he has to be..."
Jean cleared his throat, but didn't say anything to him. Instead he reached over and pulled the cell door closed. The locking mechanism clacked shut with a cold, echoing kind of finality.
"He's lying, Havoc!"
Jean ignored him. Yes, Mustang was lying. Or, at least, stretching the truth. Alphonse never wanted Ed committed... but he had known that something was wrong with his brother. He had seen, as everyone could see now, how very sick he was. Mustang knew this, but he wanted to hurt Edward... and there was nothing that he could say that would injure him more than those parting words.
Jean shoved his hands into his pockets and moved away from the door, down the hallway. Fuery was still huddled against the wall, but Jean left him there. He had a feeling that he, too, wanted to be alone right now.
"He's lying!" Ed shrieked to no one, over and over again, "HE'S LYING, HE'S LYING!"
Jean's stomach turned, and suddenly all he could think about was how much he needed a fucking cigarette.
But even when he was outside and halfway down the street, pulling long drags of tobacco into his constricting lungs and blinking tears out of his eyes, he swore that he could still hear him screaming.
Mustang had stopped just outside the prison building. The sky loomed low over the street, heavy with the promise of more rain. It had been raining for days, off-and-on, since they'd gotten back from the border.
He was leaning back against the outer wall of the brick building, eye closed. He reached up and massaged his brow with a wince. Heymans couldn't help but notice that the fingertips of his gloves were stained a hopeless shade of red, and it dragged a thin pigment of Ed's blood across Mustang's temple as his rubbed it.
Heymans heard footsteps and looked back to see Falman coming toward them down the short flight of steps leading to the prison. The tightness in his heart eased just a little, glad to know that someone else was here.
He turned back to Mustang and cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Sir?" he began softly. "Are you alright?"
Mustang sighed, his breath stirring a few strands of his dark hair. "Am I supposed to be?"
"...No, I guess not."
Mustang let a silence grow between them. Heymans looked back at Falman, who shrugged. Neither of them knew what to do. This was not anything that they were used to and they didn't know how to go about making things better.
Because neither of them were Hawkeye.
Neither of them could give him what he needed, nor could they soothe the pain of his loss; the loss of his wife... and now of his unborn child, that he hadn't even known existed an hour ago.
"...I think I'm going to go home," Mustang rasped after a moment, staring off across the street. He had one hand on his abdomen absently, gently pressing against his healing bullet-wound. "I don't feel very well."
"I'll drive you," Heymans offered quickly, digging in his pockets for his keys, glad to finally be of some use.
"I'd rather walk."
"Then Falman and I will walk with you."
"Alone, Lieutenant."
Heymans hesitated.
Ever since Mustang had been injured at the border by his attempted assassin, the Parliament had been a little over-protective of their Fuhrer. He'd needed body guards on occasion before, but now he could scarcely leave his house without being accompanied, by order of the government. As much as he knew that Mustang just wanted to be alone, Heymans couldn't allow him to walk the two miles to his manor by himself.
"Sir, you know you can't go alone... The Parliament—"
"Fuck the Parliament, Breda!" Mustang shouted, the obvious distress that he was trying to keep inside him finally bubbling over the edge of his stoic exterior. But then he stopped himself and raked a frustrated hand through his hair. "Sorry. Just... I-it's fine. Let's just go, then."
"Sir."
Silently, the three of them walked to the car. Falman opened the back door for him and then got into the passenger's seat. Heymans got behind the wheel uneasily, adjusting the rearview mirror to focus on Mustang before he started the car and drove off.
Mustang leaned back in his seat, staring at the ceiling of the car. He was chewing his lip and his hands were fiddling with the bloodied fingers of his gloves agitatedly. He suddenly looked to Heymans like a tortured, caged animal pacing along the walls of his enclosure: all he wanted was to get out... but there was no way out of this. There was no ignoring what he'd lost and the pressure of this internal confinement was crushing him down with an unbearable weight.
Heymans looked over at Falman, each of them instantly understanding the other's thoughts. God, if only they knew that to say to him.
"...This is absurd."
Mustang's voice cracked through the quiet inside the car like a whip, harsh and sudden.
"I mean... isn't it?" he went on, sounding bewildered and perhaps vaguely hysterical. "It's just one thing after another. It's just getting steadily worse. It's ridiculous. What have I done wrong? What sins have I committed lately that have made me deserve this? I-I mean, if this doesn't disprove the existence of a benevolent God, then..."
He trailed off shakily, turning to look out the window. The gray light was just bright enough to reveal to Heymans how hard he was fighting to keep himself from weeping in front of his subordinates.
"Or maybe there is a God, and I've just done something to piss him off," he continued, suddenly grinning. "I haven't lost enough yet, or learned whatever fucking lesson He's trying to teach me, so He decides to add a dead baby to the list of my torture? On top of everything else?" He gave a frighteningly empty bark of laughter. "Isn't that just fucking absurd?"
Heymans swallowed hard, the road before him blurring. "Yes, sir," was all he could think to say.
The sick smile on Mustang's face vanished at the nervous reply. His shoulders hunched and he reached up to unbutton the collar of his uniform, pulling the fabric away from his neck as if he couldn't breathe very well.
"...Sorry," he apologized after a moment, wiping his eye furtively. "That was just kind of a blow, you know? I just had... no idea. She probably didn't even know. I'm sure she didn't. She couldn't have."
"It hit us all pretty hard, sir," Heymans mustered lamely.
Mustang shook himself, closed his eye again tightly, and sat back in the seat.
They pulled up in front of Mustang's home a few moments later. The Fuhrer's manor was a huge, sprawling property, much of it recently renovated in the wake of Mustang's fiery battle with the last Fuhrer to inhabit its pristine halls. Mustang looked out the window, a hushed kind of loathing slithering across his face as he gazed up at the massive front steps—those steps where he had once lain, bleeding and unconscious, as Hawkeye tried to revive him. Heymans could almost hear him thinking: Why could she save me, when I couldn't save her? How could a belly wound be more damaging than a bullet to the head...? Where is the equivalency in that?
Heymans got out and opened the door for Mustang, not looking him in the face. Falman got out on the other side, watching them both. It was nearly impossible to ever guess what that man was thinking, but the tightness of his jaw let Heymans know that he, too, was struggling to keep himself calmly unemotional—a trait that usually came naturally to him.
"I'll cancel your meeting with the Treasury in the morning. We can push it back to Thursday, if you'd like..." Heymans offered, knowing that he was probably going to need more than just one day to himself.
"No, it's not necessary..." Mustang tried to protest, getting to his feet.
"Yes it is, sir," Falman said seriously, speaking for the first time. "I think it's very necessary, at this point."
Mustang looked over at him, but then nodded sadly. "Right. Thank you."
Heymans cleared his throat. "What would you like us to do with Edward? I mean, he did try to assassinate you. Do you really want to release him...?"
"Yes." The answer was immediate. "Sign him over to Winry Rockbell and tell her that I don't want him anywhere near Central. I never want to have to see his face again. He's her problem, now. Besides, I don't think he'll try anything again."
"...I'll send through the papers tonight, then."
"Good. Fine."
Mustang looked as if he was about to say something else, but then he just shook his head and walked away from them toward the manor, his hands in his pockets.
But then he stopped.
He stood there motionless for a beat, his slumped shoulders shivering a little against the cold breeze that licked down from the darkening sky. A few scattered raindrops fell, darkening the concrete at his feet in a random pattern of spots.
"...Do you think she knew?"
When neither Falman nor Heymans offered him a quick reply, he half-turned to look at them. His eye was wide, almost scared-looking as he waited for them to answer.
Heymans faltered. That was a loaded question. What he was asking went far deeper than simple knowledge of maternity. Because if Hawkeye had been aware of her condition, that meant that she had known the dangers she was placing in front of her unborn child by going to war. Pregnancy is automatic exclusion from battle, and Hawkeye surely knew this, yet had chosen to take the risk anyway. And when she had heroically taken a fatal bullet for her husband and commander, she had willfully sacrificed not only herself, but their child to keep him safe.
Heymans wanted to think that she hadn't known, that she would never place Mustang's life over the life of both her and her baby... but she would have. She had been willing to sacrifice everything she had to Mustang, and not even because he was her husband... but because he was her Fuhrer.
At least, that's how Mustang would see things. That's what the terror in his eye was, the thought that she had knowingly killed their child to save his life, and that new burden was far heavier than anything that he could possibly lift.
Heymans cleared his throat, his mind lurching queasily in search of an appropriate answer more convincing than a simple "no", and finding nothing but deep sadness.
"I think would have told you if she'd known," Falman said finally, answering without really answering.
Mustang stared at him. The sprinkling from the sky was quickly turning into true rain, making Mustang's dark hair cling to the side of his cheek. He let out a sharp breath that might have been a relapse to that empty bout laughter that had taken him in the car, then said:
"Yes. Yes, of course. H-ha."
Without another word, he turned and quickly ascended the steps to his home. A man at the door let him in, and then all was quiet.
"She knew," Falman confided once the door was closed. "Because I'm pretty sure Fury knew, too."
Heymans let that settle on him for a moment, then wiped a raindrop from his cheek. Then, without speaking to one another again, the two of them got back into the car and went back to work.
((A/N: I'm thinking of putting this fic on hiatus. I'm starting to lose steam with this one and I don't really enjoy writing it anymore... and I know it shows in the quality of the writing, for which I apologize. Hopefully I get my inspiration back for this one soon, but I have other things I'd rather be writing at the moment. Perhaps I'll just keep this on the back burner and update whenever the spark hits me, but start posting other fics at the same time. I dunno. I'll try to get at least one more chapter up before deciding anything. Bleh.))