Chapter 8

Roy emerged from his room the next morning to find Edward grouchily slouched on the window seat in the living room with no one else in sight. The scowl that had once graced his office so much was written across all Edward's features, and the way that he absentmindedly watched the morning traffic on the street outside told Roy all that he needed to know: his brilliant mind was up to something, as usual.

At first, he thought Edward hadn't noticed him; he didn't look away from the window at all, and after a long moment of watching him, Roy continued his trek to the kitchen. When he was halfway through the living room, Ed spoke.

"Do you want to go back to Amestris?" The voice that came out was smaller than usual, almost vulnerable, and Roy immediately stopped and turned to stare at him. "It's my fault you're here," Edward continued. "Now that you've found us, and you've confirmed that we're safe and sound...do you want to go back?"

Roy thought for a moment before answering. He had always assumed that after he'd located Fullmetal, they'd find a way to return to Amestris, all of them together. After the Gate's cryptic remarks about Edward knowing how to return, however, Roy was suddenly a lot less sure.

"Amestris is my home, Fullmetal," he said softly. He walked over to the sofa across from the window seat and sunk into it, never taking his eyes off of Ed's profile. "So yes, I would eventually like to return to it."

Edward said nothing for a long moment. They coexisted in awkward silence, the dull sounds of the traffic outside contributing a faint background hum. Finally, Ed turned and looked Roy square in the eye.

"We can't go back," he said flatly. His eyes were dull and cold, and Roy was terrified by what he saw in them. "If we could have gone back, I would have taken us there long ago."

"You know how to get home," Roy stated, the Gate curling sluggishly in his mind at the suggestion.

"You know how I wasn't willing to murder people to get the Philosopher's Stone?" Ed asked, a challenge in his eyes. "Well, I'm not willing to murder people to get back to Amestris, either." Roy's face must have been shocked because Ed smirked slightly. "What, you hadn't realized it yet? I thought you were supposed to be crafty, you bastard. Anything that defies the natural laws of alchemy requires the human element in order to succeed." He worried his bottom lip. "Here in this world, there's no way to sacrifice only yourself. The only way to get through the Gate is to sacrifice…others. It's the price to pay for using alchemy in a world where it doesn't exist."

"Does anyone else know?" Roy asked, turning this information over in his brain. He'd already had a vague inkling that this was true. The knowledge was in the back of his mind, like an imprint, and he wondered if the Gate had left it there as he'd passed through. Yet he'd never really considered the true price to getting home before...

"The old man had it all worked out," Ed said crankily, flicking his ponytail with feigned disinterest. "I don't know who had access to his notes before I managed to get my hands on them, but I immediately trashed the parts where human sacrifice was mentioned. The more ambitious shits in this government would have been likely to try it, otherwise." Somehow, Roy knew he was referring to Müller.

"How did they get through the Gate last time?" he continued, although he knew the answer from the Gate's knowledge. The homunculus Envy had died, and the energy from that death had powered the reaction. Ed didn't answer him but instead went back to staring out the window.

"It's why Müller wants the Uranium bomb, you know," he said finally. "It has the power to destroy millions of lives in an instant, but Müller thinks it can power the alchemic reaction to activate the Gate between worlds." Roy shivered. The death of millions?

"Can it?"

"On its own? No. Too scientific, not enough humanity behind it. If it was used to wipe out a city, and the energy from that sacrifice was used?" Edward took a deep breath and purged it, his antenna blowing slightly from the effort. "He could open the Gate a thousand times over."

A chill crept its way up Roy's spine. Müller was him. Slightly different, but still him; there was no way that any version of Roy Mustang would kill millions of people in order to satisfy his own hunger for power. Millions, no, but ten? Twenty? How many lives would it cost to open the Gate just once?

Roy had a feeling that Edward knew. He also had a feeling that if he asked, he would never actually receive an answer.

Years ago, how many lives would he have sacrificed if it could have brought Edward back to him?

"I'm going to grab breakfast, Fullmetal," he said instead, standing up abruptly. "Would you like me to grab you anything?"

Edward gave a harsh laugh. "After that conversation? Jackass, I'm not going to have an appetite for hours. Human sacrifice makes me sick."

Human sacrifice made Roy a little sick too, but he felt that he needed something to distract Fullmetal from the horrible look in his eyes.

"Let's go for a walk," he suggested instead. The warm sunlight was streaming through the window and it looked as though they were in for a lovely early autumn day.

"Can't," Edward mumbled. "I have to wait for Al. He and Liza went to get groceries." He still was having trouble meeting Roy's eyes.

Roy abruptly decided that even if Edward wasn't going to be cooperative, the fresh air would do himself some good, so without any further comment, he went back to his room to change into the clothes provided for him. Liza had gotten several more nicely tailored suits while they were away, and they were all displayed prominently in the guest room closet. Roy selected a navy blue one and dressed quickly, finishing off the look with the matching hat that sat on the coat stand near the door. Glancing at himself in the mirror, he felt that he looked very dashing.

He hoped that Edward felt the same.

Given by the faint red coloring in his cheeks as Roy exited his room once more, Edward did find the ensemble attractive, but he still refused to look at him. "Fullmetal, I'm going out," Roy told him as cheerfully as possible. It was hard to be cheerful when one had just discussed large-scale human sacrifice, but the blush in Edward's cheeks was helping quite a bit.

"Why do I care what you do?" Edward asked, scowling fiercely. "Have fun charming everyone in Germany, you shithead."

"But Edward," Roy purred, unable to help himself. "The only person in Germany that I want to charm is you." With that, he left the living room while Ed did his best fish impression, considering the battle won.

----------------------------

The streets of Munich were busy with people, carts, and automobile traffic, but Roy didn't mind at all as he strolled along. The city reminded him greatly of Central, from the way the people dressed and acted to the slightly different dialect they all spoke. The cultural similarities between Germany and Amestris no longer surprised him, but he was still interested to find out how deeply they ran.

He was even more interested in how deeply the similarities ran between his people and their alternate selves. Was Müller the type to sacrifice millions of people in order to achieve his goal?

Roy reached the park on the corner and stopped, admiring the treetops starting to blaze with the first hints of autumn. He was no longer upset with Ed for not attempting to return to Amestris, but he didn't know why the Gate had ever thought that Edward would send him back if he'd revealed himself in Amman. Why did it want Edward to be in Munich so badly?

The Gate, of course, was silent, as it had been since they'd returned. Roy thought annoyed thoughts at it, but it didn't seem to stir at all. Typical.

The park was lovely as Roy strolled through it, but his mind was elsewhere, so much that he didn't hear the sound of footsteps approaching until they were right behind him. He whirled and turned to see Edward standing there, fully dressed and panting slightly from the exertion of running after him. "Mustang!"

To say that he was the last person Roy expected to see was an understatement. "Fullmetal?" he asked incredulously. "I thought you were waiting for Al." To his surprise, instead of answering, Edward sullenly moved forward until they were side by side.

"Let's go for a damn walk," he grumbled.

Roy smiled. "All right."

They ended up sitting on a bench next to a pond at the far end of the park, with no other souls in sight. Edward kept tossing stones absentmindedly into the water, watching the ripples spread outward from each disturbance, and Roy watched him, contented to just have his presence nearby.

"You shouldn't have let me think you were Müller," Edward said finally, turning a particularly flat stone over in his palm and looking down at it as though it was the most interesting thing ever.

"I know." Roy admitted quietly. "I'm sorry."

"No, you don't know." Ed's voice grew heated. "You can't possibly understand how hard it was. At first I thought he was you. I trusted him like you. I gave him my loyalty like you. And then..." And then Müller had betrayed him, threatened Al, and ruined everything. He already knew this story. "He wore your face!" Ed continued. "He was you, and yet he was missing everything that made you worth anything, you bastard."

Roy kept his face firmly schooled into a neutral expression. "I'm sorry, Fullmetal," he said again.

"And now he knows you're here," Edward said hollowly. "If I'd known back in Amman that you were Mustang and that you hadn't met Müller yet...I would have sent you home, no matter the price. Fuck," he swore, "anything to keep you out of his hands."

"Is he really that bad?" Roy hadn't exactly liked Müller, but the man hadn't seemed like a danger to him.

"Hello, Mustang," Müller purred as he brought his palms together. "Time to wake up."

Roy shivered, the memory of his dream from weeks ago still unsettling him.

"Do you know how it feels to be betrayed by someone wearing the face of someone you care about?" Ed spat out. He threw the flat stone into the pond for emphasis. "I've experienced some pretty shit awful things in my life, and trust me, this was up there. So when I found out you pretended to be him…when you said you were him, but you acted like you..."

Roy couldn't bear it any longer and he crossed the six inches or so between them to take Edward's gloved flesh hand in his own. "Fullmetal, I had no idea that Müller had done those things to you. I was just trying to protect myself." He wanted to explain about the Gate, he wanted to make Edward see, but somehow he knew that it would only sound like petty excuses. There was nothing to do but admit that he was wrong and move on.

Edward curled his fingers around Roy's, his face reddening. "If I had known it was you earlier...I wouldn't have been such a..." He mumbled the rest of his sentence, but Roy smirked anyway.

"What was that, Fullmetal? You wouldn't have been such a brat?"

"Shut up, old man!" Edward scowled fiercely, but didn't let go of his hand. Roy absent-mindedly stroked along the stretch of Edward's pointer finger with his thumb, the barest of touches. Edward seemed to waffle between scowling further and blushing, the mixture of expressions on his face adorable in the bright autumn sun. Roy scooted closer, closing the gap of space between their bodies and pressing them together side-by-side.

Edward stared down at their joined hands. "You bastard."

"What did I do now, Fullmetal?" Roy asked.

Ed reddened noticeably. "I don't want to talk about it."

"If you're talking about the fact that you're obviously smitten with me," Roy purred, "there's no sense in hiding something so glaringly obvious." Ed jerked his hand away from Roy as if burnt and stood up abruptly, marching down to the pond's edge.

"I am not smitten with you!"

"Oh?" Roy asked archly. He told himself to stay calm; after all, Fullmetal was giving all the signs, and it wasn't like him to read anyone wrong, much less someone he'd known as long as Edward Elric. Roy was a people person first and foremost – if Ed was giving him signs of being interested, then most likely, Ed was interested.

"No, you shit! I..." Ed turned around, and Roy saw more than three lost years in his eyes. He was taller, broader, older, and Roy couldn't take it anymore. He stood up from the bench and bunched his hands in the collar of Ed's jacket, pulling him in for a kiss.

Instead of squirming like Roy half expected, Edward returned the kiss fiercely, as though he'd been waiting years for this. His automail hand clutched desperately in Roy's new navy suit and his flesh hand came to a gentle rest at the edge of the hairline on Roy's neck. Roy ignored the crook in his neck, the vague discomfort of being outside in broad daylight, ignored everything except for the young man in front of him, blond and fresh and everything he'd been waiting for. He was kissing Fullmetal. They stood like that for awhile, making out like teenagers, before Ed finally pulled away shyly.

"I trust you," he told Roy with a fierce determination in his eyes. "I trust you, and never betray that again."

"I won't," Roy promised. "I would never—"

"Also, this is kind of illegal," Ed grinned wickedly at him. "We probably shouldn't be out in public, you pervert."

Roy's brows knitted together. "But Fullmetal, aren't you legal now? Or are you afraid that you don't look it—" He trailed off at the pressure of Edward pinching his thigh and winced.

"Shut up. It has nothing to do with age. Two...men," and Edward swallowed hard, "being together is against the law here in Germany." He frowned. "Don't ask me about these weird laws, I didn't make them. Religion plays a major factor in this world, much more so than in ours, and part of that means that they're obsessed with morals."

Roy smiled at Ed's scoffing. Of course being obsessed with sexual morals would seem odd to Ed; he'd been fighting much harder truths since he was barely old enough to understand the world. Roy felt similarly; when he'd battled homunculi and performed human transmutation, being concerned about sexual morals seemed a little...superfluous. Although perhaps he wouldn't have felt that way if Fullmetal had still been fifteen...

"Well, then, we will be discreet," Roy told him. He didn't try to touch him again, and as they made their way back to Liza's house, they were careful to walk side by side with a good foot of space between them. However, Edward kept glancing sideways and Roy kept glancing back, and there was nothing that could stop the occasional small smile, although Fullmetal would usually replace it with a firm scowl within seconds.

For the first time since Edward had disappeared so many years ago, Roy thought that maybe he felt all right.

-------------------------

That feeling was not to last, because Müller was waiting for them when they returned. He was wearing a military greatcoat and pacing in the foyer, obviously unhappy about something. The sounds of Liza and Al cooking in the kitchen wafted in, but even their happiness couldn't overcome Ed's displeasure at seeing him.

"What are you doing here?!" he demanded. Müller glanced over at Roy, then back at Edward himself. "Haven't you done enough damage?" Ed continued.

"It occurs to me, now that you're back in Munich, you can complete the job that I originally gave you," Müller purred smoothly. It was unsettling, watching himself in action, and Roy smacked his own head lightly to keep the buzzing away.

"Oh yes, by all means. Al and Mustang and I will go track the Uranium bomb again. See you in the next life, jackass."

"Not that one," Müller said sourly. "Before that." Now Ed made a sour face, obviously trying to pretend he didn't know what the man was talking about. "Your father's research. I want to find a way to open the door between worlds again."

"Haven't you jackasses already realized that that's impossible?" Edward growled. "No, I won't help you at all. And don't bother threatening me with Al this time, either. I've trained him in physical combat and he's older, he won't be a victim of yours any longer. Plus, no one will remember Heiderich anymore."

"I would never have considered trying to get to you through Alphonse," Müller told him smoothly. He smiled charmingly at Roy, who couldn't help but smile back, and Edward scowled at the two of them.

"It would appear Fullmetal doesn't want to help you," Roy told him.

"It would be a shame if Edward felt that way," Müller countered, "Because if we can't continue Hohenheim's research, we will have to take a different approach to the problem." His smile took on a terrifying quality that Roy didn't think he'd ever quite mastered, even when manipulating people.

"What sort of approach?" Edward growled.

"Well, how do we even know that the humans on the other side of the gate are the same species as we are? Perhaps if we understood their biology, it would be easier." He shrugged. "It's not as though I can prove that you and Alphonse definitely came from Amestris, but you have just put into my possession a prime candidate for...biological inspection."

Roy's eyes narrowed, and he got it before Edward did. "Don't you dare use me against him," he said, hands automatically going into his pockets for gloves that didn't exist.

"Oh but imagine how delighted my superiors would be if I brought in a double of myself," Müller grinned. "It's a shame there's no easy way to compare just how similar we really are. At least, while both of us are alive."

Ed slammed his automail fist through the foyer wall, shaking the entire house, and his yelling was practically incoherent. Al and Riza came running out from the kitchen, and Roy grabbed Edward's arms to try to restrain him from killing Müller on the spot. "You can't have him! How dare you?!" Ed was yelling, so angry. So protective of him. Roy had to resist the urge to feel giddy about that – giddiness could come later, after the danger of Fullmetal demolishing a building (again) had passed, and after he was done being furious at Müller for using him.

"If you don't want that future to come to pass," Müller said brightly, completely unfazed by Edward's show of temper, "I suggest that you be at the labs tomorrow morning at 8. Your brother and Mustang can come too, if they wish to help." He smirked slightly. "Don't bother trying to run away again. My people are watching the house."

Roy stared at him. "You're not me at all," he said with a growl.

Müller glanced at him and smiled cheerfully. "Have you not done things you didn't want to do for the sake of your country?" he asked. "Edward told me all about you, Roy Mustang. Don't pretend to be some kind of saint. You've used people before and you've threatened them too. The only difference is, this time the person being used and threatened is someone you personally care about." Roy faltered then, frowning. "Ah yes, it never occurred to you that maybe the people you threatened in the past had loved ones, too? But they were just tools to you, ways to reach a goal." He leaned in close and whispered against the shell of Roy's ear in almost an intimate gesture. "Edward Elric is my instrument, my tool, and I will use him to make this country a better place."

"Shut up!" Edward shouted. "You're nothing like him!" He glanced at Roy for confirmation, but Roy knew he would get none. Müller was completely right. Roy had acted the exact same way in the past, but it didn't mean that he liked it.

"Please be at the lab, Edward. I would hate to have to do anything to make your life unpleasant," Müller told him dangerously. Edward glowered back at him but said nothing. "Good. I'm glad we have that sorted."

To everyone's surprise, the man's countenance completely changed from dangerous to friendly. "Now, I have a date! I'll see you tomorrow," he said cheerfully, and then he was gone in the swirl of a greatcoat.

It felt as though someone had walked over Roy's grave.