A/N: I do not own FMA or any characters from it. Once again, it has been a while since my last update, huh...?
It was in fact a mere coincidence...
A coincidence that the day he had learned of the Affair Chart had been the day before Fuhrer Bradley's anniversary. Not that anyone knew this, least of all Zolf Kimblee. And even if he had known this, it wouldn't have bothered him much.
The Fuhrer was a homunculus... So what would an anniversary mean to him, after all? But Bradley had, unbeknownst to this man, chosen his own wife. Chosen her not for her ideal personality for being the Fuhrer President's wife. Not just because she was trusting, and would accept Pride as if he were her own son readily and without question. But because he had, by some emotion he himself could not explain, wanted her to be his wife.
And now, he was filled with another emotion he couldn't quite explain. A mix of shame and disgust. Shame for his own actions... Disgust for his wife's. And it was with this in mind that he caught Mrs. Hakuro at the doors of Central Headquarters, with a charming smile.
This did not escape the attention of his own wife, who witnessed such an incident as she herself was walking up to HQ. And it tore at her. She dodged past him and locked herself in an empty room. An empty room except for one thing... That thing.
The Affair Chart.
And Rosaline stared at it, tears coming to her eyes as her gaze flashed between every line, every name... And it hurt, it hurt... With a choked cry, she dashed her fists against the chart, clawing at it. But the card-stock paper refused to yield under her small, soft fingers. In the end, she attempted to compose herself, and calmly left the room.
Liana searched that morning... It shouldn't have been that hard to find the Crimson Alchemist... After all, they did have the same boss! They should have been seeing more of each other than the few glimpses here and there. Yet she was never able to, or perhaps too afraid to, stop him in the few seconds when she had the chance. And so she worked silently on paperwork, head bowed over her hand as it scratched words into the paper.
It seemed that the only two people in the entirety of Central HQ who were not in a deep misunderstanding were Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye. But they weren't exactly safe, what with a jealous Pride running around... Not that they had any inkling of that...
No, they had no idea at all... And Pride couldn't tell if that made him angrier or if he took a sick sort of glee in knowing that they wouldn't even know what hit them...
Alice Dawson was watching everything play out that day, you could say. She got the distinct feeling that something was wrong. No... More like everything was wrong all at once. And even she, secretary extraordinaire, could not fix everyone's problems...
But she would do the best she could. And when a red-eyed Mrs. Bradley appeared at the office doors when Alice clearly knew the man himself was not there, she paged him quite urgently over the loudspeakers.
He responded rather quickly, actually, and the married couple hurried into Bradley's office. Alice knew that this was probably not something for her to butt into... It was far more serious than anything between the President and First Lady had ever been, and she knew they needed to sort things out. Alice decided to take a walk around Headquarters to see what else was wrong...
If the Affair Chart was at fault, was the cause of this... It was something that she had to fix. As an added measure, when she saw Major Armstrong with his arms full of flower bouquets, she made it a note to tell him that it was Mr. and Mrs. Bradley's anniversary, and mightn't he take them some of those flowers? It was a risky move, but he would at least break the tension... And flowers would do them both good. As much as Alice coveted the Fuhrer President and his wife separately, she would do anything to protect their relationship with each other.
Meanwhile in the Fuhrer's office, the President and First Lady were having a very terse argument. Mrs. Bradley's voice had grown shrill and choked.
"… Not only are you cheating on me… But you… You have the INDECENCY to be with a different woman on OUR ANNIVERSARY! You- You-!"
But King Bradley never found out exactly what he was. Because at that moment…
"HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! PLEASE, ACCEPT THESE FLOWERS, A VARIETY GROWN IN THE GARDENS OF THE ARMSTRONGS FOR GENERATIONS! THEY ARE SURE TO BRING JOY AND HAPPINESS TO ANYONE WHO BEHOLDS THEM!"
The Fuhrer and his wife just stared blankly at the muscled man, whose huge arms were filled with equally huge bouquets of pink and yellow roses.
"Yes, thank you," Fuhrer Bradley said finally, grabbing one of the bouquets and directing Armstrong to set the rest of them on top of the desk.
Then, Bradley waited patiently for Armstrong to take his leave. The man didn't seem to take the hint.
"WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY! WOULDN'T YOU AGREE, SIR? IT MUST BE BECAUSE OF THE DEEP AND TREASURED LOVE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR WIFE!"
Bradley smiled pleasantly.
"Major Armstrong… Have you ever wondered why you aren't promoted?"
Miraculously, the muscled man stayed silent.
"You may just find out if you don't leave in the next ten seconds."
"… WELL, I'D BEST BE ON MY WAY, MUCH WORK TO DO!" Armstrong laughed nervously, rushing from the room.
Fuhrer Bradley sighed, turning to his wife and handing her the single bouquet in his hands.
"I… I want you to know… That I didn't want this to happen. I apologize for the way I hurt you… But I'm always so busy, and I never see you… None of those women… Were anything to me. And I hope it's the same with all of the men you were with."
His voice failed him, and he couldn't say any more, lapsing into silence.
On the other side of the building, Selim was stalking his victims. He hoped they would be very surprised and upset, when they realized... And he hoped that they would beg for each others' lives... Roy for Riza's, and Riza for Roy's...
Oh, yes... Revenge would be swee-
Armstrong. It was Major Alex Louise Armstrong. He was the person to foil young Selim's plot.
"AH, YOUNG SELIM BRADLEY! YOUR PARENTS ARE UP IN YOUR FATHER'S OFFICE. WHY DON'T I ESCORT YOU THERE AND THE NICE RED-HEADED SECRETARY WHOSE NAME MOMENTARILY ESCAPES ME CAN WATCH OVER YOU UNTIL YOUR PARENTS ARE FINISHED SPEAKING!"
And unless he wanted to expose his secret, which Father would be furious about, he had no chance against the sheer muscly power of Major Armstrong. So he was carted to Wrath's office, farther and farther away from his would-be victims with each step.
And he would get a severe tongue-lashing from Father later for letting silly human emotions like jealousy and 'love' get the better of him. So Roy and Riza were quite safe for much longer than Armstrong's unintentional intervention.
Colonel Archer was getting downright annoyed. Yes, so the Crimson Alchemist was already obnoxious enough, and Lt. Marshall was a complete handful... But the way they were sidestepping each other was not only annoying, it slowed down their productivity! And if there was anything that Frank Archer hated more than Roy Mustang, it was looking bad because of useless subordinates! And so, though they had been fighting since she had been appointed, he took Alice Dawson up on her offer immediately. He would help with anything if it would stop his subordinates from being both annoying and lazy! He could only handle one of those at a time!
Alice Dawson had a plan. Oh, she had such a plan! After all, the Fuhrer President and his wife were taken well care of; Armstrong's no-doubt awkward intervention would have shaken things up enough to get them on the right foot. Now she just had to worry about Liana.
It had taken a bit of creativity, and the humbleness to ask for help from her sworn nemesis, so she was determined that Liana be grateful for the lengths that Alice had gone. All the elements of her plan (including Bill the janitor intern, Colonel Archer, and herself) were in place. Now, they just needed to start.
First, she allowed Archer to use the precious button on her desk connected to all of the speakers in the entire building.
"Marshall and Crimson, to my office now."
And, even as volatile as either of the two could be, they would not dare defy a direct order like that. This was what Alice's plan counted on. The two of them returned quickly to Archer's office, where Bill was waiting.
Luckily for Alice and her plan, Liana and Kimblee were approaching the office at about the same time, and from opposite directions. Otherwise her plan (which wasn't as brilliant and well-thought-out as she had first suspected) would have gone horribly wrong.
Bill wasn't exactly a wonderful actor, but his loud whistling was innocent enough, and Liana was too distracted to really take notice of him. As he swished out his broom in front of her legs, he had to cringe to stop himself from apologizing for purposely tripping her.
As for Liana, she tumbled forward just in time for her coworker to trip a wire that sent both she and Kimblee catapulting into the air in a crudely made net. As the two of them struggled to find a way down, Alice was patting herself on the back happily, and Archer was wondering what exactly the outcome of this scheme was supposed to be.
Liana was thoroughly embarrassed. Not only had she tripped like a complete idiot, she was now trapped in a net dangling three feet from the ground with her frienemy, coworker, and kinda-sorta-crush. How one person could be all three was mystifying, but Liana was too busy trying to find a way to cut the net that she didn't have time to ponder such deep thoughts.
After a moment, she noticed that her fellow captive was doing absolutely nothing to help them get out of their predicament.
"Really?" she demanded, pulling on his ponytail. "Are you just content to be stuck up here in this awkward position forever?"
"That hurt," he growled in return, grabbing her wrist angrily. "Anyway, unless you want me to make this net spontaneously combust, I don't exactly have a way to get us down."
Liana's scowl deepened, and she yanked her arm away from him. It was obvious he was still angry about her comment the other day.
"Look, we're never gonna get down from here unless we work together, you know. Grab my gun, I can't reach it when I'm all folded up here like a pretzel."
He did so with ease, but just as she was beginning to tell him to shoot out the cable at the top of the net, she found herself staring down the barrel of her own gun. Immediately, she was tense, trying to think of any possible way to disarm the alchemist without getting shot or blown up.
Rosaline Bradley's eyes welled with tears, and she pulled her husband into her arms, sobbing. They stayed like that for a long time, enjoying each other's company, letting their breathing and their embrace do the communicating for them.
"I'm sorry, King..." Rosaline said at last, wiping tears from her eyes. "We were both... I can't believe that I ever..."
"I can't believe what I did either," her husband replied, and the two kissed chastely.
"Never again," he whispered in her ear.
And then, smiling, the two of them exited the office to spend their anniversary away from Central Headquarters and all of the headaches it represented.
Now, Zolf Kimblee was not one for unnecessary violence, which was a complete lie by the way. But he wasn't stupid enough to shoot his own coworker in cold blood. Well, at least while they were still in the office. I mean, really, he was playing nice so that he could get as far away from that cramped hellhole of a prison as possible, right? Why ruin it now?
But the look on Lt. Marshall's face was downright amusing. He kind of wondered what it would be like to pull the trigger and kill her, even as he knew he would never do it. With a slight flick of his hand, he shot, and the rope holding up the net they were trapped in snapped.
The two of them fell to the ground with a thud that left the alchemist's back stinging, but he calmly picked himself up, grabbing Liana's arm to haul her to her feet as well. She was stammering and blinking at him owlishly, her mouth opening and closing in surprise. She looked like a fish.
He wanted to laugh, but at the same time, her shock was a little annoying. After all...
"C'mon, stupid. I have something to show you."
And he led the silent Lieutenant to a room and opened the door. Along the wall was the affair chart, and he yanked her forward and pointed to a particular spot on the chart. A single red line, spanning between two names. It was, of course, a line that Liana had seen before, but had tried to forget about many times. She didn't like the way that a single line could make her red-faced and embarrassed.
It was the line connecting her name to his.
"Do you remember who drew this line?" Kimblee asked tersely.
"... You did," Liana answered, looking away.
"Exactly."
And as the two leaned towards each other, Alice Dawson grinned to herself and shut the door quietly. The perfect plan indeed.
And then she realized that her hand was connected to that of her arch rival. His pale face was especially flushed, and Alice decided that maybe her nemesis wasn't so bad as long as he wasn't trying to take Bradley from her and Rosaline. Yeah, maybe she could deal with this guy a little longer.
And though not all of them noticed, everyone was hooked up nice and sweetly.
Mission Accomplished.
