AN: EDIT: Okay, so the chapter title /used/ to be from "Bury Our Friends" by Sleater-Kinney, but I ran into a song so perfect for this chapter that I was actually compelled to go back and change it. The chapter title is /now/ from "Shadow Song (Peel Session Version)," by the Mountain Goats, which you can listen to here: /df6X_ucGP9g
Also, for the logo for Central U I used the symbol that it seen on one of the branches of the Central City library in Brotherhood. I don't know if it's technically affiliated with the university, but the symbol was a little too perfect (get it? Central U? ba dum tss) so I just used it.
Also also, if any of you are interested, I have a Royai mix up on 8tracks that I generally listen to when I'm drafting this, which you can listen to here ( /spooky_bee/symmetry-a-royai-mix#smart_id) as well as an Eva mix that I listen to when I'm writing more action/plot-heavy stuff like this chapter, which you can listen to here ( /spooky_bee/city-with-no-children-a-neon-genesis-evangelion-fanmix#smart_id). My 8tracks username is spooky_bee, if any of you are feeling like some fic-reading music.
Also also also, the voicemail that Hughes leaves Roy is very, very heavily inspired by the voicemail that Kaji leaves Misato in episode 21 of Eva, so I must give credit where credit is due.
And that is all of my notes for this chapter. Promise.
Disclaimer: I own a really cute pair of high-waisted shorts, but I don't own Eva or FMA.
Chapter Ten- "In case I never make it through to where you are."
Maes Hughes is the kind of friend you go to brunch with. It fits him so well, almost as if he were born for the sole purpose of inviting people out to eat the strange middle sibling of breakfast and lunch with him and his (occasionally annoyingly) perfect family. All the places that serve brunch have breezy patios situated under fancy awnings, and brightly-lit, cheerfully-colored interiors. The tablecloths are always a perfect, summery white, the kind that reflects sunshine back at you. They're the sort of places that Roy often went with his sisters when they got the urge to dote on him (which was often), and are, in actuality, pretty girly places. Brunch is a pretty girly meal, if Roy were being honest, but Maes Hughes is the kind of man who is so comfortably situated in his own masculinity that there are few things in this world that could flap it. Hell, if a fairly serious relationship with a man couldn't do it, then Roy seriously doubts that a basket of beignets, which hilariously make little Elicia look as if she's been snorting cocaine, could put a dent into it.
Roy also likes brunch, because it's the only way you can drink before noon and not have to call yourself an alcoholic.
He had slipped out a few hours before, as he is sure Hawkeye expected him to do. He isn't sure, actually, what they would have done if he had stayed, if he wasn't able to brush aside the frankly terrifying reality of "waking up next to Hawkeye" and replace it with the much more manageable "I have a really terrible hangover and, fuck, I'm supposed to meet Maes for brunch in two hours." And so he had slipped out of bed (or off of bed, as the case may be, because he was too far gone to even get under the covers) and out of Hawkeye's arms, always surprisingly strong and muscular, and into the shower as quickly and quietly as possible. He spent most of his shower sitting down as the water drilled onto his back, because standing up made his stomach pitch, and he at least has his life together enough to not vomit in his own shower. After feeling mostly clean, he managed to slip into a pair of (he's fairly sure) clean jeans and a button-up shirt. He feels fragile in the same way hangovers make everyone feel fragile, and for some reason having his forearms exposed feels oddly risqué when he remembers that Maes's three-year-old daughter will be there. Everything he does feels risqué when he remembers that Maes-the first, and perhaps last, great love of his life, the only person he can remember saying he loved with any seriousness, who shrugged him off like an ill-fitting sweater too long ago for Roy to still be this hung up about it-has a three-year-old daughter. Because, honestly, what the fuck?
He has the music in his headphones on a little softer than usual on his walk to the Tunnel station, to account for the headache, and feels supremely blessed by the unspoken public transit etiquette that you don't make eye contact with strangers on the subway. Even after having showered, when he catches his own reflection in the window of the subway, he still looks a bit green, and the wrinkles that are beginning to etch into his forehead look much deeper. If he focuses hard enough, he can convince himself that he can see his lone grey hair, but that kind of focus makes his head hurt worse, and so he closes his eyes.
To his credit, he only shows up at the restaurant fifteen minutes late, instead of the usual thirty-to-forty-five. The Hughes family is seated on the patio-a cool breeze is sweeping in from the West and would make the day remarkably pleasant if Roy wasn't contemplating vomiting every time he passes a trashcan-looking as portrait-perfect as ever, practically a life insurance ad made flesh. Elicia is seated on Gracia's lap even though she is a "big girl who can sit in her own seat." She is joyously eating from a little bowl of cantaloupe that was probably intended for Gracia but has since been commandeered by the imperious three-year-old. That must come from Gracia, because Maes is a pushover and always has been. It made it all the worse when Roy consistently, almost compulsively, hurt him, again and again, like Riza shoots down clay pigeons.
"The birthday boy has arrived!" Maes says brightly, pulling out Roy's chair for him. He sinks onto the wicker with a little too much weight to be comfortable, but his limbs feel both brittle and jellyfish-like and he finds he doesn't really care so long as a member of the waitstaff shows up soon so that he can order a Bloody Mary.
"Welcome to the world of real adults, Roy," Gracia says with a chuckle. Gracia and Maes are the same age, and have known each other for longer than he and Roy have. It's a sweet story, really: two childhood friends, separated by shuffle of daily life, only to be brought together and apart and together again by the tragedies of war. Sweet, the sort of thing that would make a good movie. It makes the back of Roy's mouth taste sour, and he begins gulping down the glass of water (which has lemon slices and sprigs of mint in it, to clear up any misconceptions anyone had on whether this was a Nice Restaurant or not) that someone had politely already set down for him.
Roy has never been able to suss out Gracia's opinion of him. Of course, if he asks Maes, then he always says that Gracia loves him, and Elicia loves him (he is "Uncle Roy," after all), and even though he knows that it's been six years (good lord, he feels old), he imagines it must be awkward knowing that your husband's best friend used to be his boyfriend. That has to be weird. But every time he sees her, Roy always thinks that Gracia Hughes would make a fantastic poker player, or maybe a spy; her face and her demeanor are always perfectly unreadable, pleasant and non-threatening and everything that Roy wasn't and could never be. Gracia is an astoundingly safe, dependable woman, and Maes deserves that, he really does.
"The world of real adults is really bright, don't you think?" Roy asks, adjusting his sunglasses.
Gracia's expression doesn't change (Roy swears, that woman could have a bomb strapped to her chest under her sensible sundress and you wouldn't fucking know), but Maes's brow knits itself in paternal concern. You can't condescend to me if we've fucked, that's not how this works.
"Have a little too much fun at the Devil's Nest last night?"
Like Maes, Gracia had grown up in West City, but had moved out to Central for university, and so that name struck as much fear in her plush, motherly heart as it did in anyone else past college age in town.
"The Devil's Nest? Re-"
"Yes, the Devil's Nest, really," Roy snaps before he can stop himself. Both Gracia and Maes look a bit taken aback by his interruption.
Elicia crosses her chubby arms in a self-righteous pout. "It's not nice to interrupt people, Uncle Roy."
Somehow actually hearing Elicia call him "Uncle Roy," as opposed to her parents simply telling her to do so, causes his stomach to seize.
"You're right, Elicia," he says, allowing the nausea to rock his stomach, like standing on a poorly-tethered dock. He lifts his eyes to Gracia's. "I'm sorry, it's just been..." He tries to think of a singular adjective, maybe even two, that could explain what had transpired the previous night. There was stupid-Seriously, Roy, you're thirty, you have no excuse to buy ecstasy off of kids in club bathrooms anymore.-and surreal-falling into bed, quite literally and with no implications beyond this, with Hawkeye-and scary. But none of this he wishes to discuss with the Hugheses, all freshly-pressed and appropriately-attired for their brunch that will probably consist of fruit and yogurt and other healthy things that adults eat, and perhaps, if they were feeling frisky, a singular, overpriced mimosa. All Roy wants is the hugest, greasiest omelette he can procure, which here will probably still include goat's cheese and heirloom tomatoes. "It's been a very long few days."
Gracia looks at him as if he were her erstwhile younger brother, or maybe an underfed puppy in the window of a pet shop. He doesn't like being pitied. He takes his sadnesses and anxieties and he handles them himself. Does he do so in a healthy manner? No. But does he handle them? Yes, and that is more than a lot of people can say.
"Which is why I hate to ask," Maes says, refilling Roy's water glass from the ornamental carafe of water placed on the table, as is fashionable in Central restaurants these days. "But are you doing anything tonight?"
"Why, Maes, I'm flattered, but you're married."
Roy's posture is a little too stiff, his tone a little too bitter for his joke to be funny, but Maes plows ahead dutifully. "There are some things I think we should talk about. Some things with the Program that I would like another pair of eyes to look at."
"Why my eyes and not the Hawk's Eyes?"
Roy recognizes the look Maes gives him, the one that always stands in for Why must you make everything so difficult? He's intimately familiar with it, in every way that phrasing implies. "Because you're my friend, Roy, and you're a smart guy. Is it so hard to believe that I would want you to look at it?"
No, not really, except that people tend to forget just how smart Roy Mustang is. His persona makes it easy to forget, unless he wants you to remember, which works to his advantage more often than not, but he is smart. Often too smart for his own good, in fact.
"What is it?"
Maes casts a subtle look around the patio, then through the window of the restaurant, and then even out onto the street. Roy wishes he could brush off his friend's actions as paranoia, but he knows as well as anyone that Central is full of eyes and ears, some of them belonging to his foster mother and other people they can trust, and some of them not.
"We'll discuss it tonight, okay?"
The young waiter chooses that moment to come and take their orders, which Roy finds suspicious. The timing is a little too perfect, but then again, at a place like this one, the waitstaff is probably paid to be conscientious of not interrupting their guests' conversations. Not everything is secretly bearing malicious intent, but Roy occasionally finds it quite hard to remember that.
Riza is awake when Mustang leaves. She's a very light sleeper, and so when she feels something wriggling (albeit quite delicately) out of her arms, she wakes. But, despite this, she is in no mood to discuss anything that happened the night before, so it's probably just easier if he leaves while she's supposed to be asleep. And so, instead, she lays in his bed (or on his bed, as neither of them actually made it under the covers) and listens to the morning-sounds of Mustang bustling around his apartment. He must be running late for something, because she can't hear the burble of the coffeemaker, but not too late, as she can hear the hiss of the shower. Several minutes after that, he exits the bathroom, smelling like fancy shampoo and soap, and then leaves shortly after.
Riza thinks that, since this is her day off, she should soak this up as much as possible, sleeping in a bed. It's been a while, but her back already feels immensely better, even if she did sleep on her back, with Mustang's head on her chest. She needs to get back to her apartment and do laundry because (she looks down), sure enough, there is a greasy oval left by Mustang's pomade on her shirt. But her car is still, unfortunately, parked in front of Madam Christmas's bar, which means that she'll need to take a cab there, and then drive home, and that sounds like an awful lot of work for a Saturday morning. It is her day off, after all, and so she will at least give herself the luxury of taking her time getting home, rather than shamefully rushing back like she normally would.
She saunters into his bathroom, air still thick from where Mustang had showered earlier, and turns on the shower before wandering into the kitchen and turning on the coffeemaker. She isn't sure what puzzles her more: how well she knows her way around his apartment, or how different his home is from hers despite the fact that they are, technically, exactly the same. She uses his coffee pot more than her own, at this point, but she keeps almost stepping on things: books, empty cigarette cartons, unopened mail.
With the coffee brewing, she returns to his bathroom. It isn't until she is naked and can see herself in his mirror that she realizes she has never showered in his apartment before. It had always been an option, either one offered by him or threatened by her, but never something she had actually done, and standing naked on his bath mat it feels oddly invasive, as if she were digging through his underwear drawer. But she feels disgusting, the smell of Madam Christmas's cigars and the Devil's Nest clinging to her hair, and she has no luxury to be bashful.
It's odd; she expects his bathroom to be the same as the rest of his apartment-cluttered and grimy-but his shower is remarkably clean. He does have a preponderance of shampoo bottles, but most of them look like the sort of thing a significant other would buy for you, expensive, and most of them look unopened. There is Mustang's own expensive shampoo, which smells like spices and sandalwood (an old money kind of smell, what most people who don't know him assume him to be, and which he is more than happy to corroborate), and the matching conditioner. But other than those, there is only a bar of soap, simple, which probably only cost 100 cenz at a drugstore. That's Mustang, though: the strange cohabitation of the expensive and the cheap, the high-class and the low-brow. She feels a bit tawdry using his shampoo, but desperate times and all that.
Once she gets out and dries off, the smell of coffee (hazelnut, because Mustang is still a baby when it comes to his coffee) is wafting in from the kitchen and Riza feels oddly at home. It's a strange feeling when you're standing in nothing but a towel in your best friend's bathroom, but it's a feeling nonetheless, and for once Riza doesn't want to brush her feelings under the rug like dirt that would offend the company you're expecting to come over.
She considers putting her clothes from the night before back on, but, the unpleasantness of that option aside, she knows that she could borrow Mustang's clothes and he wouldn't mind. She isn't sure how she knows this, since it hasn't ever come up, but she knows it just like she knows that he lets her crash on his couch after a night out drinking, or a bad date (she slept there after her one and only date with Havoc). Like most things about their friendship, it's unspoken, and even if it wasn't, she knows that if she says the three words she never says-"I needed to"-he would let her. And right now she needs a change of clothes, because she went out for him, and she slept with (Next to? Beside? Holding?) him, and so the least he could do is let her borrow a shirt and a pair of sweatpants.
Everything in Mustang's closet is flawlessly ironed, each suit even in its own branded, zippered bag. Everything in his chest of drawers, by contrast, is unfolded, wrinkled, and (potentially) unwashed. Aside from the shirts he had accumulated from the years he has spent going to concerts, he's had many of them since their days at Central U. She finds one in particular that she remembers-a t-shirt gone buttery and soft with years of washing-dark blue, Amestrian blue, with Central University's logo: a capital U with a line running down the middle. On the back it says "Class of 2009." She remembers sitting through his graduation, itchy with sweat under her one nice dress, the one he told her she didn't have to wear. She sat next to Maes Hughes, who had already graduated by the time Mustang started university, preening like a peacock with pride in his boyfriend. She had gotten him a bouquet of flowers, peach roses from the flower shop that Gracia worked at, because she didn't know how else to congratulate him.
She pulls on the shirt and a pair of equally faded sweatpants, slightly amazed at how well the ensemble fits her. Mustang has never been bulky, and he isn't all that much bigger than her. Anyone who saw her would probably assume the clothes were hers. Clean and clothed and feeling significantly more centered than she had upon waking, Riza pours herself a cup of coffee and sits down on Mustang's couch (still lumpy and pockmarked with cigarette burns, but she doubts he'll ever get rid of it).
She thinks, looking around his apartment, drinking his overly sweet coffee and wearing his clothes, that if things had gone differently this might be what her life would look like. She knows herself well enough at this point to let herself acknowledge that, way back when, she had had a crush on Roy Mustang. This isn't overly surprising, and now she writes it off as the byproduct of an isolated childhood, the lack of a strong father figure, and a deep need for attention (oh, how her psychologists would be proud). But what if it wasn't? What if, as a girl, she had truly loved Roy Mustang and his skinny arms and his Xingese eyes and the way he always went out of his way to try and make her happy, even if he usually failed? What if, in a fit of pubescent pique, she had kissed him and they ran away and they wound up in a dinky apartment not altogether different than this one, and she would be drinking his coffee and wearing his clothes, not because hers were now dirty and she was tired from a night of restless sleep, but because that is just what couples do?
But she knows, at this point in her life, that that is just girlish hypothesizing. Even if her childish feelings for Mustang had overwhelmed her so (which they hadn't) and she had made some sort of move (which she didn't), she knows that nothing would have come of it, because Roy Mustang likes sexy women and pretty men and she is neither of those things. And besides, if sharing an apartment with him for year hadn't resulted in any new development in either of them, then she doubts anything would. The true nature of their relationship aside, at this point in their lives, he's stuck with her, and she's stuck with him. There's nothing either of them could do now that could change that.
She goes to set the coffee cup down when she sees that Mustang must have really been running late, because he neglected to cover his tracks. The packets and files that Riza remembers seeing the last time she slept at his apartment (This is really becoming an unfortunate habit.) are still there. They're disorganized, and one file is even flipped open, as if Mustang realized he was late in the middle of reading through it. A familiar face leers at her from the glossy picture that is paper clipped onto the paper at the front of the file. Even though the Program, like most things these days, is technically paperless, they still have paper duplicates of all the files in their database in case something happens and a power surge wipes their hard drives. Riza knows the people in archiving, mainly girls fresh out of university and hoping to move up the ranks and catch a glimpse of the famous Alchemist pilots. It wouldn't be hard to get these files out of them, especially not if Roy Mustang showed up and flashed them a grin, with a look in his eye like he's sharing something truly secret with you, something only you can handle. Riza has never been on the receiving end of that particular Roy Mustang, but she's seen it in action, and it's terrifying.
The face looking at her is that of Solf J. Kimblee, the very crazy, very dead pilot of the Crimson Lotus Alchemist.
"Why does Mustang have Kimblee's file?" Riza asks the empty apartment in the same way she does her own, because even though he can't answer, Black Hayate can at least look interested in what she's saying.
She's seen this file, of course. Kimblee, like Armstrong, Mustang, and Elric, was her responsibility. She wasn't the one who had hired him on-Armstrong and Kimblee were already pilots by the time Riza joined with the Program, having been hired by her grandfather, General Grumman, before he left the Program for unspecified reasons-but he was still under her watch. To this day, he is still her biggest failure. She had never liked him, not the way she liked Armstrong and Mustang at least, and had always been somewhat wary of him, but he was undeniably good at his job. Out of all of their pilots, he scored the best in their simulations, and in the early days of their conflict with Gluttony, he gladly took control of the situation and seemed to have it under control. But maybe that was the problem. Alex Louis Armstrong comes from a long line of military officers (Just ask him. Honestly, he'd be more than happy to tell you about it.), and so views his job as pilot as a familial obligation, though not a begrudging one. Mustang views it as his job to protect his country as best as he can, as well as to repay her father for what he had taught him. For both, piloting is, ultimately, a job; a job that needs to be done, but a job nonetheless. Kimblee, however, truly enjoyed piloting. Enjoyed it too much, perhaps.
Riza had looked through this file many times after the initial aftermath of the Gluttony situation, as the Ishvalan dust was settling on a near-empty country, trying to find something that the physicians and technicians had missed. Because never-never-in any sortie or simulation or test had a pilot gone berserk. And even then, it was never thought possible that a pilot could be disassembled like Kimblee was, just a pile of various powders and a large puddle of water at the bottom of his plug. For all intents and purposes, Solf J. Kimblee was gone.
If you asked Mustang, it was good riddance. Armstrong was too well-bred to agree with him, too polite, but Riza and Mustang knew that he did. They had never gotten along. Kimblee thought that Mustang's motivations were naïve, that the only way he had managed to even become a pilot in the first place was due to his relationship with Riza (which he always managed to make sound particularly unsavory in his slick, reptilian voice), and Mustang thought that Kimblee was a sadistic creep who should never be allowed within fifty miles of an Alchemist. Mustang turned out to be right in this regard, but he took no pleasure in it. He always seemed slightly guilty at having sussed out Kimblee's instability before he went berserk, like he should have done something.
Riza knows that Mustang has always been dissatisfied with the fact that they were never able to try Kimblee for what he did, but it's hard to deny facts: there is no longer a Kimblee left to try. As far as Riza is concerned, his punishment was just. As a pile of component elements, Kimblee can't hurt anyone ever again, and that's enough for her.
It apparently wasn't enough for Mustang, though. That's the only explanation Riza has for why he has Kimblee's file. She sets it down and picks up another and finds a detailed expense sheet for the Gluttony sortie, billions of cenz spent on ammunition, power, and medical supplies. Another file has various maps of Ishval and the Eastern quadrant, shaded a ghostly grey in the areas that were demolished, and pricked in red where either Kimblee or Gluttony decimated whole cities and towns. She picks up a packet after that, which shows a transcription of all radio contact between the Alchemists and Central HQ, the page detailing Kimblee's going berserk dog-eared in the lower right-hand corner. Each file and packet is another angle of the conflict with Gluttony, with a particular emphasis on Kimblee. If Riza didn't know any better, she would say that Mustang was in the middle of writing a research paper, the way he has diligently stuck to theme, but broadened the scope of the topic to include every possible side of the issue. Riza, being the child of scholars, appreciates this kind of academic due diligence.
But Mustang, despite his intelligence, is no scholar. He's got Edward Elric's jittery legs, legs made for running, and unless the topic at hand is one of immediate interest to him, he had an annoying habit of falling asleep in lectures. She has never seen him put as much effort into anything as she can see looking at the war zone on his coffee table, the veritable forest of papers all centered around one individual: Solf J. Kimblee.
She wants to call him (she hates texting, it's horrifically impersonal) and ask what this is about, but she knows that he's out, and she knows that even if she got him on the phone, he probably wouldn't answer. He doesn't want her to see this, she can tell by the way he had cleared this from her line of sight the last time she was there. No one handled Ishval well, but they handled it poorly in varying degrees. Alex Armstrong cracked and had to be sent home for therapy before the conflict could even be wrapped up (a decision that became the final crack in his already fractious relationship with his sister, Olivier). Maes Hughes transferred to a desk job and hastily got married, in a gesture so ham-handed that even Mustang couldn't miss it: Not everything is bad in the world. Look at the Good Maes Hughes and his new Good wife Gracia and their new Good marriage. Marriages are symbolic of rebirth, of renewal, of taking two things and making them one. Maes Hughes, in his infinite Goodness, wanted his friends to see that there was still possibility for rebirth, even after all the death they had seen.
Mustang didn't seem all that different after Ishval: he still drank too much and smoked too much and went out too much, but it was the same level of Too Much that he had done before. Riza realizes, now, that both that statement was untrue, and that he hid something else. He hid this, this obsession with What Went Wrong and how it could have been fixed, even though, now, there was nothing that could be done save trying to keep it from happening again. Suddenly Mustang's question in the hospital after the sortie with Lust-"Do you think we have another Kimblee on our hands?"-doesn't seem so innocuous or so unexpected. For a moment, Mustang probably thought his worst fear had been confirmed, and in the shape of a fifteen-year-old boy with long hair and two automail limbs, no less.
She feels slightly sick to her stomach now, and it has nothing to do with the drinking the night before or drinking coffee on an empty stomach. The only thing missing from this set-up is a cork board with pictures of Kimblee attached by thumbtacks and a piece of yarn. This singlemindedness of his is charming and expected when it comes to him talking about how, one day when he's old(er) and grey(er), he wants to run the Program. Everything he does is, at least in some way, oriented toward that goal, like a loadstone toward a paper-clip, but this is different. This is unhealthy and paranoid and guilty. Roy Mustang is supposed to be shameless, but the way he's compulsively clearing his tracks of this late-night research is anything but.
She finds herself feeling oddly embarrassed at having seen it.
Things are starting to slot together in a way that she doesn't like. This is no casual research, and (although she isn't sure how long this has been going on) it would have taken a while to accumulate all of this information, even with the help of the swooning archivists. She is struck with the image of knocking on his apartment door at two in the morning some weeks ago, expecting him to be either out or asleep, but finding him awake and claiming to be "working." Of course Roy Mustang wouldn't be doing paperwork in the middle of the night (or ever). The way he had hastily hid it from her before he went to bed, he knew that she wouldn't like this, this fixation. The morning Ed Elric showed up at Central HQ but Mustang had turned up hungover, she had assumed he had been out with Havoc, like he always used to be, but Havoc said he had no idea what Mustang had been doing the night before. Riza knows now; he had been doing this, and, to place a cherry atop this incredibly concerning sundae, he had been doing it drunk.
She suddenly feels like an intruder in this apartment that has seen so much of her over the years, the place where, just minutes before, she had felt as comfortable wearing his clothes as her own, and so she reaches for a steno pad that is lying atop the stack of papers (the top page of which already bears hastily scribbled notes that Riza has difficulty deciphering) and a pen and writes out a quick note:
Borrowed a shirt and some pants since I slept in my own clothes last night. Thanks for the hospitality. x R
Unsure of where the last night has left them, she settles for something in between "Riza" and "Hawkeye" and just opts for her first initial. Maybe she should use "H" instead, but that feels too informal for someone she had cradled like a child while he wept, even for her.
She meticulously cleans out the coffee mug (a cheeky thrift store purchase from Breda that reads "#1 Dad") and places it back in the cabinet, leaving behind a missing shirt and pants and an intentionally placed note as the only signs she had been there in the first place.
Winry loves junk. She loves junk so much, in fact, that she doesn't even get offended when people call it "junk." Just ask Ed, he's tried. Winry had just shrugged and said "One man's junk is one very smart teenage girl's reasonably priced treasure." Rockbell Automail is known for what the charitable call their "creativity." Being based in Resembool, they don't get a lot of traffic, and low traffic means low funds, and low funds means that, if one wants to stay in business, one has to get creative.
Some of Winry's fondest childhood memories are of spending long summer mornings with Pinako, scouring Resembool's yard sales for anything that could be disassembled and melted down into something of use. Winry has Pinako's eye for hidden treasures, and Ed's skill at haggling. A few summers before, Pinako was too busy with clients to be bothered to go trolling through the junk heaps of Resembool, and so Winry had dragged Ed and Al along with her.
Al is a delight to go junking with. He finds joy in often bizarre, random trinkets, and is excellent to go with because, honestly, who could refuse Alphonse Elric anything? The boy is practically an overgrown kitten. Ed, on the other hand is...difficult. Like with most things, truthfully. He acquiesced both because Al wanted to go and because Winry told him that, if they didn't, then they might not have the material to fix his automail the next time he broke it. (It was never just that the automail broke, it was always that Ed broke it.) And so, sourly, he had agreed and Winry had fixed them all lemonade in water bottles to help fight the heat.
Winry isn't stupid. She knows that Ed hates the heat, and that most of the reasons why aren't his fault. He only wears dark colors in order to avoid getting automail grease stains on his clothes, and he's still remarkably self-conscious about his prosthetics, opting for long sleeves and pants and hoodies rather than the shorts and t-shirts that Al wears. Winry does what she can for him, though, and that day she had even managed to have him allow her to put his hair up in a bun so that it wasn't hanging against the back of his neck. If Winry is gonna be honest, he looked rather fetching that way.
They had chatted blithely the whole walk around town, the inconsequential, easily forgettable chatter of summer mornings, until they came across an estate sale. Estate sales were rare in Resembool, and still are, but are markedly less uncommon after the conflict with Gluttony. For the first time in Resembool's history, there were people who no longer had families to settle their affairs, and so something had to be done with the stuff that was left over. In the year or so after Gluttony and the Crimson Alchemist destroyed a large portion of their town, estate sales were quite common.
Winry always felt a bittersweet kind of solemnity whenever she used parts she found at estate sales. She was taking something that used to belong to someone, maybe even someone she knew at one point (Resembool is only so big; everyone tends to know everyone), and giving it a new life, a life where it can help people. Winry's an engineer, and she's never been a fan of poetry or novels or anything like that, but she thinks there's something kind of beautiful and poetic about that.
At the estate sale she found with Al and Ed, they didn't find any scrap metal, or anything that could even be broken down into scrap metal. What they did find, however, were two huge crates full of cassette tapes. Cassettes were out of fashion before any of them were old enough to buy their own music (And who buys music these days, anyway?), and Winry has always found them vaguely fascinating. Kneeling on the plush, Resembool grass, she took one out of its jewel case and began toying with the tape.
"What's that?" Al had asked, looking at Winry from where he had stood, going through a table piled high with books.
"It's a cassette," she said, holding up the tape so that he could see it. "They're so hilariously impractical; I don't know why anybody thought they were a good idea." But Winry, as much as she loves practicality and efficiency in her work, loves the obsolete on her own time. She had bought an old record player from one such estate sale several weeks before going to this one, and by the end of the summer she would have it running smoother than when it was brand new. (Honestly, what kind of idiot buys a belt-driven record player? They're more trouble than they're worth, and even though internal motor turntables are more expensive, they run better and hardly ever need repair.) This would hardly even give her an afternoon's entertainment, but they'd been out in the heat all morning, and there was still half a pitcher of lemonade in her fridge. She was feeling sleepy and sun-drunk, and so she gave the man running the sale fifty cenz and stuck the thing in the pocket of her dungarees.
Back at Pinako's house, they laid on the hardwood floor (much cooler than the couch or the kitchen table) talking and playing card games while Winry disassembled and reassembled the cassette, her one, small conquest from a full morning of searching. Pinako would be disappointed, and Winry was a bit crestfallen as well, but it was better than nothing, and she was only out fifty cenz for it. After she had gotten it reassembled, she held it up, letting the light filter through the clear plastic.
"I never asked," Al said. "What tape is it?"
Winry pulled the jewel case out of her pocket and read off the artist and title. It was a collection of folk songs set to piano, specifically ones common in the Eastern region. Feeling heavy and tired, Winry ran into Pinako's workshop where she kept a boombox radio to listen to while she worked. It was old, a leftover from when Winry's father had left Resembool to go to medical school, but it had a tape deck. Winry popped the tape in and reclined back on the floor, where Ed and Al were already laying with closed eyes.
The songs were quiet and sparsely arranged, only a piano, and Winry found herself drifting off to sleep when she heard a hitching sound, like someone trying to catch their breath. She opened her eyes, propping herself up on her elbows, to see Ed staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, clenching his bottom lip so hard between his teeth that it was starting to draw blood.
"Ed, what's wrong?"
Upon hearing Winry speak, Al opened his eyes as well. "Brother?"
"This song..." He turned to face his brother. "Al, do you remember this?"
Al listened quietly for a moment before shaking his head. "No, I don't think so."
"This is the lullaby that Mom always sang for us," Ed said quietly. "It had words but...but, I can't remember them anymore, Al." Ed's eyes were wild and wide with tears, still suspended in the corners of his eyes. "It's only been two years, Al, why can't I remember the words?"
Winry had let him keep the tape after that, and Ed had gotten somewhat fixated upon it. Even with the track titles and some background information in the jewel case, Ed couldn't track down sheet music for the song that included the lyrics that his mother had used to lull him and his brother to sleep when they were children. For his birthday, Winry constructed Ed a portable tape player, so that he could listen to it whenever he wanted. Now, in the long nights he spent in Riza's apartment, unable to sleep, he listened to it, track twenty-five, on loop, until the sun came up.
Al can't remember the song. Ed is only a year older than him, but it's amazing what that one extra year has done to them. Ed's memories of their childhood, especially of their mother and of Hohenheim (Ed won't let either of them call the man "Dad"), are so much crisper than his, and occasionally it feels like all of those years in their home, with their parents, were just a dream. The things he can remember are foggy, like he's viewing them through a steamed-up window, and it's makes his mother seem like a ghost to him. He knows that he's only fourteen, and that fourteen years is nothing compared to Riza's twenty-seven or Mustang's thirty, but it occasionally feels as if the years he spent as a child were a thousand years ago, and that the one year Ed existed without him is an eternity all its own.
Memories of childhood are difficult for Al to remember consciously, but he dreams vividly. That's part of the problem. Either he is having nightmares that feel very real, or he finds himself in his mother's arms, or watching from the window as his father ties a swing to the tree in front of their house. Either way, he wakes up feeling exhausted. He can only ever remember the nightmares.
For once though, he wakes up feeling rested. It's sad that this should be so out of the ordinary, but unfortunately it is. Also unusual, he finds himself on Riza's couch. He lifts his head, limbs still heavy with sleep, but, for once, not stiff. He feels young for the first time in a long time. From the kitchen he can hear the sound of voices and can smell frying eggs.
It's still early, so early, in fact, that he guesses that Winry and Ed haven't slept, which is concerning. But though he can see that Winry and Ed are exhausted, they don't seem upset. Their laughs are a bit woozy and weak-kneed, in the way everything is funny when you've been up for too long, and Winry is in her cover-alls, her hair tied back in one of Pinako's old bandanas. Ed has his hair in a ponytail, in the way he has taken to wearing it in order to fight the heat, and Al is hit by a strange kind of déjà vu, like remembering something from a dream. He stares at Winry, then at Ed, then casts his gaze around the living room and the kitchen, but it still sits in his mind like a rock in his shoe that he can't shake out.
Ed notices then that he's awake. "Sleeping beauty has awoken at last," Ed says with a sleepy, but easy, smile. He's holding the bowl that Winry had beaten the eggs in, which still has a whisk sticking out of the top. For once, Ed is in shorts and a tank top, automail on full display in the way he does when he's only around family. Ed is a bit like a feral cat. It takes a lot of comfort and trust in order for him to get settled. "You okay, Al?" Ed asks, brow furrowing. "You're looking at me kinda funny."
It is then that it hits Al, with all the speed of a punch to the gut. He looks like Hohenheim. Al's not sure how he knows this with such certainty. Hohenheim left their mother when he was still very small, too small to really be able to remember much of anything, and yet, looking at his brother, he knows with perfect clarity that he is the spitting image of their father, all golden and ponytailed. He's not nearly as tall, and doesn't yet have the spectacles he remembers his father wearing (How do I remember that? I don't remember remembering that.), but it's still there, and it makes his throat go tight for some reason. Looking at his brother, he feels homesick and at home all at once.
He clears his throat, hoping that Ed interprets it as clearing away the sleep in his voice and not trying to keep from crying like a little boy. "It's nothing. Are you guys making scrambled eggs?"
"With cheese!" Winry chirps brightly from the stove, hair luminous in the early light, even under a bandana. "Your favorite!"
When he was younger, shortly after their mother was killed and Ed started going to university, Al lived in Resembool with the Rockbells while Ed studied in East City. It was truly the only time Al has ever known what it was like to feel lonely, and even then it was a tempered kind of loneliness. Pinako taught Al bits and pieces of engineering so that he could earn his keep (as if Alphonse Elric needed to earn his keep in order for the Rockbells to keep him up, but Pinako knew that Al didn't like not feeling useful), and he spent his days going to school with Winry and video-chatting Ed. But when Ed was home in the summers, he took long-term loans on books he had read during the school year and brought them back so that Al could read them. This is how Al learned about alchemy, and how he became mildly obsessed with the idea of human transmutation. He wasn't stupid; he knew that alchemy was a fiction and that he could never, in fact, transmute a person, but he spent long days daydreaming about somehow figuring out what these men had missed hundreds of years ago and successfully bringing back his mother.
He told Ed about this, and it was the first time he had ever made his brother cry.
After that, he let his daydream go and gingerly gave the books on alchemy back to his brother. They suddenly felt very heavy in his hands. It wasn't that he stopped missing his mother (he seriously doubts that is possible; Trisha Elric was a fantastic mother, and Al has a sharp enough memory to remember that at least), but he began to accept the way things were. But now, sitting around Riza Hawkeye's small, rickety kitchen table, Al finds himself wondering why he would ever daydream about bending the laws of nature to take things back to the way they were. There are people who have mothers and fathers and siblings with all of their limbs and will never feel the kind of love that he feels at that moment, eating cheesy scrambled eggs with his robot pilot brother and his gearhead friend. It's a peculiar kind of love, but it's so overwhelmingly comforting that he thinks that all of the horrible things that have happened to them have brought them to precisely this place, and he finds that he isn't particularly angry at the universe anymore.
Riza Hawkeye returns to her apartment to find it empty of teenagers, but now with two notes that had not been there before.
The first is on the kitchen table:
Decided not to waste a nice day sitting inside. Will be back by dinner.
(And then, in a different hand) Hope Pilot Bastard didn't drive you too crazy last night.
Ed, then.
At the bottom it is signed, in three separate hands:
Love,
Al, Winry, & Ed
She finds herself smiling at this little piece of paper (which turns out to be the back of a calculus test that Winry had been handed back; she had gotten a 98%), liking the space it occupies on her table. She wouldn't call it a fear, but Riza has a definite discomfort with empty homes. She shouldn't, not anymore, not after living alone for as long as she has (save Black Hayate of course), but occasionally, if Black Hayate is asleep and she finds herself alone in the kitchen, she finds herself transported unwillingly to the four silent years back West. When her mother died, it was like her father expected them to die with her. Maybe that's why she had thought, as a girl, that she had been in love with Mustang. It would be hard not to love the person who resurrected you.
But now, now that the Elrics and Winry were here, her home had noise again. No, not noise. Noise what she had to fight against in the Devil's Nest, noise was what always seemed to occupy her mind if she didn't always keep it occupied, wasn't constantly keeping it busy with games of mental fetch. This wasn't noise, it was sound, and that was different, and beautiful.
She takes the note and folds it, delicately, into a square and places it in one of the pockets of Mustang's sweatpants, wandering, happy but delirious, over to the couch. She is exhausted-physically, emotionally, mentally, hell, maybe even spiritually-and wants nothing more than to waste her Saturday sleeping. And yet, there, placed almost bashfully on a cushion is another note.
She recognizes Winry's handwriting immediately. It manages to be both precise and girlish, and unlike Mustang's is as easy to read as typeset.
No more sleeping on the couch, Captain! While you were out, me and Ed worked on a little project so that you can get your bed back. Consider it just a small thank-you for letting us live with you. Ed and Al will never say it (well, Ed will never say it) but they truly appreciate all you've done for us, and so do I. This is the least we could do.
x Winry
Feeling a slightly dizzy mixture of maternal affection and confusion, one emotion she has possibly never felt before and the other one she has become all too familiar with recently, Riza walks warily, note in hand, into the room that used to be hers.
What she sees is exactly what she had seen the morning the Elrics showed up: her bed, with its burgundy-colored sheets. And yet, in the space between the left side of her bed and the wall is now another bed. Well, perhaps "cot" might be more appropriate: it's roughly the size of a military cot, and seems to be constructed entirely of scrap metal. But, atop the uncomfortably steampunk construction is a twin mattress, clothed in sheets the robin's egg color that Winry has taken to wearing.
Winry and Ed had, in a night, constructed a bed, so that Riza would be able to sleep in her own bed again.
She isn't sure what is more confusing, the fact that two teenagers were able to stockpile this amount of junk metal without her knowing and construct a bedframe in a single night, or the fact that they would ever feel the need to. It never even occurred to Riza to begrudge Winry for taking her room. It only seemed right. For most people, obligation doesn't extend this far, but she has to remind herself that she is thinking of the boy who risked life and literal limb to save his brother and the girl who followed her best friend halfway across the country so that he wouldn't have to fight alone.
She remembers what she had thought when Hughes was attempting to let Riza allow them to stay with him, when she was trying to understand why they would come all the way out to Central from Resembool.
That's not obligation. That's love.
She sinks down into her own bed and gets the best sleep she's had in weeks.
Sometimes, Maes wonders how he managed to date Roy Mustang for as long as he did. He's so insufferable in so many ways and, despite having just turned thirty, is one of the most immature people Maes has ever met. He occasionally thinks that Elicia has a better grasp on some things than her Uncle Roy, to which she would reply "Of course, Daddy, Uncle Roy is a boy!" And, you know, at this point Maes would be hard pressed to disagree with her.
His time with Roy both feels very faraway and very recent, clouded in the dust of Ishval and thus unfortunately locked away in the same places in his mind where he keeps the memories he would rather not think about. And he's done a fairly good job of it, too. Well, he's done a better job that Roy and (although she would probably shoot him for thinking this) Riza. He thinks getting married and starting a family is a pretty healthy coping mechanism. More healthy than drinking himself stupid or bottling up everything he feels. Maes isn't stupid, or at least not as stupid as Roy and everyone else they work with. He knows that Riza isn't unfeeling. Underneath her stoic exterior is a heart as red and bloody as anyone else's. He's just not sure that she's ever had enough time to sit and feel the things she needs to feel. He's not sure she knows how.
He just wishes that talking with either of them wasn't like pulling teeth. Part of him wishes he could bring up his findings with Riza, but she's too deeply enmeshed with the brass by this point and, unfortunately, that would make her a liability. Roy, on the other hand, being only a lowly pilot and his best friend, to boot, makes him the perfect candidate. The only problem is getting him to shut up long enough to discuss anything.
And so that is why he is currently walking to Seele, a quiet little bar not too far from his house. Conversations like these are dangerous in a place like Central City (and, he knows now, anywhere in Amestris), and he's too paranoid to have them at home where Gracia or Elicia could overhear and possibly place themselves in danger for knowing what Maes knows. He had picked Seele especially, because it would be guaranteed to not be empty (it was in a trendy area of town and now, in the brief period before dinner, would be at peak hours), but it had been open long enough to not be entirely full. In other words, they would be able to converse uninterrupted, but there would be enough people there to provide background noise to deter any nosy bystanders. That, and if he is going to talk about this, with Roy of all people, he wants to have a drink.
In his messenger bag (leather, heavy, an old birthday gift from Roy that is too nice to part with) he has a file that makes him feel like he may as well be carrying a bomb into a slightly-out-of-fashion bar.
Inside, Seele looks like the kind of place where you would have a clandestine discussion of what Maes jokingly referred to as "conspiracy theories," but which may be much more than theories at this point. Roy Mustang isn't the only person who lays awake at night thinking about the organization they have sworn their lives to. (Maes knows about the Kimblee files. Of course Maes knows about the Kimblee files. Do you think Roy Mustang, Alchemist Pilot would go slumming down to the archives himself? Of course not. The kids in the archives like Maes, though. Unlike some people, they actually enjoy seeing pictures of Elicia.) He sets the bag carefully down on the floor by his chair, right as a waiter comes up to the table.
"Can I get you a drink, sir?"
The blood chills in Maes's veins, going thin and icy. The waiter standing by his table, still polite and well-dressed, is unmistakable: slim-hipped and androgynous, with long, spiky hair and a thin, catlike grin. There are two explanations for why the same waiter from brunch that morning would be here. The first is that this kid-who can't be particularly old-goes to Central U and is working two waitstaff jobs in order to pay the bills. But Maes has always been too optimistic, and he knows that. When he allows his eyes to wander down just slightly, to the thin, muscular legs coming out the bottom of the waiter's short skirt, he sees a tattoo on their thigh, in bright red ink, of a snake eating its own tale. An ouroboros. His mouth goes suddenly dry. He had been so careful, but the kid had been in dress pants at brunch, how could he have known?
"Scotch please. The most expensive you've got."
The import of that isn't lost on the waiter, and their purple eyes glitter hungrily. "Of course, sir."
Heart thudding in his chest in a way it hasn't since he got back from Ishval, since he had to live in constant fear of imminent death, he steps outside to make a call. He takes his bag with him.
Roy isn't sure why he's dreading getting drinks with Maes so much. After all, Maes is his best friend, was before they dated and continues to be even after they broke up. Roy will always love him in a strange kind of way that, at this point, has nothing to do with sex or romance. He just knows that Maes wants to have a Serious Conversation about something involving the Program, the same kinds of things he's wanted to talk to Roy about for weeks now, but it always comes at the worst times, like this one. Roy's brain is still foggy from the hangover, and now also from the two Bloody Mary's he had with brunch. He doesn't want to have to think. He wants to lay in bed with the curtains drawn and watch Netflix until he doesn't feel anymore. After the longest birthday of his life, hungover brunch, and then two hours at the Hughes house, playing with a sticky (but ultimately adorable and frighteningly intelligent) three-year-old, Roy would like to transcend existence for a while.
For not the first time, Roy is glad that he's an atheist, because if he wasn't then it wouldn't take much to convince him that God hated him.
He feels the same kind of horror at finding that he hadn't put away his research that he felt when Christmas had walked in on him watching porn as a teenager. This is something both private and very, very embarrassing. Roy, unlike Armstrong, had been immediately cleared by the psychological staff of the Program once they got back from Ishval and consequently released back into active duty as a pilot. But Roy was raised with sisters who lied to men for a living, one of which had actually been studying psychology while she was under Christmas's employ. It wasn't hard for Roy to bamboozle some mental health professionals into thinking he was fine.
But this, Roy thinks, looking at the artifacts of his obsession, isn't fine.
Even with her watchful eyes, Roy could fool himself into thinking that maybe Hawkeye had missed it in her hurry to get out of his apartment. But, seeing his steno pad very purposefully placed directly on top of Kimblee's personnel file, he can't be allowed to have even that small amount of comfort. He exhales shakily and picks it up, expecting to see a lengthy discussion of why what he is doing is inappropriate, or worrying, or possibly explaining her wish to talk about this in person in the future or get the files confiscated. That isn't what he sees.
Borrowed a shirt and some pants since I slept in my own clothes last night. Thanks for the hospitality. x R
Like most things done by Captain Riza Hawkeye, this is infuriatingly cryptic, but, like with most things done by Captain Riza Hawkeye, Roy is skilled enough now in understanding her to interpret it: She looked through the files, she knows they are there, but she is going to let him continue what he is doing, either because she doesn't want to talk about it, or, perhaps, because she trusts him. It's the last part that confuses him, the way she signed it: just "R." It isn't like them to sign things using only initials (although it isn't particularly like them to leave each other notes, either), but if they were to, Roy thinks they would probably use their last initials, not their first.
Roy was so preoccupied with this tiny, arcane detail that he hadn't noticed his phone buzzing in his back pocket. He half expects it to be Riza, since he almost believes that she would know that he had found her note with her strange, preternatural knowledge of all things, but it isn't. He has a missed call from Maes. He rolls his eyes. Maes Hughes is an incredibly impatient man. He's probably sitting in the bar already (a full hour early, Roy would like to add), wondering why no one else in the world is on his same, skewed timetable. But then, moments later, moments before Roy is about to call him back and tell him to chill the fuck out, he'll be there soon, when he sees something unexpected on the screen of his phone: a voicemail. Hughes never leaves voicemails. It isn't his style; if you don't answer his call on the first try, he'll just keep calling until you do, what he has to tell you being far too important to simply leave in a voicemail. This is bizarre. Brow knit, Roy opens the voicemail and holds the phone tentatively to his ear.
Roy, it's me. You probably think I'm calling to ask why you're not here yet. He laughs. But, for once, I'm not calling to scold you. I think I've scolded you enough for one lifetime. His voice sounds odd. It's too calm. Maes Hughes runs almost solely on sheer enthusiasm. Hearing him sounding this serene is unnerving. I don't think I ever apologized to you for breaking your heart. And don't laugh, Roy Mustang, because you know it's true. Oh, and another thing: please keep Gracia and Elicia safe for me. They really do love you, and without me there you'd be the next best thing. But don't let this stop you from figuring out what's going on with the Program. I've got the files with me, but... For the first time in the voicemail he can hear Maes's voice begin to tremble. I doubt they'll get to you. You'll need to start over, but you have to do this. This...it's bigger than us. It's bigger than the Alchemists. It's... He coughs around the warble in his throat. If I see you again I'll truly apologize, Roy, because I think we'll both deserve it at that point. See ya.
Roy sits for a moment, listening to the dial tone. The sound in his phone is impossibly hollow and huge, as if it's echoing through a cathedral, or a tomb. He considers calling Maes back, but knows that nothing will come of it. Nothing will come of anything anymore. He doesn't want to cry, because he hates crying, and he did more than his fair share of it last night, into Riza's muscular shoulder. And because he knows that if he sits there any longer he'll cry, he runs.
Riza's apartment isn't a far drive, maybe five miles, but five miles running and five miles driving are very different distances. He runs it anyway, because he isn't sure where else he would go. His dependence on her has tightened over the last few weeks, and now he feels it around his neck like a noose, choking the air from his lungs. If he didn't go to see Riza, he isn't sure what he would do. There are times when his need for her in the purest sense of needing her, in whatever capacity she presented herself, was so strong he felt like he might die, and he feels like that now. So he runs. Maybe a mile in, when his chest begins to heave, it begins to rain, and he welcomes it, both out of a desire for the world to show some sort of sympathetic fallacy at the beautiful, rare thing that had just been taken from it, and to cool his sickly, feverish head.
Roy is good at running out of sheer stubbornness. He had always been a thin, infirm kid, and so he didn't take to it like Riza did, all strong, taut muscles and golden, Amestrian blood. Pure and vital, the wet dream of the Amestrian military. But Roy has never been what they wanted: too foreign, too small, too ambitious. But he sticks onto them like a tick, and now he's sucked up too much of their oily, poisonous blood to let go. He owes Maes that much.
When he gets to the foot of Riza's apartment building, his hangover, his breakfast, his newly blossoming grief, and the exertion catches up with him and he retches into the grass. Only allowing the rain to clean the sweat and the sick off of his face for a moment, he races, shaking and damp, into the building's lobby and up the elevator to Riza's floor-only the thirty-third, significantly better than the forty-seventh-and considers briefly whether or not he's made a horrible mistake. Maybe he misunderstood, maybe everything is fine, maybe Maes is fine, and there's no reason to be here and trouble Riza any more than he's already troubled her the last few days.
But he knows. He's not stupid, and neither is Maes, and Maes knows-knew, he corrects himself-that he would understand. This is a game they've been playing for a long time, of talking about things without ever talking about them. It's a game he and Maes mastered in Ishval, but a game that Riza Hawkeye has been playing her entire life.
And so he knocks.
She answers the door, hair loose, still in his Central U t-shirt and sweatpants.
"Mustang? What is it?"
The symmetry isn't lost on him, that this is exactly what he must have looked like that first stormy afternoon on the Hawkeyes' doorstep, shivering and wet and, most of all, scared.
"Can I come in?"
Ed has been complaining the whole walk back to the apartment.
"Of course, the one day I don't wear a hoodie, it rains." He has his arms crossed resolutely over his skinny chest in the way that makes it look like he doesn't care that the people they pass are staring at his automail arm and leg, even though he does. In Resembool it hadn't been nearly as much of an issue; because of the conflict with Gluttony, automail was an incredibly common sight in Resembool, especially since he lived with two automail engineers. But the people in Central lived much softer lives, happily cloistered away from any warfare or anything else that would cause a loss of limb save a bizarre accident. Ed looked like a novelty, and he hated it.
"I think it's nice," Al says, arching his face up toward the rain like a flower reaching for the sun. "At least it'll cool down now. It's been so hot all day."
Which is precisely why they had gone out in the first place. On a day as hot as this one, nothing sounded better than ice cream, and so they set out in search of what was, purportedly, the best ice cream shop in Central. But on a scorching Saturday afternoon, the line was out the door, and they had been gone longer than they had anticipated. It was worth it, though; the internet hadn't lied, and the ice cream had been amazing, just perfect for a hot, muggy day. But then, of course, on their walk home it had started to pour.
Ed's foul mood isn't helped by the way the rain makes Winry's shirt cling to her in an entirely inappropriate fashion, and so he walks on Al's side, keeping his eyes resolutely forward.
"I feel bad tracking water into Riza's apartment," Winry says, wringing the bottom of her skirt out gingerly onto the floor of the elevator, while Ed carefully studies the buttons delineating each floor.
"I'm sure Hayate's tracked in worse," Ed says.
"Are you kidding?" Winry says, flipping her sopping ponytail back over her shoulder. "That dog is the best trained animal I've ever seen, it's just that he's a puppy. I heard a rumor that he's technically ranked as a second lieutenant."
"The best trained?" Al asks, eyes surprisingly wicked. "I thought we had Ed trained pretty well."
Ed has a very loud and very offended reply to that, but the elevator doors slide open and they are on Riza's floor.
"We're home!" Ed shouts as he opens the door, but the end of his sentence trails off awkwardly when he sees Riza sitting on the couch (that is now no longer her bed!) next to, of all people, Roy Mustang, both with drawn faces and quiet hands. "What's going on?"
Al and Winry stand awkwardly in the open doorway, dripping, unsure of what to do.
A silence hangs over the apartment for several long seconds, settling like dust, as if both Riza and Mustang are unsure of what to say. And then the bubble pops.
"Nothing," Mustang says, his practiced nonchalance settling back into his bones. "Just came to retrieve my clothes."
He passes a look to Riza like a tennis ball, which she drops. Her response to Mustang is too slow, and it makes Ed nervous. "Oh yeah," she says finally, clumsily. "Let me change out of these." She retreats to her room (which is now hers again!), unusually dumb-footed for the usually graceful Captain.
But, as much as this sits uncomfortably in Ed's mind, he's young, and he's tired, and he would rather believe it when adults tell him that nothing is wrong. And so he takes the bait that is so clearly proffered to him, and he bites. "Why does Riza have your clothes?"
Mustang wiggles a most-likely-manicured ebony eyebrow. "Wouldn't you like to know, kid."
"Don't lie to him, Mustang," Riza shouts from behind her closed bedroom door.
"Of course," Mustang says, "as if I could ever delude myself into thinking that I was worthy of the resplendent Captain Hawkeye."
Okay, he's laying it on thick, and even Ed can tell that much. His jokes are less fluid, his smile too forced. Something is definitely going on here, but Ed sincerely wishes that there wasn't.
At that, the "resplendent Captain Hawkeye" exits her room, now clothed in a pair of jeans and a soft-looking grey shirt. Aside from her Mustang's-shirt-and-pants ensemble, this is the most dressed down he has ever seen her. Said shirt and pants are folded neatly and perfectly square, like a department store display, and she hands them to Mustang like some sort of royal sacrament. He takes the clothes from her and smiles, the muscles in his face pulling uncomfortably, and gives a small bow to Winry standing in the doorway.
"If you'll excuse me, Miss Rockbell." Winry steps aside, and then he is gone, closing the door behind him.
"What a weirdo," Ed says, to fill some of the silence that is in the apartment in Mustang's wake. Mustang has the habit of leaving a room and then sucking all the sound up after him. Their small living room feels suddenly vacuous, even with four people standing in it.
"I hate playing waitstaff," says Envy. "It's never any fun. I never get to do any fun stuff anymore."
Wrath, seated in the war room, takes a sip from the tea that he had made Olivier make for him. General Bradley is, perhaps, the only person in the world who could make Colonel Olivier Mira Armstrong do anything, let alone something as banal and effeminate as make him tea. The tea tastes twice as good because of that. Power makes everything taste sweeter.
"You're not doing this because it's supposed to be fun." He spits the word out of his mouth like a watermelon seed, like fun is a foreign, abstract concept translated from a distant language. Fun? Oh no, we don't have that here in Amestris. What a barbaric idea. "You do this because it's your job, and if you don't do it I'll flay you alive."
Envy sighs, the haughty, bored sigh of a wealthy teenage girl. "You know, sometimes I forget why they call you 'Wrath,' but it's shit like this that reminds me exactly why."
"Is it done?" Wrath asks, unfazed by Envy's impertinence. He may be younger than Envy, but he feels much older, and he clings to his authority with knuckles gone white and bloodless.
"Yup," Envy says, hand on miniskirted hip. "Maes Hughes is officially dead. Good thing too; he was too smart for his own good, and that could've gotten annoying fast."
"And the files?"
Envy holds up a heavy leather messenger bag, with a large rust-colored splotch on the front like a piece of modern art. "They're all in here. Maes Hughes was a very busy man."
"I like busy men," Wrath says smoothly. "But only when they're working for me."
"What are you gonna do about Mustang? He was supposed to meet him at that bar."
"I'll handle Mustang," Wrath says. "Don't you worry about that."
"This should send him a pretty message," Envy says, grin wide and toothy as a jackal.
"And besides," Wrath says, pouring himself another cup of tea. "If he gets too uppity, he's just a piece of equipment. We can always replace him." He takes a sip from his cup without blowing on it first, savoring the way the boiling liquid scalds down his throat, and savoring even more the feeling of his throat knitting itself back together again. "There are plenty more where he came from."