A/N: This might answer some of the Al questions. :D Or add to them. And it was very tempting to write Team Hx instead, but I wondered how many people would be familiar with the shorthand…

Flame and Fullmetal
Chapter 11 – Some Team History

The office was rather empty following Major Kimbee's capture, since all of them had had jobs they'd had to put off for the emergency and now they had to play catch-up. Fuery and Falman were gathering intelligence on several alchemic incidents. Breda was pouring over what they'd already collected and mapping plans: whether the incidents were connected and what connected them, what preceeded them, what caused them, what followed… He left complicated alchemy stuff to his chief, but he recognised simple circles and the frequent symbols. Came with the territory after all, when you worked in a team specialised for alchemist incidents.

It was probably because there weren't really alchemists to spare after their usefulness as combatants (or executioners, as Edward would say) was demonstrated in the Ishbal Civil War. Edward was different though, and none of them were quite sure if it was his youth, his ideals or something behind the scenes that had shuffled him into such a role, a role that meant he could research to his heart's content and then some and be less likely to have to kill in the process. But they weren't a team that had been shuffled into a corner to be cut off as soon as their negligible usefulness was at an end. Alchemic incidents had always been reasonably common and they were moreso following the Ishbal Civil War.

The war had declared to the public as well how valuable alchemy could be, and its knowledge was less tightly controlled. And so they were the ones to mop that up. To discover branches of alchemy the Military was ignorant of in the process, and to mop up such incidents – send amateurs who were truly eager to learn and for the right reasons to proper teachers so they may one day join the Military themselves (though Edward didn't necessarily take an active role in that. He was a funny one, that Edward). And the less desirable up and coming alchemists were either discouraged, knocked off a peg or monitored carefully in case the dissolved into a greater problem.

Havoc claimed he joined the crew because cases were reasonably common, which translated to common enough to need a specialised team to address them, but rare enough that they get more time off than other teams. Though the downside was that some cases dragged on, and the non-alchemy inclined – which was all of them really, except for Edward, though Breda and Falman both knew a manageable amount of theory without having ever purposely triggered an alchemic reaction – would find themselves on month-long stakeouts. Breda claimed Havoc had dragged him along. They were old friends since their Military academy days, and Breda was the self-appointed voice of reason for Havoc's impulsiveness. Though Breda wasn't that reasonable, Edward found, and neither was Havoc that impulsive. More like two big brothers, and after the original hurdle of getting to know each other was gone, the got along quite well and none could really complain about where they'd wound up.

Falman's transfer had been arranged by then Major Hughes. A brilliant man, the man had moaned, with a brilliant memory and widely read to boot (and that tidbit of information had perked Edward's interest, of course) but getting a bit too inept at combat for the sort of fast-paced field operations his original team found themselves in. So Major Hugues suggested the three person team could use a fourth member and the higher-ups were unlikely to dispute the transfer, and so Edward agreed and the transfer was made.

Fuery was actually a pick-up from one of Edward's earliest missions, and a legendary tale in the office that, of all things, involved a dog. Though, like all tales that were told too many times, it had mutated along the way and neither Fuery nor Edward was inclined to correct the others. Especially with the bet pool going on – which was Havoc's work as well.

And then there was General Grumman who decided the team needed another alchemist and he had a newly certified alchemist that fit the bill nicely. Edward was still making his mind up about that matter, but he supposed they could have done worse. The man was still relatively young (though he was older than Edward and Fuery both, and the former point seemed to be an awkward point with Roy Mustang) and relatively open, and his first mission had been a success – though not in the way Edward would himself had done it, if he had done the mission himself.

He wouldn't have except in his early days as a State Alchemist, because it wasn't an intelligence mission. But the higher ups had sent it to him anyway, along with the paperwork assigning the Flame Alchemist to the team. Tradition, perhaps. It was a nice simple mission a single person could handle, in any case. And there was an implicit order buried in there that Edward really had no reason to not obey. So he sent Roy Mustang off and somehow got an alchemist out of the deal.

Which reminded him. He should check with Izumi and see how the girl was going… if she was going.

And now he was on his way to Briggs with Private Riza Hawkeye, and Edward wondered how well that would work out. They knew each other, on a more personal level than Breda and Havoc as well. Maybe they'd become an operable pair, in which case he'd have to ask a certain General to transfer his granddaughter. He wondered how that conversation would go. With instant denial or hearty laughter was his guess.

And, finally, there was the secret member of their team, the member the public heard about, but the military forgot and his team were, on the whole, ignorant to. The mission that had led him to Fuery was a solo mission – and those had been getting more and more common until the norm that was the current times and the partner he trusted to watch his back could no longer accompany him…and could barely talk to him at all.

.

Edward was in his personal office, deciphering Kimblee's notes. He hadn't misspoken about the ease of decoding them. Kimblee was tricky, but he was also arrogant and that arrogance meant his notes were not guarded very thoroughy with word codes. Instead, they were guarded with the arrangement of the pages, and the transmutation circles they created – but that also left an easy way to connect them. He only had to be careful not to touch the circles once they were set, and that was the tricky part. Circles covered every border and any one of them would blow up the notes and the desk they sat on. But Roy's first mission was still fresh on his mind, and wind alchemy that had come up as the question, and Edward simply used a simple circle to create some turbulence and control the pages with the air.

Kimblee couldn't manage sustainable circles – circles that would activate once completed without an alchemist touching it to provide the energy for the transmutation. He hadn't heard of anyone who could, actually. Though books from Xerxes claimed it possible, without a shred of information on how to go about achieving it.

And once the puzzle on how to read the notes was solved, it was somewhat boring work – writing down what was decoded in his own travel-log code and trying not to think about it too much. Because if he thought about it, he'd get distracted and add his own theories and try exploring something, and then he'd never get to the end of the notes and he'd rather he didn't have such volatile things lying around for when he was exhausted and weary and threw caution out the window. Or when his mind was occupied with other things, things he could only have in the privacy of his personal office or his dorm room and both of those only sometimes even though he kept an ear out for the bells, that voice he awaited, anyway.

'Brother?'

And, sometimes, he wondered if he wasn't just imagine the voice, whispering in the silence. Those times, when he'd say 'Yes, Al?' as though they were back in Resembool and in their bodies and their mother and Winry's parents and maybe even their bastard of a father were there as well. Or even the times that followed, because when Al had been in his suit of armour he'd walked and talked and moved and been awake. In fact, he'd never slept.

But now he spent most of his time sleeping in the Gate, with Ed just imagining the voice…

'How are you?'

Then again, sometimes it was Al, and Ed happily pushed himself away from the desk to enjoy that precious window of time before it vanished again. Because it always vanished too soon.