Author's Note: Well, this one was a drag DX Neither of the two seem the type to really keep lucky charms, nor could I think of any scenario where one of them would give a good luck charm to the other. Eventually I came up with this, but I hate this chapter. It's awful and boring, but at least it's short.
Timeline: Midseries
Theme 12: Good luck charm
For feathersnow, brainstormer extraordinaire
"Yo, Ed, Al! I didn't know you were in town already."
"Hello, everyone," Alphonse said politely, bowing slightly to the room at large.
"Yeah well, it was another wild goose chase," Edward growled, ignoring the greetings of all the soldiers in the room.
He slouched over to the door leading to Mustang's inner office, but Hawkeye, who was nearest, told him, "The colonel just left to go to the lavatory, but he should be back in a few minutes."
Edward turned, his hand hovering over the doorknob. "Oh, okay." He looked at the others; Alphonse was chatting happily with Fury about Hawkeye's dog Black Hayate, who had become something of a mascot for them. "I guess I'll just go on and wait for him, then."
When Hawkeye nodded and returned to her paperwork, Edward pushed open the door and entered the inner sanctuary of Colonel Roy Mustang. He took his customary position on one of the dark green couches in the middle and sat there for a minute, waiting.
But he was too worked up to sit still for long. He'd come here expecting to bang loudly into the room as usual and shout some of his feelings at the one person he could turn into a scapegoat. But without Mustang here, all he could do was dwell on how they had failed – again – to find the Stone.
Huffing irritably, Edward got to his feet and paced around the room, searching for something to distract himself with. Eventually he sat down in Mustang's comfortable chair and spun himself around boredly. When Mustang still hadn't returned, Edward's hands strayed to the drawers of the desk. He wasn't normally a nosy person, certainly not the type to go snooping around in someone's desk unless they were a criminal or had information on the Stone. But he had no such inhibitions when it came to Colonel Mustang, and he was taking too long anyway.
The contents of the colonel's drawers were mostly uninteresting – paperclips, blank envelopes, spare ignition-cloth gloves...then he opened the smallest drawer on the top, and at first it seemed to be empty. But when he shoved it closed, he heard a rattling sound and fished around in it curiously. He pulled out a small pendant on a thin chain, and leaned back in the chair with his feet propped up on the desk to examine it.
The chain was broken, he saw, which might account for its presence in a desk instead of around someone's neck. It was made of a smooth, dark, shiny wood, carved in a curious shape. It was an ovalish shape, with tufts on the top and a circle in the middle. Kind of like an eye. An animal eye, he thought. A bird's eye. Something about it reminded him of an eagle's eye. Or a hawk's...
Just then the door opened and Mustang finally came in. He blinked in surprise, then scowled, to see Edward in his chair. "Just what do you think you're-"
"Hey Mustang, what's this?" Edward held up the pendant.
Mustang immediately lunged forward, squealing, "My good luck charm!"
Edward pushed off the desk with his feet, sending the chair sliding back into the wall and out of Mustang's reach.
"G-Give it back!" The color was rising in Mustang's pale cheeks, and he seemed to be attempting a stern look as he frantically snatched at the chain.
Edward grinned, his instinctive response to anything that embarrassed Mustang. "Not until you tell me what it is. A lucky charm? How unscientific..."
"Look, it just has...sentimental value..."
His grin widened. "Sentimental...romantic value?" He dangled the eye just out of the colonel's reach.
Mustang's face was such a satisfying shade of bright red that Edward didn't even mind when the man leapt around the side of the desk and snatched the charm away. At last he had some dirt on Mustang.
