Ed stared for several long, heart-stopping, impossible seconds.
Then, there was only one thing stopping him from hurling himself right onto Justin, and that one thing was Roy's steady arm, thrown out to hold him back and keep the bastard right in between him and him.
Roy was snapping already, frantically dragging his fingers together over and over, the sound echoing in the tiny space but no fire came after it, no smoke, no explosion. It took them both a moment to realize he was snapping his bare hand, pale fingers fumbling in the firelight, and Ed only realized in time with Roy's rough gasp that the glove was still on his hand.
"Roy-" he gasped, already scrambling to finagle it off, hand it back over to him- but Justin, with one dangerous, calm wave of his gun, and an even more dangerous, deranged sort of smile, froze him right in his tracks.
"Ah, ah, ah," he warned, shaking his head along with the gun and giving them the same bloody, slippery sort of smile that made Ed feel like he'd just been drowned in a bucket full of ice. "Let's just see you toss that right over here, shall we? No need for anyone to get all antsy, now."
Panic and hate both this time collided in his chest, slamming into each other to form a white hot sort of blinding rage. The patronizing, the condescension, that fucking smile-
"That was not a request," Justin said coldly, and this time, the gun was cocked with anything but a smile.
Ed's heart pounded, and for several deadly, furious moments, he honestly felt as if he'd prefer getting shot then following any single instruction from that man ever again.
But then Roy was there, pushing him back just a little more with an arm that was too steady, a face that was too cold. "Do what he says, Fullmetal," he murmured, dark eyes never leaving the fake doctor and dangerous alchemist across from them- and this, too, was obviously not just a request.
At first that was all there was, the two older alchemists glaring at each other, smeared blood trails gleaming on both their faces and in the flickering firelight they looked almost wild, feral. For a terrible moment Ed wandered if that was how he looked, too, half-crazy in the dusty darkness with a gun on him from one direction and Roy's arm from the other.
"Fine," he spat, working the oversized glove off his hand and glaring all the while. It was a bit hard- or just impossible- to aim, but he still made it a point to toss it down across the confined space, not to Roy, but certainly not to Justin either. He was shivering and in pain and scared, but all that fear and hurt that he'd been made to keep silent for so long morphed straight into rage as he slapped it right onto the floor and pushed against Roy's arm, nearly throwing himself at him. "That you wanted? That good for you, doctor? Doctor-" What was it, what was it, what the fuck had Hakuro said- "Doctor Everson?"
Justin, midway to a suspicious glance after where Ed had tossed the glove, stiffened a little. His warning smile slipped, the blood still dripping in a macabre trail down his pale, shadowed face, and for a moment, his eyes narrowed. "So you know my name, then."
"That's not all that we know," Roy snapped, hand tensing as if he wanted to do just that. "We all know who you are. What you've done. Maes- the military knows, the whole military knows! It's too late for you- if you think-"
"I think," Justin said carefully, "that the three of us are currently stuck in what appears to be a cave in, and until an alchemist comes along to help us out, we'd be best to stay calm, unless you want to bring the whole building down on our heads. So." He waved the gun a little again, the threat silent, but Ed did not need it to be spoke aloud. "How about the both of you just stay right over there and keep your hands where I can see them?"
Ed glared across the small space, hand clenching to tighten around Roy's wrist as he again fought back the desperate urge to stop cowering like a weakling and finally, finally, strike back. He didn't care what Justin said. He didn't care, staring around the dark and dusty and bloody rubble, that the son of a bitch was right, and if Roy had had his gloves to snap with he might well have brought the whole down on them.
He'd take the risk, if it meant it crushed Justin along with them.
He'd take it because he was never letting that man so much as touch him again. He wasn't going to wake up back in that padded room, he was going to let him take Al away from him, and he wasn't going to fucking let him hurt Roy.
He was done being helpless.
That gun- where was that gun Hawkeye had given him, he had to have dropped it in the fall, but it was somewhere around him, somewhere close, if he could just-
"Edward," Justin warned, slippery smile broadening again. "Whatever it is that you're looking for, I'd ask you to consider if you could get to it faster than I could pull the trigger." He paused for a moment, leaning just a little more against the rough, scraping concrete to again wave the gun in his direction. "Unless, of course, you're looking for this, Edward?"
"Looking for-"
He fell to a dead stop, his eyes widening in horror.
Hawkeye's gun.
Hawkeye's gun.
He'd stolen it.
She'd trusted him to use it... she'd looked at him and told him she trusted him with it because she knew he could do it, and- and he'd just...
That son of a bitch...
That was what the sounds of movement had been before, he realized with a dawning sense of terror. The shuffling and creaks that he'd ignored while trying to tend to Roy, movement at his back... he'd dropped the gun from Hawkeye and Justin had stolen it.
Ed snarled, hand tightening into a bruising fist, and suddenly found his heart pounding so hard he could hardly stand it.
She'd given it to him because she'd said she trusted him, she'd told him she believed in him even if he couldn't believe in her or himself, and he'd just- just-
When is he going to quit taking things from us?!
"So your plan is to shoot us, huh?" Roy snapped, angry and cold. He continued to all but shove Ed behind him, arm thrown out and his till clenched, bare hand nearly vibrating with the tension. "Regretting not killing us before? Want a do-over?"
Justin frowned a little himself, his inscrutable eyes flickering darkly in between the two of them even while that dammed gun didn't move a single inch. Always right on Roy. "Actually," he murmured, "I was intending on hanging onto a few hostages. You know- just to be safe." He gave a slight, dangerous sort of shrug, and an even more dangerous sort of smile. "We've got no way of knowing if it'll be my friends or yours who break through here. I'd just like a little insurance policy if it ends up not being someone friendly to me."
Ed just glimpsed Roy rolling his eyes in the dancing firelight, the bastard elbowing him back a little when he once again tried to shove his way forward. "You're the insane one, doctor, if you think they'll let you get anywhere with us. If you wanted us dead then I'm afraid you missed your chance months ago."
Justin's face, however, his bloody, eerie face, twitched again, just a quiet little smirk as he settled himself more securely against the rubble and his unfocused sort of eyes flickering to glare away towards the floor. "Don't you worry about me," he muttered under his breath, an annoying sort of smug, arrogant deflection, and Ed's anger flared again.
"You-"
"Fullmetal," Roy hissed, shoving back even harder. He shook his head, dark eyes flickering back around to meet his against the gleaming blood on his face, a terrible dichotomy of black blood on white skin with a silent sort of message etched there. A desperate pleading to just stay quiet, let me handle this, let me protect you, Fullmetal, but all Ed read over the resounding anger and panic was Roy trying to take all oft his on himself again, and leave Ed out of it. He'd take whatever Justin had to give as long as he could save Ed from it.
Well, Ed was tired of sitting back to watch as everyone else protected him.
He was tired of it.
And this time, he decided to fight back.
"You can fuck right the hell off, Justin," Ed snarled, and Roy only had one arm and was knocked all but senseless with a head injury so he just shoved his protective hand straight down to push forward instead, gasping in the smoke and trembling hard with the barely suppressed rage. "Haven't taken enough from us already, huh, is that it?! Want to try and shoot us cause you think it'll get you out of here?!"
"Fullmetal, please-"
"You're out of your dammed mind. You're not going anywhere! Al's here, Hughes is here- you think they're just gonna let you walk away?! You want to try touching us again, well, go ahead, you fucking psychopath! Go ahead!" Ed kept one eye on the discarded glove on the dusty floor and the other on Justin, half crawling forward another inch even over Roy's half desperate, gasped sort of protest. "Just do it now! God knows you threatened to do it enough times, remember that, you threatened it to me, you said you'd kill him if I didn't do what you want! And you tried to kill me, you remember?! Do you?! Because I do!"
Behind him, Roy gasped, abruptly and suddenly horrified, but Ed fought on without heed for it, his eyes only for the bloody, still smiling face before them that had taken everything away from him and tried to take still more. "You wanted to leave me to die! I heard you! You said you were going to leave me like that, that people died like that all the time and nobody'd care, you t-thought- you want us dead?! You wanted us dead this whole time?! Go for it, then!"
Justin tensed again. His eyes narrowed in the face of the nearly screamed rant, form infuriatingly motionless and expression furiously impassive, so still Ed's head pounded and his vision contracted around him and he saw red- but his tormentor remained perfectly calm and in control the entire time. "So you've rediscovered a backbone, then?' he nearly snarled in disgust, slowly halfway working himself to his knees as if to be ready to fight him off at any moment. The gun remained steady in the air, turned towards Roy without ever once wavering. "Well, you can leave it back where you found it. Nobody wants you dead. All anyone wants is for you to just shut up."
"Oh, right, you just want to drag us around at gunpoint, then?" he spat. "You're- let go, Roy!- you're a fucking joke. If you really don't give a damn, why don't you get us all out of here right now? Aren't you an alchemist? Can't you just transmute your way out- oh." He mock paused, letting his smile twist into something even colder, because he had been through too fucking much at that man's hands to restrain himself any longer. "Oh, that's right. I forgot! You can't. Because you failed your alchemy exam. You were such a shitty alchemist you needed us to do your dirty work for you."
And this time- for perhaps the very first time since he'd ever woken up in that damn hospital- Ed was in control, and he got to see Justin be rattled.
It wasn't much. Just a subtle tensing around his eyes, that annoyingly, infinitely smug smile fading into something darker, something angrier. But it was there, that was all Ed had to see to squash the rising fear in his chest, and instead embrace his own rage full-heartedly.
"You don't know a damn thing," Justin hissed. His eyes went narrow, a slight tightening at his mouth, the smallest shudder in his voice to belie instability. "I could've done it all myself if your military had recognized me. How good I was."
"Yeah, but they didn't, did they?" Ed pressed again, an almost wicked smile twisting its way across his face that he didn't have the self-control or the will to stop. "They turned you and your trash array out because they knew you were trash, they knew-"
"Fullmetal, for the love of god, shut-"
"They weren't good enough for my array! They weren't smart enough to look at me and see what I could do! They looked at me and said I wasn't good enough, but then- then they take him," he gestured wildly at Roy, "they take this dammed brat who couldn't even make gold for me- then there's you! You! A twelve year old god dammed child! You-"
"That's right! A twelve year old child!" Ed shouted, shoving forwards past Roy's arm again to lunge ahead, sanity and reason bashed against the rocks for panic to override him from head to toe. "A twelve year old child was better than-"
The gun came down like a club; he saw it in the firelight, swung down as a hammer, and a split second later, he realized what it was. A split second after that, he realized he should probably get out of the way.
That was a split second too late.
This time, when Ed woke up, his head was pounding, and this time, every ounce of his confidence and bravado had morphed into miserable regret.
Ow.
Ow.
Ow.
This time he wasn't coming off of a peaceful round of sedation, nonconsensual or not. This time every bit of him hurt and his head in particular felt like somebody had taken a sledgehammer to it. It ached just to breathe and eyes still shut, body still slumped on the floor- didn't matter; still felt dizzy and knew just upon trying to crack open his eyes that standing was a bad idea. Talking? Also probably a bad idea. Staying conscious? Ditto.
But he was awake now, each shuddering breath feeling like a nail through his eye, and he could feel something slick and cold on the side of his head, sticking his hair together, that he could only surmise to be his own blood. He heaved in a shaky, shallow wheeze again, miserable and half-sick already, letting his head nuzzle into the nearby warmth because he wasn't capable of just about anything more than that.
It took him more than several seconds to realize that that warmth was familiar, because he'd fallen asleep against it before.
Roy.
Roy's scratchy uniform jacket under his cheek, and his scratchy, uniformed arm around his back to hold him there.
The anxiety and fear already clutching at his stomach receded, just a little bit, and Ed let himself relax into the bastard's arm just a little more.
Then, a half second later, he remembered why it hurt, why it felt like he was slowly suffocating in a crypt, and why he was passing out against Roy, and that anxiety and fear came right back full force.
Roy. Justin. Gun to his damn head.
Justin.
Ed shrunk just a little more back into Roy as something cold and terrified clenched in his stomach and the fear began to claw its way right back up his throat.
Voices encroached in on his already hazy consciousness, biting at the dizzy cloud in his head like so many bugs. He clutched exhaustedly at Roy, his tired and sore fingers curling in his jacket as he sunk back against him as surreptitiously as he could, wanting to get away, wanting to hide-
But there was nowhere to run.
"...fair. It wasn't goddamn fair."
Justin, Ed recognized. That was his voice.
He sunk into Roy a little more.
"Do you know how long I spent, making my array? How hard I worked on it? And then- then they wouldn't even test it. They wouldn't even try! They said it was too dangerous just after looking at it!"
Roy was quiet, and did not respond. Unlike Ed, it seemed, the bastard was content keeping his silence and not testing the dangerous, antagonistic asshole with a gun.
Probably because it was safest that way.
Yeah, Ed thought, the word muddy through the pounding in his bloody, bloody head. Yeah, it was probably safer to have Roy be the one doing the talking.
"And instead, what did they do? Who'd they take instead of me?" There was more shifting of rubble now, tired, dusty sort of creaks that sounded as if Justin was pacing, now, kicking aggravatedly at rubble, muttering under his breath. A distracted, angry mumble, not even talking to Roy at all anymore but to himself, all but ranting as he paced, and Roy, his arm still draped protectively around him, held very, very still."There's Armstrong," Justin muttered on, "buying his name in when his big name and old money... then that Kimbley- but you all didn't care about dangerous arrays with him, you didn't care until he was blowing other soldiers up... Shou Tucker, and from what we all hear he's just a psychopath that lost it..." The pacing sounds stopped for a moment, as if Justin was glaring down to them, now, eying them with that angry, hungry, wolflike stare Ed remembered so well from the days and days and days he'd been forced to kneel down before that array. "Oh- I'm sorry. I'm forgetting my manners. You wouldn't actually remember any of that... would you, Roy?"
This time, Ed felt Roy tense a little, and the arm that was loose around his back stiffened as his fingers clenched into a hard, tight fist.
He didn't say anything, but Justin, apparently, did not need him to.
The fake doctor laughed, the sound loud and hollow in the tight space, and he moved closer and he laughed again, smug and arrogant and slimy. "That's right. Your military refused me and told me my array would never work- so I hand them back their two prize alchemists without a memory left in their heads." He paused again, and Ed just barely cracked his eyes open to watch as the shadowy figure knelt down for a moment, gathering something from the dusty ground. "What are you doing with this, hmm, Roy?" He waved his find in between them, the smirk audible on his voice alone. "We both know you can't use it."
Roy was quiet for a moment again, and Ed dared to crack his eyes open just a little further, struggling to see without alerting to anyone that he was awake.
Roy's glove.
Justin had picked up Roy's glove, that he'd made Ed take off and toss to the floor.
He gritted his teeth, and seethed.
"...They wanted me to look the part today," Roy said stiffly at last, his voice purposefully vague and distant. "No. I can't use them. You know why."
Ed nearly blinked in surprise, only barely managing to hold himself still out of some sort of desperate, last ditch effort that he grasped onto in the nick of time. So Roy was going to play innocent, then- tell Justin he couldn't use his alchemic explosions and fires that Ed knew he'd worked so hard at.
Hell, it wasn't too bad a plan. Ed sort've wished he'd had some of the foresight to play it cool himself, before.
Maybe that way his head wouldn't feel like someone had smashed it against all the rubble around them.
And this answer, thankfully, somehow seemed to be enough to satisfy Justin as he laughed cruelly again, high-pitched and vaguely unhinged, unsettling. "That's right," he proclaimed, slipping the glove onto his own hand to grin at the embroidered array. "The famous, flagship Flame Alchemist, and I was enough to make you useless. I was better than you."
There was another cold, unsettling moment of silence.
"Is that why you did all this, then?" Roy asked quietly, his arm tightening protectively around Ed again. "We know about the gold. We know why you needed State Alchemists. But this is why you wanted us, isn't it...? You wanted to make a point."
"Wanted to? I made my point!" And Justin had whirled around on them again, angrily waving that one gloved hand, the other with the gun still in the air, and even in the sliver of vision Ed had between his lashes he could see the blood trail had gotten worse. It was all the way down to his chin, now, and still dripping. "I bested both of you. You- you were the youngest State Alchemist before this kid came along, did you know that? Just a few years before they threw me out of the exam. I put in a decade of work but you just stroll in barely out of school and they let you in- and for what?! You couldn't even use my array to make gold. We both saw it." He laughed suddenly again, a short and abrupt burst of hysteria, spinning around on the spot to set about pacing frantically once more. "Then- then they take this... twelve year old brat... they took in a dammed child while they laughed in my face..."
There was another uncomfortable silence, Roy almost unnaturally still around him, and Ed shrunk back self-consciously again.
But a few moments later, the fake doctor's laughed died down shakily, and he dropped his gloved hand back down to his side, a cold, angry sort of smile slipping onto his face again that Ed could just barely see through his one cracked open eye. "I'll admit I was angry with the boy at first. But he proved he was worth it. Always running around doing alchemy without circles, I heard not even the military knew how... he was good. He was even better than I thought he was. I put an impossible array in front of him near the end and he just- just sailed straight through and came out standing." He shook his head wondrously, one hand dragging through his blood-matted hair while the other with the gun still refused to waver even an inch. "I'd never heard of an alchemist surviving that array in one piece but he does it when he can't even remember enough to tell a transmutation from a deconstruction. It was incredible." He laughed quietly again, half bewildered, half still cruel. "I knew I could use him, even before I saw just how good he was. I needed someone to make gold for us and if anyone could it was him. I needed him."
There was another short, uncomfortable pause.
"So," Roy said finally. "You took Fullmetal because... you needed him. And... and you took me." He took in a slow, slightly shuddering breath, just close enough for Ed to feel it on his skin. "To get back at me."
Justin glanced darkly back at them both, the firelight casting eerie shadows on his face and flickering against his cold smile. "What do you know?" he chuckled, smirking. "The useless alchemist finally gets one right."
Roy tensed again, and this time, Ed knew he wasn't the only one thinking about the glove still set snugly on the bastard's pinned arm.
"I'll be honest," the fake doctor went on with a broad, gleaming sort of hysterical, insane smile, "the grand scheme of things, the gold, this fight against the military? It was never for me. There was so much more to it than even I knew... your government is a lot less liked than you'd believe, Flame. There're Ishvalans with us today, chimeras- did you know that, Mustang, did you know how many chimeras your government makes in secret while executing Tucker for doing the same but getting caught? I sure didn't until I got caught up with all of this. And there's more! You think you were the only ones making gold for us? Just little Ed, bankrolling our entire fight?" He barked out another short, angry laugh. "Think again. The Freezing Alchemist, he's with us too, Isaac- and he's with us of his own free will!" The pacing started again, this time with that dammed gun wavering back in their direction while that glove that Ed so desperately wanted back on Roy's hand left still by his side. "He doesn't talk much. I could never get him to tell me what he's got against the military. But it was never mattered to me."
"...Because you got what you wanted."
And, once again, Justin grinned.
"I did," he said coldly. "I got exactly what I wanted."
To that, Roy slowly tightened his arm around Ed again, and Ed, his head still dizzy and his heart still pounding, at last felt a slow, rising sense of resignation.
That was that, then.
That was why all of this had happened to them. They'd been targeted by this angry, pathetic alchemist who'd felt slighted by the military years and years ago, and had let that slight turn into a festering wound that hungered for revenge- and they had been his unlucky targets. Ed had been snatched up because they'd needed him to use their arrays and it sounded like he'd been their best bet, and Roy had been targeted because Justin had apparently fixated on him as the face of the military's slight against him.
That was it.
Because it didn't sound as if Justin had ever even met Roy before. That he'd just stewed in silence for years against him and when the opportunity had arose, he'd just gobbled it up, thrilled for the excuse to do get at him however he wanted. And Ed?
God, it sounded like he'd barely even entered into the asshole's mind. Like he'd been little more than an afterthought, at best. That he'd been Justin's little lab rat, neatly running around his little mazes like a good boy, while Roy had been the lab rat he'd shocked for the fun of it, but Ed- all Justin had done to him, all he'd gone through, the weeks alone, the nights spent screaming and out of his mind, the days spent abandoned on the floor of that padded cell, the months alone and memories of his brother ripped away and torn apart and left to die like trash-
And there wasn't even a reason for it.
Justin's entire focus had been revenge against Roy for some imagined offense the bastard hadn't even committed- but there hadn't even been a reason for what he'd done to Ed at all.
He'd just let him be hurt that much because he hadn't been human enough to care.
Something miserable and lost sunk past the lump in his throat, and for a moment, he felt almost too lonely and neglected to stand it.
Only for a moment, however.
Because a heartbeat after that impossible, choked, chilling silence- the noises started to come.
Loud, shuddering rumbles that shook through the earth itself, the rubble around them suddenly trembling, the floor underneath their feet suddenly shifting, showers of crumbled dust suddenly dousing them and Roy was coughing, the bastard hacking for breath even as the one arm he had to hold him tugged him suddenly closer. It was an abrupt, desperate grab at protection, Ed felt it even as he started to push himself upright, forgoing any attempt at feigning sleep any longer because in the frantically flickering firelight and earsplitting rumbles so close around them he felt it in his bones that they were about to be fucking suffocated in a dammed cave in.
But while Roy flinched back, trying to hold him closer, and Ed clutched right back, ducking his head from the suddenly trembling rubble- Justin jerked bolt upright, and grinned.
"Looks as if somebody finally found us!" he cried, throwing his newly gloved hand up in near ecstasy. "And if someone's about to let us out of here-" He turned his hungry gaze back down onto them... and with it, the gun.
"Then it's time for me to get my human shield back."
For a split-second, there was nothing but the same flickering darkness, Ed's confusion, and Justin's sharp smile.
Then he realized exactly what that man meant.
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
"Don't touch him! Stop, Justin, STOP IT-"
"Stop! N-no-" Ed yanked away, but Justin was already grabbing at his collar, yanking at him while Roy fought back, holding him with all his strength and Ed grabbed him back but Justin had leverage and both his arms to work with and there was nothing, nothing he could do to stop it as he was dragged right up into the air, right away from Roy- and right against Justin.
His panicked heart careened right to a stop, and by the frozen, distraught rictus of anguish on Roy's face as he was ripped away, so was his.
And there it was.
In about two seconds flat, Ed had gone from safe and protected against Roy, to dragged up and away from him to be pinned against Justin so tightly and forcefully he'd been knocked right off his feet, his leg dangling uselessly from the one arm that kept him pinned against Justin's chest, and with the cold, hard muzzle of the gun from Hawkeye jammed right into his skull.
There it was.
Ed's heart lurched so hard in his chest he nearly choked. Roy, still trapped down on the floor, was now scrabbling, gasping, his feet struggling for purchase against the dust as he shoved and shoved at the concrete pinning his arm- but he remained stuck amongst the rubble, and unable to manage anything more than staring up at him with huge, desperate eyes and a horrified, frantic face that felt like it had driven a knife through his heart.
And it didn't matter, because there was absolutely nothing he could do about to get away.
He was trapped again- right back in his worst nightmare.
Because Al was gone, Roy was powerless, and Ed was... was helpless.
It was suddenly feeling very, very hard to breathe.
And then Justin was hauling him backwards, Ed's foot scraping uselessly agains the ground as he gasped and struggled, trying to kick but the gun jammed harder into his head. Roy cried out but it didn't stop them from pressing back against the wall furthest from the noises and the rumbling, the rumbling that was already spreading out into a spiderweb of splintering cracks throughout the stone and the rubble. Even in Ed's ascending panic he saw it, the thick and crumbling columns and walls across from them starting to splinter firelight, pulverize one after another, sparking with alchemic light-
And with that, just mere moments after Justin had dragged them away from Roy, the wall was blasted apart, and their tiny prison was breached in what Ed already knew would be the last time.
There was yelling and chaos; he saw guns and more alchemic light and an army of blue soldiers that he knew meant Roy, but it was all too much and Justin was dragging him and shouting again and Ed pressed his eyes shut with a near whine, gasping and trembling and needing it all to stop. He shrank into himself, a scream catching desperately in his closed off throat but he was too scared to move, that damn gun, he could still feel it right against his head, and Justin was yelling and shaking him and his skin crawled, oh god Justin was right there and all over him, he was right back where he'd started it was like he'd never gotten away at all he wanted it to stop he wanted it to STOP-
"Fullmetal! Fullmetal!"
When Ed finally wrenched his eyes back open, trembling and torn and paralyzed at Roy's desperate scream, it was to an entirely different scene than he'd shut them on.
There was a new blinding light, the white overpowering him after so long of just a flickering, dying flame, the crumbling rock walls around them torn apart with something that just smelled like alchemy. There were soldiers, soldiers in Roy's blue that he didn't know, Armstrong, he thought frantically, that was Armstrong, the blue light of alchemy sparking around his hands, and Roy-
Roy was across the room, wavering on his feet and finally freed from the concrete, Hughes with him and pinning him back to his chest, holding the struggling bastard in place, one arm around him while the other had a knife- but Roy obviously didn't care. Roy was tugging at his arm in vain, panting and almost near tears, trembling as he fought to try and get to him while Ed was just as frozen in place as Roy.
"Let him go," Hughes said evenly. There was a strain there, barely noticeable under his voice but Ed saw it in how he still fought to hold Roy back, but he wouldn't have been able to tell just looking at his face; he looked calm and steady, in control, but that wasn't helping, he could feel the gun on his head- "Let him go or we will shoot. Now. ...Let him-"
"Fullmetal! Fullmetal! Justin-" Roy cried again, struggling, "you- you son of a bitch- don't touch him! Fullmetal!"
"Justin?!" Hughes gasped, shock gleaming in his eyes as his cold as ice, almost glazed over mask shattered into one of horror and disbelief. He glanced down at Roy, still held tightly against him, then back over to Ed, obviously stunned. "Wait, this- you're-"
Ed choked out a small, desperate whimper when the arm around his chest abruptly tightened, dragging him back closer as Justin pressed against the crumbling rubble and crammed the gun even harder into his skull. "Who I am doesn't matter. All you need to know is that I have your alchemist, and if you don't want him to get shot, you're going to stand down and let me pass." He paused for a moment, jostling Ed a little more, and this time the tiny noise of terror he felt die in his throat, choked off, he heard come out of Roy's just the same. "You're going to stand down now!"
No, Ed wanted to say- almost did. No. No. No. Every fiber of his being rebelled against it, every part of him screaming desperately for it to stop, because he couldn't. He couldn't he couldn't he was not going back there, Justin couldn't take him, Roy- Roy was right there, his brother was here, he'd clawed his way back to all of this and Justin couldn't take him away from it again, he'd rather die than go back there, he couldn't do it he couldn't do this stop stop stop just shoot him please don't let him do this DON'T LET HIM DO THIS-
But they weren't moving. They weren't letting him go. Roy still was struggling, one arm tugging miserably at Hughes', but he certainly wasn't backing down, and none of the others were, either. All the blue uniformed soldiers stayed right in place and Hughes stayed with Roy- and they weren't moving.
Ed saw that.
Unfortunately, so did Justin.
The alchemist dragged him back another desperate inch or two, his foot scraping uselessly against the ground, and with Ed held as close as he was he actually felt the short, almost panicked intake of breath behind him.
Because for the first time, something wasn't going as Justin had planned.
"Get- get out of my way, I said!" he shouted, but this time Ed heard the slight, almost panicked crack in his voice, the alarm, and the grip around him was suddenly bruisingly tight. "Do you understand me?! I'm not bluffing! I'll shoot him!"
"No, you won't..." Hughes forged on calmly, or at least as calmly as he could fake- but Ed's already panicked, splintered focus, this time, was pulled off of the investigator trying to negotiate his freedom, and instead onto the man he was holding back.
Because Roy still had one glove, and as Ed watched him, he realized that the bastard was now very intent on using it.
He was trying to go slow, hiding his plan from everyone else there, but Ed knew Roy, and he knew the slow, careful way he was moving his one gloved hand was anything but an accident. He saw it curling carefully, thumb and forefinger rubbing together in a lethal gesture that only Roy could make, held almost perfectly still by his side but ready to move at a moment's notice.
And that, more than any of the others on his side in this new terrifying standoff, was something he knew he could count on.
Jerkily, breaths still hitching in his chest, he forced his gaze up from the bastard's hand to his eyes.
Roy, unlike everyone else in the room, was watching him. Not Justin, but him.
Roy knew that he'd seen his glove; he could read it in his eyes without even trying. Roy knew he'd seen what he was trying to do. But instead of nodding to him or perhaps mouthing something or trying to tell him to wait, to hang on just one second more and it would be over, instead the bastard just... looked at him. Just stayed frozen against Hughes' arm and stared to him imploringly with worried, almost frightened eyes as if trying to say something to him, desperately passing every silent word that he could for only Ed to hear.
And a moment later, because out of everyone in the world, Roy, he knew- Ed got it.
He was trying to ask for his permission.
Roy knew that he knew what he was trying to do, and as he stood there silently across the room, still pinned by Hughes' arm and gloved hand still perfectly motionless by his side, Ed realized that that was how he was going to stay. If Ed told him no, then Roy would stand down, and let Hughes continue to try to talk Justin into letting him go.
But the offer was there: Roy would do what he could to end this here and now, and all Ed had to do was let him.
He could miss. He could burn Ed as well as Justin. He could burn Ed and miss Justin entirely. He could hit the wall and bring even more rubble down on their heads. He could miss and tempt Justin into pulling the trigger. Any number of things could go wrong but there was only one way for it to go right, and only one instance of perfect control of his alchemy would allow for Roy to pull it off- a perfect control that he knew Roy was not confident that he had.
He was asking Ed if he was willing to take that risk.
Ed took in a deep, shuddering breath, and closed his eyes.
He trusted Roy.
That was all he needed to know.
Slowly, his heart piercing through with terrified, stuttering anguish, he nodded against the gun held to his head.
Roy stared back at him with dark, steady eyes, whatever terror he knew the bastard had to feel muffled under urgency. His mouth moved silently, desperate fear etched into every line of his pale face, and his gloved hand, again, tensed by his side.
Ed started to nod again.
And this time: the man he was pressed against, clutched so tightly it hurt and so close he could feel every flinch, every movement, every breath, the man who this very second held a gun to his head-
He felt it.
Justin stiffened a little against him again, hauling him backwards, the gun pressed harder against his skull. "What-" he heard him murmur, the panic and fear shuddering through the word, "What're you- you?!" There was a ripple of confusion, of chaos; he started to pull the gun away as if to point it at Roy before it was suddenly jammed right back against his head, even harder than before and he felt him shaking, he saw the terror light up in Roy's eyes, he heard Justin gasping, faster and faster. The gun was trembling in his hair, ice cold and hot at the same time, there was more yelling and Roy looked so scared, more scared than he'd ever seen him, somehow Ed couldn't see anything more than just that terrified look in his eyes as the gun pressed into him harder and Justin's arms grabbed at him harder and-
There was one single gunshot.
And Edward Elric fell forwards in Justin's arms: dead.
