Ch. 40

Roy Mustang arrived at the central battlefield just in time to see the Amestrians turn the tide on what appeared to be a mostly one-sided battle. The home-team blue countered the Drachmans at their every move, matching if not outmanning them into submission. He snapped and his flame darted between gentle snowflakes to a conveniently-aligned triad of pale-skinned northerners, rescuing a straggling and clearly undertrained teenager.

He arrived just in time for the snow to start falling, and he praised whatever god had preferred this fluff to freezing rain. He was still operational.

Just in time to notice Riza storming in from the opposite side of the clearing, guns blazing, enemies falling like freed marionettes around her. His hero.

In time to see Havoc fall to a large Drachman with some short-range weapon, but Roy found himself unable to help because, in conjunction with everything else, he arrived at the scene the moment one Edward Elric was being carried out of it. The kid was slung over the largest Drachman's shoulder, bleeding freely onto the fresh white of the ground. The moonlight was dimmer now, he couldn't make out details of the injury. He was clearly unconscious, maybe dead at this point but Roy doubted it, seeing as there were dozens or hundreds of dead around them and it would be no issue to toss the teenager's body on top of the rest. Special treatment probably meant alive in this scenario.

Roy sprinted the length of the clearing, alternating between ducking around and burning up its occupants. He came up short. The large Drachman disappeared into the now-blackened forest. The snow clouds had coagulated, from a litany of cumulus to a solid layer that blocked out the feeble moonlight. There was no light spared to illuminate the depths in between the trees. He flicked a few sparks, and, in frustration, in desperation, a full whip of crackling heat into the darkness. And still, Edward and the man were out of sight. His only reward was that now, a bunch of trees roared with dancing flame. The very few remaining leaves served as good tinder.

And, despite the narrow Amestrian lead, he was unquestionably needed in the fray behind. Despite this, he took a step toward the curtain of light that separated him from the rest of the forest, and somewhere, Ed. At the second step, he heard a familiar cry, 'Behind me!' that drew him backward. His eyes locked on Riza, standing firmly as the only wall between a very injured Havoc and throng of black-haired giants. Her movements were visibly slower now. One of them grabbed her arm, began to close the space between her and his blade as she cringed in pain. Blood seeped from her bicep between the man's clenched fingers. She cringed, stiffened, and almost fell limp. Pale, even against the snow.

He shouted something unintelligible into the abysmal trenches between the flickering trunks. Whatever he tried to say, reassurance or curse, he couldn't remember as he turned completely away and launched back into battle.

Probably, he had asked Edward for forgiveness. A part of Roy knew that Ed could get out of anything, and that if they wanted to kill him they would have done so by now. Another part, deeper, knew that Ed could very likely die because of Roy's abandonment. At this, his rage exploded in fire on the enemies, freeing Riza, not remembering to pray he hadn't burned Riza, attention on killing, on retribution for his mistakes, past and present and future errors, only satisfied in the thudding resonance of Drachmans dropping into the bloody slush.

A part of him he had been cultivating, nurturing back to health since Ishval, wilted completely as he relived the agony of loss. The agony that demanded fire.

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Gracia gently ran her fingers across the sill of the small window. Rather than inspecting for dirt or dust (the small dwelling offered little to do; thus, she made it impeccably clean from the first day and onward) she searched for some trace of sunlight falling there. The coloring was mottled on the sill itself, and the dim inside lights were just bright enough to fight off the small shafts of possible outside light.

It had been so long since they'd seen the sun, the sky, the stars… The small window, the meager door, had been bolted shut and replaced with a slot at knee-level for passing food and supplies. She hoped that the bolted shutters might yield a feeble ray, but it seemed somewhere past the quarantine the skies were overcast. It was cold enough that snow couldn't be far off.

The kids were playing, a rare occasion these last few days, holding a tea party where both seemed to want to be the host rather than guest. She heard Elysia yell something about 'good manners my good mister' and was tempted into a smile. The children helped pull her from wallowing in her dregs of pessimism. Maybe it was just a cloud passing overhead, and the sun was soon going to show face.

She leaned close to a crack between the heavy boards. She was surprised. There were people out there, despite the warnings. More eerily, she hadn't been alerted to them by any kind of sound or sense of movement. They were men, tall. Clad all in dark, though she could make out some military continuity between their uniforms. Nausea creeping into her stomach, she checked the clock above the stove to make sure. Quarter to eleven. Not a normal check-in time. The streets very well should be empty.

She backed away slowly, so achingly slowly that her joints hurt to do it, from the window. She crept across floorboards she knew very well by now not to provoke to creaking, over to the two tea party hosts.

"Mommy, do you want a lump of sugar in yours?"

"No thank you, darling," she whispered softly, so softly her throat couldn't quite vocalize past a croak. She wrapped her left arm around Isaac and looped her right through the back of Elysia's overalls, grabbing tight, and steered them into the bedroom.

She didn't know why she was still hoping for the sun, but crouched under the bed it was all she could think of.

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The Ice Alchemist was not pleased. Edward could tell that much from the very constipated silence coming from that wedge of the darkened cabin. Every once in a while he'd get a grunt of thought, or pain, it was kind of hard to tell, and then more silence. He almost conceded to it when the words finally came.

"Frankly, I do not like the odds. We will both die. Or be turned into slaves. Or turn into slaves and die. I really don't want to die a Drachman slave."

"Whoa there. It's not that grim, we just have to pretend a little while. Stop calling it being a 'slave', that's weird."

"That's what it is. And how do you know for certain they'd send us back to the front lines? What if we're just going to be experimented on, or publicly executed?"

"They can't replicate alchemy in their labs or they'd have done it already. And why kidnap two alchemists, and I suspect many more, when you only need one to run experiments on? I've seen the trends in person. Drachmans take out Amestrian armies. An alchemist steps in, the tide is turned. I saw them with my own eyes targeting the alchemists in battle specifically with non-lethal attacks. Brutal, but the end goal is kidnapping. The Drachmans don't have alchemy, but they've got brainwashing down. I met a couple of their troops in a very unfortunate train ride, and the lengths they were willing to go was not natural. They're going to try to turn us to their side and fight their war, but if we're prepared we can turn this whole thing against them. I'm sure."

"What about the execution thing. You didn't mention that."

"…Okay so I'm not one hundred percent sure the execution thing won't happen, but – hey hear me out, the likelihood is very small-"

"You're very small-"

"Fuck you this is what we're doing-"

A crash from the front had them both silenced.