Anxiety tightens Penelope's chest, watching her team, her family , going at Roy, watching him fight back.

"Hey!" she snaps, not entirely meaning to, but she can't just watch this anymore. "Hey! I am still here," she says, trying to look at everyone all at once and cursing that she only has the one camera to see them through. She takes a deep breath then addresses Mustang first. "Mr. Mustang, would and Mr. Maes—I mean Hugh—I mean Mister—" She stops, breathes in again, then restarts. "Do you and Mr. Isn't Supposed to Exist mind giving us a minute? Please?"

Mustang's dark eyes watch her, still angry through the screen, but she knows it's not at her specifically. At least she's pretty sure it isn't really her he's mad at so much as the situation on the whole.

After a moment, he inclines his head. "Of course," he says.

"Don't go far," Emily says, her voice hard with a clear undercurrent of anger that Penelope doesn't like at all.

The glare Mustang shoots her in reply is scathing, but he doesn't reply, just stalks out with his Maes Hughes on his heels. She waits for a moment, listening for a door to close.

Her team settles in her view, all looking various levels of frustrated and angry when Emily says, "What do you have for us that you couldn't say in front of them, Penelope?"

"Nothing," she says, shaking her head slightly. "I don't have a single thing for you that they can't hear. I wish I did, but I don't because Roy Mustang didn't exist before eight years ago. I don't because that—" She points in the general direction that they had walked off her screen. "—Hughes Maes Hugh— whoever he is—didn't exist before two days ago. I don't have anything that I could possibly tell you that they couldn't or shouldn't be allowed to hear."

"Then why—?" Rossi begins to ask, and she thinks that she sees comprehension come over his face, but she doesn't let him get it out.

"Because I have seen this team go through absolutely everything , and I have never seen you guys behaving like this. What is going on?" she asks, feeling like her anchors have been cut loose and she's drifting off to sea.

She watches their shoulders hunch, watches them want to get defensive, but Spencer speaks up first. "She's right," he says.

"Reid…" Emily begins, but he waves her off.

"No, Garcia is right," he repeats. "We're angry, we're stressed. Half of our team is missing and the answer to where they are is 'they're in another world,' is simply not an answer we're equipped to accept so we just keep needling at the one source of knowledge we have."

"Reid, Mustang is… untrustworthy. He's a liar and a manipulator, and he's hiding things from us," Rossi says, but even to Penelope, it sounds more defensive than he usually sounds.

"He might be all of those things, but he's also the only person we have who has any real understanding of what we're dealing with. We keep treating him like an unsub, but there are two things we absolutely know about him that we're ignoring. One of them is the fact that he was at home when this happened. He is not responsible for Derek, JJ, and Ed going missing. The other thing we're ignoring is that Ed is missing as well. " He waves his hand around as he talks as if he can punctuate each statement. "Whatever else we think of Mustang, even if we really believe that he groomed Ed and Ed couldn't make a truly consensual decision to be in a relationship with him, he wouldn't want to be separated from him like this. He wouldn't do anything to interfere with us getting Ed back."

"Wait," Penelope says holding up her hands. "Back up. We think Mustang did what? I know Ed said he was sixteen, but since when do we think he groomed Ed?"

"Penelope, have you ever met a sixteen-year-old who was actually mature enough to get involved with a man twice their age?" Emily asks her in return, sounding stressed, rubbing at her forehead.

"Well, no, but we didn't know Ed when he was sixteen," she points out. "And I do remember meeting him at twenty-two, and I remember thinking that he was a little baby goth who had seen some shit."

"Mustang was Elric's commanding officer," Seaver says, speaking up, and Penelope honestly forgot she was there. "Things were tense before we found out, but since then, you've become increasingly antagonistic and increasingly skeptical of anything Mustang has to say." Emily and Rossi are looking at her almost as if she has betrayed them, but she meets their gazes evenly. Penelope gives her an internal slow clap and makes a mental note to send her a nice fruit basket on the department's dime. Standing up to Emily and Rossi is not easy, but she's not the new and unsure rookie she was when they met her nearly six years ago.

"He just admitted to burning a woman alive," Emily says.

"He did," Seaver agrees, even, not any more rushed or tense than she was before. It's the kind of coolheadedness Penelope is used to seeing from her team. "But he has a point too. If she really wasn't human, if she were really part of a conspiracy to murder millions, do we know if he had a choice? Hughes didn't seem surprised or upset about it. You're lashing out at Mustang, but Hughes admitted to stabbing her in the head." Both Emily and Rossi are giving their best poker faces, but Penelope can see how agitated they are. It's in the tightness in Emily's jaw, in the set of Rossi's shoulders. "I understand that Mustang is questionable, but he is also, as Garcia said, the only one who has any idea of what's going on here."

"How are we supposed to trust a man who was a commanding officer of a child soldier? Who chose to get into a relationship with a child soldier under his command?" Rossi demands, his voice climbing with his agitation, taking an actual step in Seaver's direction.

Reid is the one who answers. "What choice do we have?" he asks. Rossi almost spins to face him, looking borderline betrayed. "Garcia and Seaver both said it—Mustang is the one who understands alchemy. Even Hughes has been candid about the fact that he can't help us with that. We've had to work with more despicable people than Mustang to achieve goals, with stakes much lower than our own loved ones," he says, and for the first time, there's a tremble of emotion in his voice. Penelope tries to remember the last time Spencer and Derek spent the night apart, and she's pretty sure it's been years. "This is not just our team," he says, getting his voice under control.

Penelope picks up the thread. "This is our family. Like it or not, Ed is our family, and he considers Mustang his family, which means, he's a part of this tangled mess that makes us all up, right?"

"Unless you really believe that Mustang doesn't want to get his partner back?" Seaver says with a challenge in her voice.

Straightening from the table she was leaning against, Emily sighs. "No," she says like it pains her to admit it. "Whatever else I believe about Mustang, he loves Elric deeply, and he wants him back."

"At what cost?" Rossi asks, anger still in his voice. "If he can find his way back to Ed, will he abandon all of us? Will he just give up on getting JJ and Morgan back to us?"

It's something that hasn't even occurred to Penelope. "He wouldn't do that," she says. She doesn't even mean to say it—and that's happened a startling amount today—but it's true. "He wouldn't just leave us and not help us get our people back because even if he would, Ed wouldn't. He wouldn't do that." Her voice catches in her throat on the end, but she doesn't just believe it, she knows it. That's not Ed. It's not who he is, that he's not he does. "He puts others first. That's what he does. And he's going to get our people back to us. Even if…" Her throat closes up, and she clears it to try again. "Even if…" The words die in her mouth.

"Even if he doesn't come back," Spencer finishes for her, and she hears the mourning in his voice that has stolen hers.

"Yeah," she manages to say. "That."

Rossi and Emily and even Seaver look away.

.o0o.o0o.o0o.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Maes asks him as soon as the door closes behind them.

Roy sighs, a stress headache building behind his eyes. "Fuck if I know." Which is a lie. They're probably talking about what a villain Roy is, how untrustworthy he is, how much he fucked up Ed. It makes him angry, but being questioned about constantly, being treated like he's some sort of predator is starting to get into his head. He's started turning over every interaction in his head, examining them from every perspective he can.

Maes snorts, and Roy embraces the distraction eagerly, turning to look at him. Part of him just wants to stare at Maes and hug him and smack him all at once, just wants to prove to himself that Maes is really here, is really real. He's already effectively done that, and Maes was still here in the morning. He's real; he's here. Consistently challenging it won't make him any more real and here.

Just like suddenly dissecting every nuance of his and Ed's relationship won't change what it is, how it built and evolved. He's certain that if Ed were here, he'd be blasting Roy for as nine kind of idiot for even considering that their relationship could possibly be based on anything other than mutual trust and respect.

Damn it. Not even two days without the Ed there to defend their relationship, and Roy is second guessing everything.

After a moment, Maes says, "You told me that you figured it out," his voice low and close.

"We did," Roy confirms. "The nation-wide array. The whole country was meant to be a sacrifice for the ultimate Philosopher's Stone."

Maes frowns, but he's not really surprised. He shouldn't be—he'd been the one who figured it out, after all. "Do I want to know everything that happened?"

Memories of the Gate, of Bradley, of Father, of Riza bleeding out before his eyes, of Scar, of Ed's confession twist up together in his memory.

"No," Roy says. Maes most definitely does not want to know; he does, however, need to know. "I don't know how much time we have, but Bradley was a homunculus, like Lust and Envy. They all answered to a creature called Father, who had something to do with Van Hoenheim."

Brow furrowing further, Maes asks, "Where have I heard that name?"

"He's Ed and Al's father," Roy says. Maes turns to stare at him. "He was… semi-immortal, though he died shortly after we defeated Father. It turns out that Ed and Al are half Xerxian—their father, Van Hoenheim, was the last survivor of the nation. It was part of a nation-wide array and sacrifice to make Father and Van Hoenheim semi-immortal."

Maes shifts his glasses up on top of his head and rubs his hands over his face, then sighs and resettles them. "So, what happened?"

"A coup. We overthrew Bradley. General Armstrong and others helped. General Grumman became the next fuhrer. Things were… getting better. Most of the upper ranks were involved in the conspiracy. They stupidly thought that if they were part of the conspiracy, they'd be granted immortality themselves…"

"Well, we always said they were fools," Maes says, resigned but not surprised. "Did you get into any trouble?"

"After most of the ranks and file watched me fight with Ed and Al against the…" He pauses, trying to think of how to describe the manikins without going into detail. He settles on, "monsters that the brass had created? No." He shakes his head. "We got promotions for our heroic actions after Grumman ascended."

That gets a scoff out of Maes. "That's always how it works, isn't it? Ah, well, I'm glad it worked out in your favor this time." He bumps Roy's shoulder. "Not that it doesn't usually."

The questions and doubts are still chasing themselves around in Roy's head, so he has to ask, "Are you really okay with it? With me and Ed?"

Maes sighs. "In my head, I still see Edward as that cute twelve-year-old brat who had enough balls to attack Bradley himself at his State Alchemist demonstration. But even as a kid, Ed knew what he wanted, and I can't imagine standing in the way of what he wants, especially if what he wanted was you." He gives Roy another nudge in the arm. "As startled as I was, I never saw you take advantage of Edward in any way that makes your feelings for him or his for you suspect. Frankly, the idea of anyone trying to mold Edward into some obedient little pet is laughable." He chuckles at the thought, and Roy smiles, the bands around his chest loosening. "If you two have kept this thing you've had together for almost a decade, it's the real thing, Roy. I don't think Ed knows how to love with anything less than all he is. Being on the receiving end of that kind of love… it's a lot."

"Understatement," Roy says, but he can hear the affection in his own voice when he says it.

Giving him a softer smile, Maes continues, "It's not for everyone. But I think…" He pauses this time, taking visible care with choosing his words. "I think you need someone who loves like that. Someone who will love everything you are, even your worst parts." He nods, more to himself than to Roy, as if he's satisfied. "Actually, yes. Thinking about it, the timing's not ideal, but I think you two could be really good for each other."

The relief that Maes, once his dearest friend, trusts him is a relief he feels to his core. "Thank you, Maes," he says.

"You don't owe me thanks. You're my friend, and I trust you. Until Ed tells me otherwise, I'm going to assume that if you haven't managed to kill each other in the last decade, you've got a good thing going."

Even after so long, Maes so easily centers him, helps ground him. Roy has gotten used to Ed doing it, but having Maes back is like a balm to an old wound Roy had forgotten he had.

"I missed you," Roy says.

Maes hooks an elbow around Roy's neck. "Of course you did. I'm the best," he says.

You are, Roy thinks, and he promises himself that he's going to get them both home.