A/N - this chapter and the next one are a teeeny bit slow plot-wise, but I just love doing character work with this group! And I promise things will pick back up!

"Time." Riza pressed the buttons on her newly acquired stopwatches, passing them around and pocketing one herself. Roy and Ed each took a pill, Roy making a face as he swallowed. Then, he pushed himself out of the chair, swaying slightly as he stood. He steadied himself on the back, his features arranging themselves into the expression of dogged determination that Riza was all too familiar with.

"We're wasting time, people. Let's go."

"Go where?" Riza asked sharply. Ed, Havoc, and Roy all froze midstep, looking back towards her with varying degrees of guilt (Havoc), anger (Roy), and confusion (Ed).

"To locate and extract both Alphonse and Maes," Roy said, setting his jaw into its most stubborn position. "We couldn't get any backup. It's up to us."

"Colonel, you do realize that you should be in a hospital, right? In fact, the doctor that I just spoke to said that he would be expecting the two of you within a few hours. The Kyrenol is just temporary, and if you take it for too long, it can cause significant side effects."

"My brother's out there," Ed shouted, and Havoc put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. Surprisingly, Ed let it stay.

"I know, Edward, and Jean and I will do everything we can to find him and the Lieutenant Colonel. But this will be very dangerous." Riza switched her gaze to Roy, hoping desperately that he would see reason. "The longer that it takes to find Al and Colonel Hughes, the worse off you and Edward will be. You could die, Colonel."

"That's worth it!" Roy hissed. His eyes were bloodshot and shadowy, but lit with a fiery determination.

Riza had always had one job that took precedence over every other, and that was to protect Colonel Roy Mustang. Often, she had found over the years, the biggest danger to Colonel Roy Mustang was in fact Colonel Roy Mustang himself. There was almost no stopping him when he got like this, but she knew from experience that he would run himself into the ground, or worse. When she said she thought he could die, she did not mean it idly. He never seemed to understand that.

"I mean...they're not going to die, right?" Havoc asked, gesturing at Ed and Roy.. "These guys are two State Alchemists! And if we all work together, I bet we can find Al and Colonel Hughes in a couple of hours, and then they can...you know...go crash in the hospital or whatever."

"Jean, you are not helping-"

"Fullmetal and I are doing this, with or without your help," Roy said fiercely. "But I would say we're a hell of a lot more likely to stay alive with the two of you helping."

To Riza's annoyance, Roy immediately looked to Havoc for approval of this statement. Havoc started to shrug, but then seemed to change his mind mid-movement and managed a flustered-looking nod.

"Jean, stop it," Riza said sharply. "We're operating outside the Military now, he can't really order you to do anything here. You don't want the Colonel to die, right?"

Riza hadn't been intending to manipulate Havoc, but the look on his face made her regret the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. He had the expression a young child might get if their parents were fighting, and he shot a frantic look back at Roy before opening his mouth to speak.

"I would like to not die," he said carefully. "Also, I would like Colonel Mustang and Ed not to die. And...um, I would like Lieutenant Colonel Hughes and Al not to die either. I'm...not exactly sure how to make that all happen."

Riza had been so focused on the Colonel she hadn't really been thinking about Al and Hughes. They wouldn't be able to actually kill Al, would they? There was no way they could know about the blood seal, and aside from that, he was pretty much indestructible.

But Hughes was very, very human.

Whoever had kidnapped Al and Hughes had probably been pretty sure that with two State Alchemists in hand, they could get pretty much whatever they wanted from the Amestrian Government. So they couldn't possibly be prepared for murder, right? They must know that if they killed a State Alchemist, the military would hunt down everyone in their party and exterminate them.

But the question wasn't really 'would the terrorists dare kill Hughes, thinking he was the Colonel?' She couldn't know the answer to that. The real question was whether or not she was willing to risk it.

"Lieutenant…."

Roy's voice was no longer angry. Instead it was exhausted, and filled to breaking with helpless tension. As she looked back towards him, he knelt heavily on the ground, picking something up. Light glinted off glass, and Roy closed his fingers around whatever he'd found. Then, he rose to his feet and half-pushed Maes' glasses towards her, eyes pleading.

"Please. I...I don't know how long we have before they realize he isn't me. Before they…before-"

To Riza's horror, his voice cracked on the last word, and he trailed off. He pulled his outstretched hand back towards his chest, carefully putting Hughes' glasses into his jacket pocket. Roy hung his head, letting his hair fall forward to obscure his face.

"I won't let that happen," Riza said firmly. Roy's head snapped up, his eyes now bright with hope.

"You mean…."

"I'll help," Riza told him. Really, that had never been in question, not after she had realized just how much danger Hughes could be in. She was still desperately worried about the risk of involving Roy and Ed, but they were right. If she wasn't with them, that risk would greatly increase. And besides, she couldn't stand to see the Colonel look like that.

"Thank you," Roy said, almost breathlessly, and that made up for all the thousands of thank yous he'd forgotten. Beside him, Ed visibly relaxed, giving her a half-smile.

Havoc sighed softly, apparently relieved that he wasn't going to have to pick a side. "Great! The Lieutenant's helping, and no one is going to die!"

"Are you coming too?" Ed asked hopefully.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, definitely." Havoc nodded at Ed, then pulled out a cigarette and lit it, looking vaguely concerned. "Um, I may have missed something, but do we have a plan? Aside from 'find Colonel Hughes and Al,' that is."

"Start with the cookies," Ed said with a scowl. "Maybe we can track them down that way. We can go to the hotel…."

"We can also speak with the mailroom here," Riza added. "Colonel, the cookies were delivered to your office, yes?"

Roy nodded, looking suddenly distant. Havoc and Ed began moving towards the door, and Riza lingered, waiting for Roy. "Colonel? Are you coming?"

"Go...go on ahead. I'll meet you at the mailroom. There's something I have to do."

As soon as he was alone, Roy dropped his pounding head into his hands. He stared at the phone, willing himself to just pick it up and get it over with. But god, he didn't want to make this call….

Roy swallowed hard. Part of it was that the call was difficult, but part of it was that he simply felt terrible. His head ached, his back ached, his stomach ached. He felt like he was just getting over a bad bout of the flu. Riza had said the medication he was on to combat the toxin caused side effects. Or maybe it was that the toxin started breaking through after a while? He wasn't sure, and he wasn't sure what the side effects were either. All he knew was that he felt awful, and he was dreading the possibility of feeling worse.

That, more than anything else, convinced him to pick up the phone. He felt this bad now, and Riza had made it sound like he was only going to get worse. He had no time to waste.

Roy dialed the number for Hughes' home. He had the number memorized, but it still took him a minute to come up with it - he almost never called Hughes first. Usually, Hughes called him.

The phone started to ring, and with a jolt, Roy realized he'd completely forgotten to consider what time it was. In fact, he wasn't even really sure. Sunlight was streaming in through his broken office window, so it couldn't be too early, right?

But it didn't really matter, because Gracia picked up on the third ring.

"Hello? This is Gracia Hughes."

"Gracia? This is Colonel Mustang."

"Oh, hi Colonel. I'm sorry, are you calling for Hughes? He's not home yet. In fact, I think he's probably still at the train station if you have something really urgent…."

"No, it's...not that," Roy said. He swallowed heavily. "I'm calling for you."

"Me? Why-" Suddenly, Gracia's voice darkened. "There's something wrong with Maes."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Roy whispered. "Gracia, I'm sorry. He's been...someone took him. He pretended to be me, and some...terrorist cell took him, thinking he was me."

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Long enough that Roy started to worry that Gracia had fainted or something.

"What are they doing with him?" she finally asked softly.

"I don't know. N-nothing, I don't think. They're trying to ransom him back to the government for money."

"Where is he?"

"I...I don't know. But me, and, and Lieutenants Hawkeye and Havoc...we're all looking for him. And we're going to find him. We will, I promise."

"Of course you will," Gracia said, and her voice was still quiet but it contained a center of cold steel. "I know that."

"Gracia, I'm...I'm so sorry. He wouldn't be in this position if it wasn't for me-"

"Hey." Her voice cut across his, silencing him. "You don't have time to be apologizing to me for a choice that my husband made, do you?"

Roy was startled into something that was almost a chuckle. "No," he admitted.

"So stop it. Go find Maes. Bring him home."

Once again, Roy was aware of just how lucky Maes had been to find Gracia. "I will. I promise."

"Good luck," she whispered, and there was a click as the line disconnected. Roy put the phone back on the cradle, dropping it beside his overturned desk as he forced himself upright. There was no time to waste.

Hughes shifted around uncomfortably in his patch of floor. But the IV pulled at one arm, the cuff at the other, and he stopped, resting his head back against the wall.

His head was starting to hurt, a lot. At first, he'd thought it was just from losing his glasses, but it didn't go away when he closed his eyes, and it was far worse than the headaches he usually got when he couldn't see.

Apparently, he really had gotten dosed with whatever had taken out Ed and Roy. Hughes squirmed again, ignoring the sick feeling of nausea rising in his throat as he moved. God, he hoped Roy wasn't feeling this awful. He needed the Flame Colonel at the top of his game, because he was pretty much entirely relying on Roy to find out where he was. As much as he wanted to think that the Amestrian military would send a crack team to extract him and Al, he was fairly sure that wouldn't be happening. From his experience, the military wouldn't exactly be willing to bend over backwards for a mid-ranking officer and a civilian. Hughes really hoped that he was wrong, but his guess was that the military would thank their lucky stars that Roy and Ed hadn't actually been taken and wash their hands of the whole affair.

Luckily, Roy had never been one to take "no" for an answer. He and Ed would be looking, and Hughes was sure that Lieutenant Hawkeye would be involved as well. He just had to hope that they would get there in time, before the military decided to cut their losses entirely and tell the kidnappers that they'd taken the wrong people.

Hughes really hoped that Al didn't know the military like he did. The younger Elric had been handling this whole situation shockingly well, but he was still just a kid.

They had the room to themselves, a fact for which Hughes was grateful. They did seem to be in a cabin of some sort, with Hughes and Al kept in a gutted living room. The two men who had checked Hughes' IV had disappeared into the kitchen afterwards, letting a door swing shut between them.

On one hand, that was worrying. There was a chance they were underestimating Al, but if they weren't keeping them under heavy guard, they really probably believed that whatever Hughes had been dosed with meant he had no chance at escape. But on the other hand, at least they could talk freely.

"How are you doing?" Hughes asked. He knew some people who met Al had a hard time thinking of him as a child, what with the armor and all. But that had never been a problem Hughes had run into. Powerful alchemists or no, both of the Elrics had always sent his protective, fatherly instincts kicking into high gear.

"I know this is a lot."

"I'm alright," Al said.

Hughes was glad he could at least be sure that Al wasn't feeling the side effects of whatever drug Hughes had been given, but he was sure that emotionally, the kid must be pretty far from alright. "This is a really stressful situation for anyone, if you need to-"

"Ed is coming," Al interrupted.

"What?"

"I left a note for him, back in East City. He knows we're missing, and he must have woken up by now. I don't know how he's going to find us, but...he will. He's probably already started looking. So I'm...I'm not worried. We're going to be just fine."

"Oh," Hughes said. "Roy will be looking too."

"I know," Al said. "And they're going to find us."

Hughes had complete faith in that - he just hoped it happened kind of soon, before any of their side effects got too bad.

"How are you doing, Lieutenant Colonel?" Al asked softly.

"Me? I'm fine, I mean, like you said, they'll find us…."

"I meant...you don't look like you feel very good."

"Oh." Hughes sat up a little, and tried to focus on Al. Even though he was only on the other side of the room, his features were blurry. The effort of sitting up made his headache worse. "I'm alright. They just...whatever's in this damn IV…. I'll be fine though. It's not very bad."

"Does your head hurt?" Al asked sympathetically.

"A little," Hughes admitted. "But I'll be fine. It's just a headache."

Hopefully, it wouldn't get any worse than it was. Hughes could deal with it, of course, but if he was feeling these side effects, then Ed and Roy likely were as well. That could make it harder for them to pull off a rescue, and Hughes and Al were depending on them.

But still, Ed and Roy were the two toughest people that Hughes knew. Side effects or not, they would find them.

It had been over twelve hours since Havoc had arrived at Eastern Command, and in that time, they had managed to accomplish a grand total of nothing. Or, that wasn't strictly fair. Technically, Havoc supposed that they had accomplished a great deal of running around and talking to people. They had also discovered that all of their best leads were dead ends.

They had ended up speaking to the mailroom, and had discovered that the cookies were delivered in an entirely unremarkable way. They'd gotten the same information from the hotel where Ed was staying.

Eventually, in a desperate effort to find something useful, Havoc and Riza had actually gone around to a series of bakeries, and tried to find out where the cookies were from. Havoc wasn't sure if they were operating under the assumption that some sort of evil pastry chef ring had kidnapped Al and Hughes, or if they were actually trying to track someone down through the purchase of two baskets of cookies. He wasn't sure if anyone else knew, either. In a worrying turn of events, he seemed to know just as much about what was going on as the rest of them.

Now, they were all standing in an alley behind the latest dead-end bakery. They couldn't stand inside, because Ed and Roy were supposedly kidnapped, and they were trying to avoid being seen as much as possible.

"Did you find anything?" Roy asked. He sounded exhausted, and didn't look much better. There were dark circles under his eyes, and Havoc thought that his hair looked a little messier than usual.

"Umm, no," Havoc said. "The owner didn't remember anyone purchasing two baskets of cookies. He was actually kind of mean about me asking, too. I guess selling two baskets of cookies is not a noteworthy event."

He'd been hoping that would get a rise out of Ed - maybe a chuckle, or even just a smile, but Ed didn't react. He'd been quiet all day, which was unusual, to say the least. Havoc knew that he was worried about Al, but he thought it was more than that. Ed looked tired too, at least as bad as the Colonel.

"We can keep talking to civilians," Riza said. "But I'm not sure how much it's helping."

Havoc frowned. With Ed and Roy in such rough shape, Riza had become the de facto leader of the group. But she sounded both exhausted and defeated, and if she didn't think their current plan was working...well, no one seemed to be offering a new one.

Havoc pulled out a cigarette without thinking about it, and lit it. He'd been chain-smoking all day. Not that that was really unusual for him, but he normally didn't spend this long running around, especially under high levels of stress, and cigarettes seemed like the best way to keep his energy levels up. He'd also consumed more cups of coffee than he cared to think about.

"Do you have a better idea?" Ed asked. "I mean-"

Riza pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. "I don't have a better idea. Not yet."

Havoc took a drag off his cigarette. He would like to help think of a better idea, but that wasn't really his skillset. He was much better at executing other people's ideas.

All four stopwatches beeped suddenly. Time for Ed and Roy to take their next round of pills. Riza jumped slightly at the sound, and they all quickly shut the stopwatches off. Ed and Roy hardly reacted, just pulled the pills out of their pockets and dry-swallowed them almost simultaneously. This had to be their eleventh or twelfth dose of the day. They seemed to be starting to fall into a routine, and that was something.

"Do you guys need a cup of coffee?" Havoc asked. That was another thing he was generally able to offer - coffee, food, and water. Riza, Ed, and Roy all seemed to have the same problem of immediately forgetting about their physical needs when they were under stress. "I'd be happy to get us all a round of coffee. Would that help?"

"I don't want any more coffee," Roy said petulantly. It had been a few hours at this point since they'd stopped for a cup. Roy had started looking a little nauseated around then, and Havoc wasn't surprised he didn't find coffee appealing. But still. The point of coffee was mostly just to keep you awake, something that Roy very clearly needed.

"I'll take a cup of coffee!" Ed said. It was the most emotion Havoc had seen from the kid in some time.

"He doesn't need coffee," Riza said suddenly. "What he really needs is rest."

"Yeah, no duh," Ed said. "But I can't exactly have that right now, I mean we still have no leads-"

"We're going to my house," Roy said.

Havoc blinked. "I'm sorry, we're going...where?"

Roy looked slightly stricken, like he hadn't exactly intended to make this offer when he opened his mouth. "We're going to my house. We can rest and regroup there. We can come up with a new plan."

"Oh," Havoc said politely, quickly finishing off his cigarette and lighting another one. His hands were starting to shake ever so slightly, which meant he was juiced up enough to last at least a few more hours. "Um, are you sure? I can keep...going to bakeries, or if we can think of anything else-"

"It's past eight, Jean," Riza interjected. "Everything's closing. We won't be able to do any more investigation tonight. We should just do as the Colonel suggests. I'm sure we could all use some rest."

Personally, Havoc didn't really think that he needed rest, but he also didn't think he could investigate a bunch of closed businesses. "Okay. Lead the way, Colonel."

Roy made a face, clearly regretting the offer of his apartment, but guided them out of the alley. The military car that they'd borrowed earlier that day was parked on the street, and a short drive later brought them to Roy's apartment complex.

The place was a decent high-rise sort of building, one that Havoc had occasionally passed and wished that he could afford. It had exciting amenities like an outer gate and a mailroom, instead of one cheap, thin door and a landing where packages were dumped and rapidly stolen.

Roy led the way up the stairs, looking progressively more uncomfortable as they approached his apartment. It proved to be on the third floor, and Havoc was sure that ordinarily, it wouldn't have posed any of them a problem. But today, by the time they got to Roy's floor, both Ed and Roy looked tired and out of breath.

Ed leaned against the wall as Roy unlocked the door, pushing it open and turning on the light. It opened directly onto his living room, and Ed staggered right in and plopped himself down on the floor.

"Wow," Havoc said, unable to stop himself. "Your place is so...clean."

"Clean" was one way to put it. The more accurate way that Havoc would have described Roy's apartment was "empty." The living room led into an open plan kitchen, and the bedroom door to one side was half open, all of it revealing blank white walls and a few pieces of sleek-looking furniture. Until this moment, Havoc would have said that it was impossible to make a studio apartment feel anything other than cramped, but due to the lack of furnishings, Roy's was somehow almost spacious.

"Thank you," Roy said stiffly, stepping around Ed, who was still sitting unhappily in the middle of the floor. "Fullmetal, there is a couch."

Ed hauled himself off the floor and stomped heavily over to the couch, an angular sort of bench covered in black leather. He slumped down on top of it, making a face.

"I think the floor was more comfortable."

Roy frowned, but didn't say anything. Havoc sat down on the couch as well, and he had to say he agreed with Ed's assessment - it was so uncomfortable that Havoc wasn't sure why Roy had spent money on it.

Roy disappeared into the kitchen, and emerged with two spindly-looking wooden chairs. He deposited one next to Riza, who just stared at it, and then sank into the other. It occurred to Havoc once again how tired and drawn Ed and Roy both looked. Havoc wasn't sure how much of it could be attributed to the side effects of the Kyrenol, as opposed to. the fact that they had both gotten up at the crack of dawn to spend the entire day running around uselessly. But either way, they clearly weren't doing well, and the lack of a plan wasn't helping anybody.

"Alright," Riza said. She also sounded strained. "We know most businesses are closed, so we won't be able to continue with that track until tomorrow morning. Eastern HQ should be accessible, so if there's anything else we wanted to check out there, that should be possible. Um…."

Riza trailed off. Havoc wasn't sure he had ever heard her trail off before. Things really must be dire.

"Hey," Havoc said, resisting the urge to raise his hand. "I think...shouldn't we eat dinner at some point? And, uh, when are we going to sleep?"

Havoc didn't feel like he needed sleep. To be completely honest, he didn't think he even needed food. But he was clearly the only one. Ed especially looked like he could fall asleep sitting up, and probably do it while eating a sandwich.

Havoc expected Riza to argue a little, but she just turned to look at Roy, who squirmed a little.

"Alright," he said. "Let's...uh, I'll find us something to eat."