A/N: I'm ALIVE AGAIN. This chapter is unbetaed.
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Chapter Five: The Victim, The Witness, and The Accused
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Maria had met Denny Brosh when they were still children. She found him pressing his back against the patch of bricked wall below her front window, muttering choked 'helps' like someone was squeezing his windpipe. Settling the watering can on the floor, Maria rushed out to locate the source of the boy's problem.
A fat spider, as big as the span of her hand, crawled towards the other kid. After three seconds of disbelief, she had scooped the creature up onto her palm, causing the boy to scream bloody murder, before she flung it across the street. She had laughed at Denny (the name he offered after thanking her) and teased him for not jumping over it or running away since spiders are generally slower than humans. With a pout, her new friend told her that he simply couldn't move at all.
In Hughes' safe house, Maria realized she should have escaped the moment she entered Mustang's line of sight. She could have kicked him in the groin and bolted for the exit. She could have grabbed a knife in the kitchen, wielded it as her first line of defense, or better yet, filled a glass with water to splash him useless. She could have moved away, stepped back, get as far from him as possible. She could have fought, scratching, screaming, and cursing the Flame Alchemist's name for her dilemma.
But she didn't. And by some sort of miracle, neither did the colonel. And then he took an echoing step.
Her body refused to cooperate, choosing instead to anchor her soul in a vulnerable stance. The floorboards beneath her shoes sung a low and steady beat that gradually grew louder in volume, while the vibration increased in intensity and made her teeth chatter. Mustang had mostly closed the distance between them, his face a mask darkened with cold fury. His chilly demeanor had stolen the remaining warmth from her that she wondered if she would even feel his hand around her neck when her nerve receptors had grown this numb. She attempted to withdraw, but her limbs shook when triggered with even just the slightest movement. He was upon her now. All it would take was a sudden seize of her throat.
Wind stung her cheeks as the colonel silently strode past.
Somehow, that was scarier. Maria blinked as the spraying sound of faucet water filled the expanse behind her. A wheeze escaped from her lungs. She forced her eyes to meet Lieutenant Colonel Hughes' concerned ones.
Perhaps he sensed the stifling tension in the air because then he broke the silence. "You two, er, know each other?"
The sudden clink of empty glass on the table startled Maria into halfway facing the man behind her.
"Oh yes," Mustang said quietly, keeping very still, hand wrapped around the glass. His dark eyes, rimmed with red, seemed to be searching her face. "I'm amazed, Ross. You managed to show some self-control in keeping him alive."
There it was again. The pressing accusation, the never-ending back and forth spat that only grew to be more suffocating every time it was uttered. She chanced a breath. "I—"
"Maes, you've been harboring your killer all this time."
The expression that Hughes gave nearly killed her that she forgot to deny. The bespectacled man stepped back from them, like a silent permission for Mustang to take care of the situation. The respectable Lieutenant Colonel Hughes himself, the man who was known for his uncanny hunches and accurate readings of a person's character, had backed away.
Colonel Mustang inserted a hand into one of his pockets, drawing her eyes to the movement. "How did you arrive here?"
"In…in this house?"
"This world."
At a loss, all she could do was close her mouth.
"I see. You are covering up for Vertrag like the good accomplice you are."
Hearing the unfamiliar name spoken aloud made her shake her head. She was so tired of this. "Who," she asked without much interest. And then the adrenaline in her veins spiked, emboldening her to ask a question of her own. "What are you falsely accusing me of this time, Mustang?"
The deafening snap caused her to recoil.
A minute had passed before she realized that the hand he had extended was gloveless. Mustang slowly retracted his limb and set it by his side, never once blinking, never letting his hard glare drift away from her no matter how much Maria wished that it would.
"I am tired of your games," Mustang relayed in a low voice. "I am tired of your drama, I am tired of your denials, I am utterly tired." He let the silence linger a little longer, allowing the weight of it to hammer his words in. Maria fruitlessly tried to work her voice.
But the colonel gave no room anyway. "My most trusted companions," he continued, "had deserted me due to a single lie. Your lie about you not killing Maes Hughes. Roasting you alive apparently did not give me the closure I was looking for, so how about this, Ross?" Shadows veiled the upper half of his face. "Gloves off. I am going to make you confess whether you like it or not. Just by making you talk."
She flinched again, internally cursing as she did so.
"Are you the murderer of Maes Hughes? Answer me."
"N-no…" And she knew—knew that the dreaded sound was coming but Maria was still unable to stop the phantom burning sensation that sparked with the snap.
"Oh? You weren't near a telephone booth on that night at eighteen thirty hours?"
She bullied her spine into a more dignified stature. "I was in my parents' home, as I'm sure you remember. I wasn't anywhere near the lieutenant-colonel during that night."
"You shot him twice."
"I didn't shoot him!"
Mustang scoffed. "Try me again. The very morning following that night, you confessed to your crimes by detailing—with utter jubilation, I might add— how you carried out his assassination. You even mimicked the voice of his daughter to mess with his mind. What changed, Maria Ross? Why the sudden scramble to retract all of your previous statements?"
Talking to the man was like talking to a wall. Copper tang lined the tip of her tongue and made speaking a grueling task. She blinked, and her eyes went the other direction to fall upon the only other person in the room. "The one thing I confessed to you was that I am not his murderer."
The colonel growled. "Look at me when I'm speaking!"
She turned her eyes back, feeling the heat radiate from the pores of her face. "Even the lieutenant colonel can see that it's not me."
"Enough of your lies." There was something in the way that Mustang reacted that was too fast, too erratic, that she almost slipped as she backed away from him. A vein jutted out from his neck. "You will tell the truth. I will pull the truth from you if it is the last thing I am destined to do and nothing. Is going. To stop me."
The words 'It's not her' cut the interrogation like a shard of glass slicing skin. Maria panted and silently thanked the heavens for rendering her observation right.
Mustang whipped his head to see his friend giving him an apologetic look. As if to save face, he tried to relax his stance, but the stiffness did not vanish from his shoulders. "Maes?"
Hughes's forehead wrinkled, seeming to continue his appraisal between the two of them, no doubt weighing the dynamics. The lieutenant colonel—second lieutenant in wherever they were—had always been extremely perceptive. Surely, he could see that something was amiss? Surely, it came to his mind that if Maria were his killer (or had the mind of a killer) she would've done him in already?
"She's...not a murderer," Hughes declared. "She doesn't have the eyes of one. Can you see the difference?"
Her sigh of relief masked the small laugh that bubbled from her throat at seeing Mustang's shocked expression. How absurd the concept was: to see his murdered comrade defend the accused?
"Come on, Maes." Mustang flicked a hand in a sharp gesture to her direction. "You can't fall for this act too."
"You have to trust me on this then," Hughes asserted. "It's not her. I find that she's also prone to speaking her mind, you'd think she would've blurted out the truth already."
"And what about me, Maes?" countered Mustang.
"I'm not saying I don't believe you," Hughes said carefully. "Because…this is going to sound like I can't pick a side because I am not picking a side. Roy, if others have noticed something wrong, as I do, too…" he cleared his throat, "…then there must be something that you're missing. There's something that they've gotten a whiff of that you haven't."
"Ross," Mustang snapped without looking at her. "Do you happen to have a twin?'
She frowned. "Twin? No, I don't."
"As I thought. An only child that is born to Mr. Josef Ross and Mrs. Esther Ross—"
Hughes grumbled. "I am not implying a twin theory, Roy."
"Then what are you implying? Poor eyesight, perhaps?" Mustang bit out.
"Let me clarify where I stand, alright? Look." Hughes gestured at Maria. "I am not completely pushing away the probability that she may have had a hand in murdering me. People can look very deceiving. But I can't prove her guilty using just your words. Forgive me, Roy but…as of now, you are the only one claiming that she admitted it the same way Ms. Ross is the only one denying it in this world." He hesitated. "Unless you've managed to bring evidence."
Mustang scowled as a bit of hope bloomed from within Maria's chest. She held her breath as she watched him tap an index finger against the side of the glass numerous times before he stopped, his knuckles white as cracks snaked from his fingertips to the fragile container. With a sigh, he relaxed his grip, set the glass down and gently slid it away from him.
"However," Hughes continued after Mustang had finally calmed down. "I think we must make sure of the fact that she isn't allied with Vertrag."
Almost in sync, they spun to examine her, with one set of eyes significantly more suspicious than the other.
"Is there anyway we could know for sure?" Mustang asked as if she wasn't even in the room. "Because if there isn't, we keep her under house arrest. Or perhaps take shifts on keeping a very close eye on her at all times."
She couldn't believe her ears. "Wait, no!" she said, appalled, as they both glanced at each other and then continued to stare at her.
Hughes cleared his throat. "Roy, I don't think—"
"I beg your pardon, Ross?" The colonel folded his arms behind his back.
"I understand that this makes me look guilty of association with this...Vertrag, but you are not putting me under house arrest. Sir," she added as she raised her chin and tried not to shift her legs apart. "Actually, am I even supposed to acknowledge you with a 'sir' in wherever we are, Colonel? Seeing as the marks on your shoulder mean nothing here?"
There was a flash of an emotion (doubt, perhaps, or maybe surprise?) that broke through his stone-cold façade. It was an earned reaction in Maria's opinion. The poor man truly needed to be slapped across the face with a reminder.
"Oh yes, I noticed your palpable absence—" she threw her gaze down and up his person "—during my longer stay here. Imagine falling in an alley of all places. An alley in front of a house. My house. But then there's another woman on the doorstep, knocking. And she looks like me, talks like me, acts like me." For a second, her throat seized up and made her voice crack. "And then I realize that my parents already have their own daughter. A daughter who loves them the same way that I do. Oh, and I can't visit because what if they see that I'm not their Maria, huh? And then they reject me? So now I have to push down this…this urge to run over to them and content myself with observing my former home instead!
"So, if you think I'll allow you to detain me in a house and force me to do nothing all day but glare at your old mug, you'd be absolutely wrong—"
"Keep on babbling and I will push through with my threat," he answered coldly.
"Oh please!" Her mind summoned images of a distressed Heymans scrubbing his face with a palm as he sat across the metal table, of Ed with his armblade out and risking his very life just by being present near her. Maria pointed her index finger at Mustang. "You blame me for the distrust I've apparently sown between you and your most trusted people. But shall I remind that it was you who put your youngest subordinate in danger when he was protecting me? How you insulted Second Lieutenant Breda just because he didn't share your opinion? You are the reason, not me, Colonel Mustang."
His hand twitched towards his pocket, and she knew that she should stop metaphorically poking at the beast's stomach with a stick. But the temptation overpowered her, so Maria leaned in close, the closest she dared to without actually touching him, and breathed near his ear. "I dare you to, in front of your friend, murderer."
Mustering all of her remaining courage, Maria turned her back on him and headed for the exit. The possibility existed that Hughes might have called her. She thought how it might be his hand that brushed her knuckles, but by then she had already rushed into the hole and climbed out of the bin, tumbling into a heap when her legs proved too unstable to support her weight. She sniffed before she slowly got up, picked the direction of her (not) home and ran, unable to understand how she got roped into this agony.
A/N: Holy shit, last sem was cursed. But it's fine, I survived. I'm not sure if any of you are still interested in this fic but leave a review or a follow because I love talking to people if I have the energy. Maybe this will motivate me to update faster gah. Also, the THEORY TIME thing is still going on.
Check out my Tumblr for some fanart and my shenanigans: manalfedz.
