Chapter forty-five

Roy was halfway lying in his train seat, his feet on the bench and Edward asleep on his chest, the little boy snoring lightly.

Roy and Alphonse were both watching the same thing with high expectations: Hawkeye was sleeping and she was slowly sliding sideways so that she would soon be leaning against Al's arm. Roy had warned him that it was actually better not to try to steady her as she could be inclined to see it as an attack and Roy would rather not have to wake Ed up twice in one day with the sound of a gun going off.

And so the moment came as Hawkeye's head gently crashed against Al's right arm with a little "gonk".

Roy smiled. It was incredibly rare usually to see the Lieutenant sleeping, but with long train rides like these, it couldn't really be avoided.

They were on the train from East City to Central and would be arriving in two days. Their plans had understandably changed with the research notes being stored at the Central Library, so their trip back home had been delayed.

"I didn't know that he had counted them," Al said quietly, now sure that Hawkeye was still asleep. His voice was full of sorrow and pain.

Roy knew instantly what Alphonse was talking about. He was still shaken by what Ed had said today. "Me neither. Has he told you about wishing that the drugs would hurt instead of causing hallucinations?" Roy asked just as quietly, his stomach twisting at the thought.

"No."

Roy sighed heavily, pulling Ed closer. "So he's hiding things from us."

"Just like he used to," Al said sadly. "Even when he's five, he doesn't want to tell us things that will hurt us."

Roy sighed again, feeling a kind of pained fury settling in his chest. "Do you think he should see a psychologist?"

"I don't think it will help… He's just going to close himself up without having us there and if we are there, then he won't say anything we don't know. Besides, I don't want him to have to relive what the Pentons did to him that way. I don't want to force him into a chair to talk about it against his will with a stranger. I don't want to force him into anything!" Roy had a strong feeling that Al would have been crying if he could, judging by the desperation in his voice at the last remark. "I just want him to be happy! Not to be happy and then have horrible nightmares about those maniacs! He's five and he has already learnt to keep some of his thoughts to himself in order not to hurt those closest to him! It isn't fair!"

"I know, Alphonse. We should still talk to him about it, though. If he keeps things bottled up he won't ever be able to let them go because he treats them as his secrets. We just need to convince him that it hurts us more to know that he's keeping things from us."

"Although we're keeping secrets from him too…" Al said quietly.

"Alphonse –" Roy began.

"But we are! For exactly the same reasons! We don't want to see him get hurt!"

"Alphonse, we're trying to stop a five-year-old from having even more nightmares than he already has. We've learnt to accept it, Ed treats it like it is a dirty secret and it is eating at him."

"It's just that it won't really be an Equivalent Exchange if we demand that Brother tells us things when we're withholding information from him."

Roy reached out and took Al's right hand in his left, looking at him. "Alphonse, telling him about what the transmutation created won't do him any good."

"I know, Dad, it's just that there's so much more we won't tell him just because we don't want to scare him. But I'm still scared, Dad. And what if all those possibilities are true and we haven't told him? He could lose his trust in us! But how can we tell him that there's always a possibility that he'll be stuck as a five-year-old for the rest of his life? That he won't grow because we can't be sure that the Pentons made him so that he will? What if something is wrong with him and he'll be stuck with a body that keeps being five even as his brain matures? What do we do then? We're just waiting to see if he'll grow up like he should or if the Pentons destroyed everything!"

"Alphonse, remember, the infirmary doctor couldn't find anything wrong with Ed. Besides, his hair has been growing and so has his nails, that suggests that he is growing like he should."

There was silence between them for a while, until Roy sighed and voiced a concern of his own. "He flinched."

"What?" Al was clearly confused. "What are you talking about, Dad?"

"Ed. He flinched when I slammed my fist on Marcoh's table. Every time I get angry, Ed gets scared. Was he like that the first time around? Or is this brought on by what the Pentons did, you think?"

"I think it's new."

"So Ed is scared of me," Roy said with a sigh, looking down at the sleeping form on his chest.

"M'not…" Ed said, lifting his head slowly, causing Roy to panic slightly. If Ed knew what they had been discussing, then it might just break his trust in them completely.

"Edward! How long have you been awake?"

"I just woke, Daddy. And I'm not scared of you." Ed flipped over on his belly and looked straight up at Roy as he propped himself up on his elbows, his eyes large and confused. "Why d'you think so?"

"You always get so scared when I'm angry, Ed…" Roy said, needing to get this sorted out. If he needed to explain something to Ed, then he wanted to know what it was that bothered Ed. The worst thing Roy could imagine was his five-year-old son subconsciously fearing him.

"You don't look like you when you're angry, Daddy. Your eyes change and it looks like the Roy-thing," Ed said quietly, looking a bit ashamed.

Roy sighed heavily. "I'm sorry, Ed. I don't mean to scare you."

"It's not your fault, Daddy. I'm just getting scared even though it looks like you and not you that looks like it did… It's just that it's like in the nightmares… I'm sorry, Daddy…"

Roy felt his heart clench. Ed always told him about the nightmares and Roy knew that the Roy-thing had been featured in many of them. Roy also knew that it meant that he'd been giving his son flashbacks to the nightmares whenever he got angry.

And the ironic part was that Roy felt his anger flare at the thought. Instead he looked down at his son and let his chest fill with love instead of revenge. He was pissed off with the Pentons and the Roy-thing, but if he scared his son by being angry, then he'd work on not letting that emotion show too often when Ed was awake.

Because if it was true, and Roy had no reason to to question its credibility, then he didn't like the fact that his own son didn't recognise his eyes when he was angry.

And Roy was sometimes frightened by his own wrath.

After all, if Ed hadn't stopped him, Roy would probably have beaten Tucker to death in front of Ed. What kind of man does that?

One thing was sure, if Roy let his hatred consume him, then not even Ed would be able to say that Roy wasn't a monster.