The Ties that Bind

A series of related one-shots that range from Roy finding Ed and Al in Resembool and far, far beyond. Not chronological. EdWin, AlMei, Royai Parental!RoyEdAl Parental!RizaEdAl

Baby Boy

Older Brother 20, Younger Brother 19

Roy was late getting to work. Again. But he actually had a legitimate excuse this time! Well, he thought it was pretty good anyway. After all, how often is someone trapped behind a line of migrating ducks crossing the street? He'd even honked at them and one of the little yellow ducklings had only stopped to give him an indignant quack before waddling along after its brothers and sisters with Mom at the head of the line. So yeah, he was legitimately fifteen minutes late because a bunch of ducks had to choose that morning to cross the breadth of Main Street in the middle of downtown East City.

They must have been canal ducks, because where else would they have even come from?

"Good morning, Major," Roy said, keeping his tone bright in anticipation of the monotonous dressing down he surely had coming.

Silence.

Roy blinked, staring at Riza who sat at her desk with her fingers laced together beneath her chin. She was staring down at something on her desk—some form or letter from a higher up? Whatever it was, her expression was such that Roy was sure she'd set it, any surrounding document, and probably the entire desk on fire if she so much as blinked. It wasn't that she looked angry per say, but there was definitely a discontented smolder lurking beneath the surface.

"Major?"

Riza stirred and looked up. Her eyes shifted from dark and almost broody to recognition. "Oh, General. You're early."

Oh wow, something must be seriously wrong. "Are you all right, Major?"

"Of course, General. Just so you know, I updated your schedule this morning. Edward is supposed to call tomorrow to check-in so Winry is coming up from Resembool this afternoon. I can send someone to pick her up, but I made room in your schedule if you would prefer to meet her yourself."

"I'll get her." As if there was any doubt. The last time Roy had sent someone else to pick Winry up from the station, she'd been kidnapped by Drachmans.

Riza pulled his schedule over and rearranged his timetable. "Very good, sir."

Silence.

"Is…there anything else, Major?"

"Hm?" Riza looked up from writing. "Oh, yes." She set her pen aside and picked up an open envelope in tandem with a sheaf of tri-folded papers. "Alphonse has sent us another letter. He included part of his research for you to look through regarding serial isolation theory. I took the liberty of requisitioning research from the East Library to supplement your understanding."

"Thank you, Major," Roy said, not expecting anything less. This had been an arrangement of theirs since Ed and Al first arrived in East City all those years ago. It always frustrated Edward to no end how Roy always seemed to be one step ahead of him on any active alchemical theories, no matter how obscure.

"Also…" An almost pained look flitted across Riza's face. "About Alphonse…"

A jolt of pain went through Roy's heart, lancing through every nerve in his body. Was he hurt? Did someone come after him? Those chimaeras were supposed to be watching him! If they let something happen to Al, Roy would string the frog up by his own spit and pull the pig's entrails out through his nose!

"What happened?"

Riza frowned and slowly, reluctantly, extended a photograph.

It's a ransom photo. Some radical Xingese group got ahold of him and is using him as leverage against Ling and Amestris as a way to usurp the new Emperor.

Roy forced himself not to snatch it from her fingers as he took it and flipped it around.

How far is it to Xing? Youswell is the last town on the Eastern line; about three hours out. If we buy/steal/commandeer a desert capable vehicle at the boarder, we could reach Xing in only sixteen hours—

Alphonse smiled up from the photo looking very much not kidnapped. He was dressed in traditional Xingese clothing that was a stark contrast to the brown tweed suit Roy remembered helping the boy pick out two Promised Days back, but not in a bad way. The blue silk shirt had a high collar held together with cloth-knot buttons with gold thread woven through the yellow-brown color to make them glitter in the light. The buttons matched his hair and eyes perfectly, and Roy had no doubt a woman was involved in that selection.

Pulling his eyes from Al's grinning face, Roy found the most likely culprit. Mei Cheng, if he remembered correctly. She was Ling Yao's younger sister and had been in Central on the First Promised Day. She looked older now—as expected, it had been four years since then, so she was probably about fourteen or fifteen now—but he remembered her as being so small.

Fierce, though. That girl was a fighter for sure.

She wore a red dress in the same Xingese style decorated with the same gold buttons in a way that was decidedly deliberate. Roy smirked. It seemed Al had found himself a little admirer.

"Cute picture," Roy said, shifting from the kids' faces to their surroundings. It seemed Mei and Al were taking a break from Alkahestry training—there was a circle half-visible on the ground beneath their feet—to take tea. They were laughing together as Mei's little, weird cat had apparently upended a ribbed mug of tea over its head and was peaking out from beneath wet and bewildered.

Roy glanced up at Riza, his eyebrows raised. "Should I ask why it had you contemplating murder, Major?"

"I don't know what you mean, General."

"I'm really pretty sure you do, Major."

He and Riza locked stares, and he could see the wheels in her head turning as she debated whether she would confess on her own or wait for an order that may or may not come. It wouldn't come, he respected her too much to invade her private thoughts for something so trivial, but he hoped she'd tell him anyway because he was insanely curious.

"That girl bought Alphonse that shirt."

"I guessed that was the case. And?"

"She bought herself a dress to match, General."

There was something implied in that statement that Roy couldn't unpack, but it was apparently important. Deathly important, if Riza's expression was anything to go by.

"Yes…" Roy said, dragging the word out to give himself time to figure it out. He didn't. Riza sighed.

"Alphonse is far too young to have a girlfriend, sir."

Roy's eyes widened. "He's nineteen, you know? By the time I was that age, I'd already kissed a girl—"

Riza was unimpressed by that admission, probably because they'd sworn never to discuss that shared disastrous first ever, ever again.

"—so I really can't fault the kid for finding someone he likes, assuming that's even the case." Roy flipped the picture around so Riza could see it. "This girl is maybe fifteen. Al's too smart to get himself tangled up with someone so young. Especially considering she's the favorite sister of Emperor Ling Yao."

Roy really didn't want to contemplate what that phone call would be like. Ling might like Alphonse, but he doubted that would save the boy from the dungeon if Ling found out anything happened between Al and Mei before the princess was at least eighteen.

Hell, Roy would court-martial the boy himself. Considering Al wasn't part of the military—and technically never had been—Roy wasn't immediately sure how he would manage that, but he'd find some way.

Maybe I'll just get Furher Grumman to suspend his passport. Can't mess around with pretty Xingese princesses if he's grounded.

"That isn't the point." With her teeth clenched, Riza was barely holding herself together from grabbing her gun and shooting something. Or someone.

Roy was beginning to think he might understand what was going through her head.

"We know nothing about this girl, and she doesn't have the decency to reach out to us before making such an obvious gesture of affection?" Riza looked down at her desk and started stacking her scattered papers with shaking hands. "What do we know about her family? Her career prospects? What are her political leanings? Does she want a family? And if she does want a family, does she intend to raise their children in Xing or Amestris? Because it will be far more difficult for us to meet with Alphonse on a regular basis if they permanently relocate to an entirely different country. Would he even know what that would entail?"

"I…think you may be jumping a bit too far ahead, Major. If anything like that comes about, it's still several years down the line—"

"Oh don't give me that!" The last semblance of Major Hawkeye flew out the window as Riza jumped from her chair and slammed her palms on the desk. It was probably the most disheveled he'd seen her in months, if not years. Somehow, the Elric brothers had become a trigger for her; nearly every major conflict occurring between Roy and Riza for almost ten years had involved the boys in one way or another. "If she's so invested in Alphonse that she's already picking them matching clothes, then an official relationship is only a matter of time!"

"Major—"

"Winry had the decency to contact me after discovering she had feelings for Edward, and she was only fifteen. We had a lovely conversation about appropriate relationship pace and tentpoles. She kept me up to date during her and Ed's courtship—unconventional as it may have been—and she called me immediately from the train station after Ed proposed!"

Roy remembered that day. His ears had rung from Winry's phone-pitched squeals combined with Havoc and Fuery's for hours.

"But this girl? This girl?"

"You do remember that 'this girl' saved your life once?"

"This and that are entirely unrelated!"

Roy snickered, and Riza cut a sharp glare his way. "Something amusing, general?"

He tried to deny it, but the words wouldn't form around his valiantly stifled giggles. "I-I just—." Roy cleared his throat. "Are you having a baby boy moment? Over Alphonse?"

Riza stared, blank-faced save her ongoing glare that promised intense pain if he didn't choose his next words verycarefully. "Baby boy moment, sir?"

Roy coughed to hide a laugh, partly because Riza looked so frazzled but also because she reminded him of a time when Madam Christmas had looked the exact same way over him. "You know, that moment when a mother realizes her son is growing up and is popular with all the ladies." He was wheezing now, trying his hardest to stay upright and not start slapping his knees with uncontrolled hysterics. "You know," giggle, "'that little hussy's corrupting my innocent baby!'"

"General," Riza growled. "Don't you have work to attend to?"

"Of course, Major." Cough, wheeze. "Carry on."

Roy barely made it to his office, door successfully closed, before the laughter doubled him over in a fit of giggles and tears.

Kaliea: I absolutely adore Riza's relationship with the boys. Doting Mom, Strict Mom, Confidant Mom, Patient Mom, Soccer Mom ("Kick his ass, Ed!"), I love it all. So here we get Overprotective Mom! Because I honestly think that, considering his circumstantes and personality, everyone would be super overprotective of Alphonse.

That, and I just loved the idea of Riza calling Mei Cheng a 'hussy' XD XD XD She didn't' in this story exactly because I couldn't figure out a non-ooc way for her to say it (she was already a bit ooc as is), so I let Roy say it for her :P

Thanks for reading!