WARNING: Some light zest. Also I'm writing this on my phone and I think spell check guardians have abandoned us. I'll probably need to repost this, apologies in advance. Bonjour Quebec ;D
Chapter 7 - Harbour
Maes was able to get Edward home before anyone could intersect them.
It took Roy a bit longer to wrap up the investigation before he could make it to the Hughes house.
Gracia opened the door.
"How is he?" he asked, Riza following behind him.
She sighed and ushered him in. "They are upstairs. Maes isn't talking to me. What happened?"
"There was another murder, Ed fainted when he saw the body," Roy explained, hardly shrugging out of his jacket before scaling the stairs.
Gracia didn't follow, nor did Riza. Breda and Havoc were downstairs in the dining room as well.
Roy went to the shut door that had a hand drawn tapped to it that read Ed, spelled with a backward 'd' with an image of a blond with a gray arm and leg, holding the hands of two little girls. There was a second sheet of paper of a white dog taped to the bottom of the page.
He went in without knocking. The boy's room was basically a library and his wall was wallpapered in drawings clearly made by Nina and Elicia. But aside from the stacks of books, it was otherwise clean. The closest had a small space for clothes, a stack of raw materials, slabs of stone and plates of metal, surrounded by yet another pile of books.
Roy sat at the end of Ed's bed as Maes had already in the desk chair.
Ed looked painfully still and his breath shallow. There was a cool cloth on his forehead that he was certain Maes used as a reason to stay and fuss over Ed.
"Maes?" Roy asked.
Maes didn't look up, he looked older, like he hadn't seen him since after the war.
Roy sat on the end of the bed, Ed was short enough that he wasn't really in risk of disturbing him.
"How is he?"
"Fine," Maes answered. "I don't think he ate enough today and he was definitely running around the city."
"Why?" Roy asked, accepting the detour. If Maes was upset, it wasn't about Ed's physical health, or at least not the core reason for the depth of this reaction.
"I'm pretty sure he has an intelligence network of 'friends' to rival yours."
"My intelligence network has said they've seen him around in odd and inconsistent places for years," Roy offered. Chris's ladies all seemed to like Edward even if they didn't have much to say about him other than the golden haired roof jumper.
"Sounds about right."
"Maes, what's wrong?"
"How do you think that woman was made?" he countered.
Made, not killed, made.
"I think you already know," Roy said.
"Tell me anyway."
"Someone performed human transmutation. Though given the results, I'm not sure what they had intended to do. It seems a particular gruesome form of murder."
"I thought there was a cost to human transmutation," Maes said, not taking his gaze off his son.
"There is, if you're trying to bring someone back to life or make life," Roy said, remembering well when Maes had nearly beaten his ass when he had been researching the taboo.
After Ishval had been a dark time. Nothing like knowing you're a monster and being told that you're a hero to drive you off the deep end.
But he had never gone through with it.
"What is the cost?" Maes asked.
"What?" Roy asked, startled.
Maes looked up, jade eyes glinting, "What is the cost of trying to bring the dead back to life?"
"Death," Roy answered. "Blood and flesh, but even then, it doesn't work or if it does rarely the way you want it to. Not even a soul is worth as much as it should be. Or at least, no one has figured it out yet."
Maes looked back at Edward who murmured something in his sleep.
Roy leaned closer, "Have you caught anything he's said?"
"Al," Maes said, voice clipped. "And mom."
Roy startled remembering what Maes had said not a night before, "You don't think—"
"He told me that he couldn't keep his brother safe anymore and though he hated his birth father, he trusted him not to hurt Alphonse."
"You think a twelve year old—"
"Eleven," Maes interrupted. "He was eleven. He left as soon as he could walk on his own even if he further damaged himself."
Roy shook his head, "He's too—"
"He too, nothing," Maes said, voice low but harsh. "You don't understand how powerful he is, how wildly intelligent. He was a child, and he saw me, a soldier back from Ishval, and you know what I saw in those eyes? Even muted by pain, exhaustion, and grief, do you know what I saw? I saw someone who could see all the way down to the soul of me. He was never a child ignorant of the horrors of the world. He saw me, counted my sins and found them less than his own.
"I've never known another child to think of himself as a monster." He met Roy's gaze before finishing, "When I looked at him, I saw you."
Roy startled at that, then looked down at the boy in question. Asleep, pale from fright, he looked much younger than he was. "You thought he killed his mother."
"I thought he blamed himself for her death."
Roy remembered Edward's expression at seeing the body, the raw fear…
The recognition.
Edward hadn't fainted because he had never seen something so awful before, he fainted because he had seen it before.
Had perhaps done it himself before.
A young boy with a younger brother, abandoned by his father and the talent to do just about anything he set his mind to alchemically, had tried to bring his mother back.
"You think he did it alone?" Roy asked, sorrow filling him.
Yes, it was a taboo, but Ed had been a minor without a watchful guardian.
"I think he meant to do it with his brother," Maes answered. "And I think he left because he couldn't live with himself for even considering to endanger his younger sibling like that."
"Which is why he's not afraid of hurting Elicia and Nina, because he knows he would never do that to them," Roy said even has he thought it an extreme amount of self blame.
"It would explain why he has never once offered to teach them anything about alchemy," Maes agreed, he ran his fingers lightly over Ed's automail arm. "The price was too high."
Roy closed his eyes in grief. He understood now why Maes had looked heartbroken.
Because Roy's heart broke for the boy too.
"Will you tell him you know?"
Maes shook his head, "No. Like I said before, it's more important he tells me than I know. It is more important he learns to forgive himself than I forgive him."
Roy wasn't certain there was anything that needed forgiving, Edward had made a stupid mistake and paid for it. But then, Roy wasn't the child's parent. Perhaps overcoming his self-hatred was more important than being empathized with.
It hit him then that Maes had taken the same approach to Roy. Maes had never absolved him of his sins. He had merely held open the door to the road forward, letting Roy carry his baggage until he learned to put enough of it down to precede ahead.
Maes finally convinced Roy to go home before midnight.
Maria stationed herself in the hall while Denny camped out in the back yard.
Gracia touched Maes's cheek, "He's going to be alright."
He wrapped her in an embrace, "I love you, so very much, my Grace."
She hugged him back with strong arms, practically hanging onto him as she let him hold her weight.
It made her feel small and safe, and it made him feel as if he had the strength to carry the world.
Because that's who she was to him. His world, his home, and his very heart.
Edward would be okay because Gracia would keep Maes anchored, no matter the storms to come.
Roy watched as helpless as ever as his nightmare unfolded exactly as it always did.
One would think that after all that Roy had seen and done in his life, this childhood trauma would be overwhelmed.
But no, Roy was just as small and helpless as he had ever been before as his mother took his hands in hers and laid a kiss on each one.
She spoke in Xingese, telling him how proud she was of her intelligent little man.
Father laughed, and said in badly accented Xingese his own endearments of his own into his wife's ear.
His mother laughed, letting go of Roy's hands to reach back and hug her husband.
Sometimes, this nightmare was worth reliving, if only to remember them like this. To remember the sound of their voices, to remember how stupidly and romantically in love they had been. His father, short and awkward in appearance, but bold and doting in his love for his family and his passion for his science.
Father and his younger sister, Roy's Aunt Chris, had been born to poor Xingese migrants in the slums in Central City. Aunt Chris had become a business woman and Roy's father had worked tirelessly to become a mechanical engineer. He worked mainly in factories, but he had sweated and bled his way up to design rooms.
Roy's mother was something else entirely. She had been beauty incarnate. Having fled her village in Xing, made the trip across the great desert herself and landed in Central. She had been a street performer, but she was in her soul, an artist who played more instruments and sang with a voice that Roy's father assured anyone who asked could shame all the angels in heaven.
She had written all her own songs and though she had never learned to speak Amestrian, her poetry books had sold well enough that she was able to stay home to raise Roy.
He missed his parents, missed them with an ache that still imprisoned his breath within his lungs at times.
Roy would have given just about anything to wake up, to for once be left with his parents happy vistage, the sound of their mirthfulled voices as his Aunt Chris scoffed at their silly romantic actions.
But it wouldn't have been a proper nightmare if it wasn't for the flash of steel followed by a dark blur as a blade embedded itself in his father's chest.
His body arched and jerked as the blade was twisted back out of him. His body fell with a thud, blood pooling on the patterned linoleum.
His mother's scream harkened the reality of death.
Aunt Chris caught Roy up in her arms, so he watched from over her shoulder as the assassin caught his mother from behind, binding her arms behind her as she attempted to fight him.
But her attacker took no chances, slamming her head down against the table again and again. When she stilled, momentarily dazed, a cloth gag was stuffed into her mouth.
Roy yelled for her, "Mama!"
She looked up at him, her eyes filled with goodbye as the apartment door between them slammed shut.
Aunt Chris didn't look back, didn't stop, not until she had run across the city, Roy clinging to her, hoping against hope that his mother would be okay.
"We will find her," Aunt Chris promised. "They didn't kill her. Wherever they take her, I will find her."
To this day, it was the only promise his Aunt had never been able to keep.
"Roy!"
He woke with start, and feeling the presence above him, he reacted on instinct. Having kicked his covers off, his legs were free to help him move as he grabbed the wrist of the person holding his shoulder.
He flipped them so Roy was on top, straddling the person's hips and his hands gripping a slender neck.
It took him too long to realise who exactly he had pinned.
Riza looked up at him in the light of the side table. She was completely passive, waiting for him to come to his senses and willing to take whatever pain he offered in the meantime.
Roy let go with a gasp of horror. Of all people, Riza was on the top of the list for those who never wanted to harm.
Never again.
He was about to turn away from her, but she rolled them again, so she was on top, straddling his midsection.
Only then did he realize what she was wearing, or rather what she wasn't wearing.
He wasn't wearing anything but his briefs and Riza wore only her underwear and a tank top.
Which meant her back was bare.
She never showed her back, not even int eh comfort of her own home.
But here in his home, the knowledge that she would show such vulnerability, that she would transparent in front of him when their pasts were so painfully intwined.
He found himself frozen, uncertain what to do. He was certain all of Amestris must be laughing at Roy Mustang who didn't know what to do with a woman riding him in bed.
But Riza wasn't just a woman to him, she was just an anyone, she was Hawkeye, and she meant more to him than anyone on the planet.
Because his initial courting of her had literally burned up in hell didn't change the fact that he was still as in love with her now as he had ever been.
He watched her watch him, her hair falling around her like white-gold.
The expression in her amber eyes was unreadable as she asked, "I couldn't wake you."
He swallowed, "Me neither. Riza, I'm sor—"
She cupped a hand over his mouth, "No. I should have just thrown water on your face."
He huffed, tensing for other reasons as she shifted above him. Gently, he removed her hand from his mouth, "Thank you."
"What were you dreaming of?" she asked as if their current position was ideal for this conversation.
He supposed the heat in his cheeks was fending off some of the residual sorrow that particular nightmare always left him with.
"My parents," was all he could manage.
"You loved them," she stated.
"Yes."
"What happened to them?" She asked, successfully killing his growing arousal.
He never talked about this, about his origins and people rarely asked him despite him looking as he did, more so the Fuery, he was obviously of Xingese descent.
His accent or lack thereof deterred anyone from asking as most believed that his features had simply had miss fortune to have his Xingese heritage be dominant.
In truth, he didn't have a drop of Amestrian blood in him.
No one ever guessed that he was first generation on his mother's side and second on his father's side. It was rare for people to cross the desert between Amestris and Xing in any great numbers.
"They were taken from me," he said.
"Were they Xingese?" Riza asked, thankfully not prying into the details.
Roy wasn't sure he wanted to have this conversation like this, but he also didn't want to chase her away when the last time he had touched her, even something as innocent as holding her hand, had been before her father mutilated his back.
Roy lowered his hands slowly and gently on her thighs. He didn't twitch a finger and she didn't move away or shift off him.
He answered her question, "My mother was and my father's parents crossed the desert as well."
Her eyes widened a bit, "I would never have guessed."
"My father never spoke Xingese when he was growing up. His parents sent him to school and refused to let anything but Amestrian be spoken in their home. His accent when he spoke Xingese was atrocious."
"And your mother?"
"Only spoke Xingese, she never learned Amestrian, but then she rarely left the apartment, much less our neighborhood."
Riza put her hands on his chest and he was certain she must have felt his heart pounding against her touch. Her voice had lowered a few octaves as she asked, "Can you still speak it, or are you out of practice?"
"What?" he asked, his thoughts scattering at the possible innuendos.
Riza was here as his guard, a second layer of defense against a serial killer targeting State Alchemists. She was in his room because he had woken her with his nightmare.
But he didn't know the reason she remained on top of him, dressed in so little, her hands exploring his bare chest.
She lowered herself over him, so her long hair spilled over him as she hovered above him, "Can you still speak Xingese?"
His fingers tensed on her thighs, "Yes."
He really didn't know what it was exactly he was saying yes to but he suspected it wasn't about his fluency in his mother tongue.
His eyes shut and he couldn't stop the gasp that escaped him as Riza pressed their cheeks together and whispered into his ear, "Speak to me, Roy. I want us to be more than ourselves tonight."
Her legs shifted down his sides, straightening over him so he held her weight. They were chest to chest and she wasn't wearing a bra beneath the thin material of her top.
"I love you. I've always loved you. There has never and will never be anyone like you. I would be able to see your beauty even if I were struck blind before ever laying eyes on you," he said in a rush, hoping like hell that Riza could only interrupt it as sweet nothings.
Roy's mother had been a village girl from one of the smaller and poorer imperial clans, there was a chance even if Riza was fluent she might not be able to understand the dialect or accent he used.
In the end, it really didn't matter what she understood or didn't because she brought their lips together and there was no more speaking for a while.
When she rose back up to strip off her shirt, he worried they were going too fast.
But she then leaned forward to turn off the side table lamp and when she came back to him she directed them to their sides. She pressed her back to his chest so his hands were free to explore her soft unblemished front.
And for a time it was just that. Gentle touches in the dark, the mixing of warmth and sweat. The way Riza came undone beneath his touch, Roy had to wonder if it was because she returned his feelings or if she hadn't had a partner in nearly a decade.
They brought each other to completion with hands though neither of them removed that last barrier of clothing. When Roy woke in the morning, her side of the bed was cold.
He was left unmoored wondering if he should wait out the storm or chase after the light beckoning him toward the harbour.
AN: If you're enjoying, please consider reviewing? I'm three chapters ahead so anything you want me to add or expand on, I can deliver ;D