7. Edward pulled the hood tight around his neck and tried to keep his head low. It was one of Roy's old military issue jackets- non-descript frayed black fabric- hastily hemmed to keep it from dragging through the puddles. Ed muttered under his breath, words crystallizing in the crisp, morning air, "If someone recognizes me, Mustang, you're dead."

"I'm sure," Roy began pleasantly, "People will simply assume that you are a child, Edward."

"I'm twenty-four years old!" Ed bit out, shooting a sour glare at his companion, "You can't just-"

"I apologize." Roy's quiet grin said otherwise, but Ed decided to drop the matter.

"Who are you taking me to see?" He asked after a moment of stillness. Roy's shallow smiled deepened and he raised his nose slightly. That aloofness frustrated Edward- it was the kind of smile one wore when they were in on a joke you knew nothing about.

"Oh, just an old friend."

The aforementioned old friend was impossible to miss. He filled out an entire desk and looked unnatural, somehow, leaned over scribbling away at his paper work. The pen looked small and fragile in his large hands and anyone who didn't know him would be surprised that he didn't break it in his iron grip. Ed let his hood fall back, eyes wide as he felt himself torn between a surprised joy and the old instinct to run as far away in the opposite direction as he could manage.

"Armstrong?" he exclaimed.

Armstrong's head snapped up and his face shifted through several different emotions before finally settling on outright speechless surprise. "Edward Elric!" he shouted, standing so abruptly that he knocked his chair over.

"Brigadier General." Roy muttered a warning tone. Armstrong's eyes were still bulging out of their sockets as he stumbled towards Edward and placed broad hands on the young man's shoulders.

"You were... you are supposed to be dead."

Ed shrunk under Armstrong's earnest grip, but he smiled anyways. It looked forced, but Roy could tell even from his vantage point that it was sincere. "I still am. Technically. So could you keep all of this hush-hush, please?" he winked and Armstrong glanced at Roy who simply placed a finger across his lips. Armstrong heaved heavily and reluctantly let go of Ed's shoulders, folding his hands behind his back.

A sigh, "What can I do for you?"

Ed looked at Roy, too large coat slipping off his shoulders and Roy strode forwards, saluting Armstrong sitffly, "We've come to ask a favour."

Armstrong smiled faintly behind his moustache, "No need to be so formal, Mustang. From your manner I gather that this is not exactly military business."

Roy coughed and relaxed, "You've gathered correctly, my old friend. We require... discreet access to any reports or texts relating to the now disbanded state alchemists."

Armstrong's eyebrows raised, "How discreet?"

Roy smiled that sly, undeniable smile of his, no less influential on his now disfigured face, "Not that I'm expecting anyone to ask, but just in case they do- we were never here."

Armstrong deliberated a moment- torn between duty and loyalty- before he straightened with resolve and gestured to the plain door tucked behind his desk. Ed grinned up at him from within the folds of thick, black fabric and headed towards the library eagerly without another word. Roy went to follow him, but Armstrong held him back until the door snapped shut.

"I suppose," Armstrong began heavily, a dark sadness in his pale eyes, "There's no point in wondering where he's been."

----------------

Ed sat on the floor crosslegged, a large tome in his lap and Roy's jacket folded behind him as a makeshift pillow. Roy was sitting calmly in a straight-backed, wooden chair watching the clock. Well, he had been watching the clock, glancing at the slowly ticking second hand in between paragraphs and formulas. Now, however, he found himself stealing stray glances at the young alchemist seated across from him. Ed read as if he were posessed by a demon, turning pages so swiftly and viciously that it sounded as if a flock of birds were flailing about within the library's walls. Ed's braid was coming loose and his blonde hair fell in his face as golden eyes scanned the book, back and forth, back and forth and then a slight pause- the pupils' movement somewhat reminescent of a typewriter.

Roy was mesmerized by this without really understanding why. He didn't even realize he had been staring at Edward until the young man cursed suddenly, slamming his book shut with a thick flapping noise that shook Roy out of his reviere.

"I wish," Ed began bitterly, furrowing his brow at the offending text, "That I could talk to my father. He would know."

Roy blinked, folding his own book shut and regarding the younger alchemist with interest, "Didn't your father die... seven years ago?" he almost regretted asking it. Would have regretted asking it had the tone in Edward's voice not suggested what it had.

Edward looked up like a wild animal caught in a hunter's trap. He paled slightly and his bottom lip slipped under his teeth as he shakily brushed a lock of blonde behind his shoulder. That was when the regret began to sink in, "I, er, am not completely sure how to answer that question."

Roy closed his eye and inhaled deeply, "I must aplogize. That was rude-"

"I saw him again." Roy's eye blinked open as Ed stood and began pulling books off the shelves at random, "I went to where he was. And then I came back. But he, um... even if he's alive right now he can never come home."

Roy's mouth opened to say something, but he realized that there was no way to reply except with another question. The famous Alchemist of Light, Hohenheim Elric, was still alive. Edward has been... living with his father? There were many intelligent questions Roy could have asked- the kind of questions that deserved answers, especially after such a string of cryptic statements. Instead, he made the worst statement he could have possibly managed considering the situation, "I thought that you hated your father."

Ed dropped a book. Just the one that was in his flesh hand. Roy watched his fingers fall open limply and the journal landed on the floor with it's spine wide open, delicate pages crumpling awkwardly against the hardwood floor. Ed straightened, sighed and turned around, leaning his head back against the bookcase.

"I hated him for a long time, but then I got to know him." there was a pause during which a small shudder wracked Edward's small body, "He... he was my father, afterall."

When Ed asked if he could take some of the books home, Roy didn't try to argue with him. He was never very good at saying no to Edward Elric anyways.