Disclaimer: I don't own any of them. Not making any money of this. Love the idea of Ed and Roy. Please leave me a review if you like the story.
Author's Note:
Less of a note, more of a plug. Announcing a change to the opening theme song for Full Circle! It's now Loop And Loop by Asian Kung-fu Generation (same band that did Rewrite), which is the last track on their latest album, Sol-fa. If you haven't heard it, go find it – the entire album is awesome, but for some reason this song really sticks in my head. The lyrics are also incredibly appropriate (the record label has an official translation up on their website for anyone who's interested). And for the one person who asked me about a closing theme song, from the same album, third track, To Your Town – Kimi No Machi Made.
Oh, and I'm glad that so many of you concur that there is still a story to be told. Please do leave me a review to let me know what you think, because I like hearing from different perspectives. By the way, I'm going to be travelling to Japan for a little over a week, leaving on Friday, so there's going to be a definite break before the next update. And yes, I'm very excited about the trip! See you all when I get back! Much love –NF.
p.s. And a heartfelt Thank You to all the lovely people who wrote words of encouragement. Yes, life does get turbulent sometimes, but the good news is, there is an end in sight – come early June, I'll be free! Slogging along until then.
Chapter 23: Where Do We Go From Here?
Punch. Punch. Front kick.
Edward Elric sucked a breath of air into his lungs as he brought himself back into a ready position, perfectly balanced on the balls of his feet. His chest was heaving harder than usual, he noted in annoyance – he was evidently still feeling the after-effects of the various beatings it had taken at the front, and resurrection was bound to be hard on a body. The skin above his heart burned as it had when he had first returned, and he longed to stop for a moment to rub at it and try to soothe the pain away, but didn't drop his hands from their guard position. He knew he was probably pushing too hard too quickly, but when had that ever stopped him? Not to mention, if he suddenly clutched at his chest, he was pretty sure one of the Elrics would have a heart attack, and it wouldn't be him, and he'd have a hell of a time explaining to Winry how he'd accidentally killed Al.
"Roy. You should take a break, you've been working like a madman for the past couple of days." Maes Hughes stood just inside the door, his face genial as usual but his eyes dark with concern as they took in the too-thin frame of his closest friend and superior officer. He had stopped by the infirmary on his way over to get a status report on the Fuhrer-elect, and while the doctors had assured him that Roy was on the mend from his injuries, they had also expressed concern over the man's general state of health. He knew Hawkeye would make sure that Roy was eating regularly, if not always healthily, but he needed more than food. The shadows under his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks screamed a need for rest. The Brigadier was suddenly struck by the realization that they were so very much older than they had been all those years ago when they had first met and sworn an oath that would change the course of their world. Older, but perhaps no wiser, he thought wistfully.
Roy looked up irritably, his mouth bracketed by thin, deep-set lines of fatigue – and something else? "Don't you ever knock? Or is my first edict as Fuhrer going to have to be a standing order for all men to knock on the damned door before entering my office?" He caught himself swearing and stopped, looking surprised.
"I did knock. You didn't hear me," his friend pointed out, strolling across the carpet and dropping himself unceremoniously into a chair. "Which just goes to prove my point. You're losing your edge, pushing yourself this hard – much more of this and you'll be useless to anyone. Let your staff do some of the work, for crying out loud, that's what they're there for. You aren't fully healed yet, you know – I'm surprised you're even able to sign papers, let alone write anything."
"There's too much to do right now, I can't…."
"Oh yes, you can. Relax. Father Hughes has everything under control. Armstrong is finishing up the plans for rebuilding and will have them to you for review in the morning. Havoc is working on security arrangements, for now, the ceremony, and after - you know you're going to have to have a personal guard at all times from now on, don't you? Hawkeye has logistics, and Fury has shown a remarkable aptitude for diplomacy, so I've put him to work handling the emissaries from the various other states. Even Xing is sending a delegation to attend, just so you know. And you should give me a medal for this one - I've even persuaded the Fullmetal Alchemist to participate in your inauguration."
Roy blinked, leaning back in his chair. "What?"
"You know, that big party next week, the ceremony that represents the crowning achievement of everything we've been working for since Ishbal? The one where you become supreme ruler of all Amestris and change this country for the better?" Maes waved an arm vaguely in the direction of the windows which framed a shimmering image of Central City, the buildings glowing red and gold as the sun slowly sank beneath the horizon.
A withering look. "Maes. What…exactly…did you mean by having Fullmetal participate?"
The big man beamed. "Why, he's going to swear you in! Brilliant piece of propaganda, even if I do say so myself. "
Roy closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly and wished for a fresh cup of coffee. While he knew he could simply call out for it, none of his staff could make it quite the way he preferred. Which just happened to be the way Edward Elric and his alter-ego Auric made it. Black, aromatic, so strong that the oils formed a cocoa-coloured swirl on the surface and a kick like a mule. He suspected getting it exactly that way involved a bit of eggshell, but he'd never found the right time to ask for the technique. "Maes. Far be it for me to burst your bubble, but given the mood Fullmetal's been in lately, I suspect he'll be cursing me out, not swearing me in."
"So glad you brought that up, Fuhrer-elect," purred Maes, his eyes vanishing behind the reflection of the sunset in his glasses. "Now, tell Father Hughes all about the trouble in paradise." He held up a stack of photo albums, letting them drop to the table before Roy's horrified gaze. "Or else we could go over my latest pictures of Alicia…and by the way, this is a second set, so they're fully expendable."
Roy decided that he had been wrong about his first edict as Fuhrer. After the damned inauguration…if he survived the damned inauguration…he was going to have it enshrined in law that Maes Hughes was strictly forbidden from bringing any photos of his family within fifty feet of the Fuhrer.
Duck. Jab. Jab. Right punch. Roundhouse kick.
He could feel his muscles starting to burn, feel them start to weigh down on him as heavily as automail would have, but chose to ignore the pain determinedly as he focused on the punching bag before him, which was starting to look much the worse for wear. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Alphonse standing by the free-weights pretending to be working on his upper body, but it was blatantly obvious that what he was really doing was watching his older brother obliquely in the mirrors. Al could be such a mother hen, damn it. He glared at the punching bag and hit it harder than was purely necessary. His knuckles whimpered in protest as he had eschewed gloves and opted merely to tape his hands. Normally he would have forgone even that: you weren't exactly going to be able to tell your enemy to take a moment while you taped your hands, and it would prevent him from using other weapons, but Al had insisted and Ed had been too tired to argue. Besides, he wasn't planning on sparring today anyway – he just wanted to focus on letting out his frustrations on something inanimate.
Hook. Hook. Block. Front kick. Side kick. Turning kick.
It was an odd sensation, to be doing something that came so smoothly as to be instinctive, and yet to know that this wasn't something he had learned – at least, not before those four years spent as someone else. His style had always been scrappier, learned out of necessity and designed to make fullest use of his automail and ability to perform alchemy sans arrays. This new-old skill was more elegant, definitely the product of intensive training – he even remembered learning it from an older female Gatekeeper named, for whatever odd reason, Izzy – but just as lethal. Izzy had also taught him to use his sais, and he remembered well the painful process of learning to use them – and learning to avoid having them used on you. He had the scars to prove it. And you never forgot taking a punch from Izzy. She made Armstrong look like a 90-pound weakling, and she'd taught him how to throw his weight behind his blows. A faint smile crossed his face as he remembered her lecturing with asperity, "So you don't have as much weight on you as some – so what? Use your agility to your advantage and just make each pound count." He didn't even mind the implications about his height coming from her.
"And you're sure you didn't say something about his height."
"For the last time, I. Did. Not. Why are you assuming that his mood has anything to do with something I did, anyway?" Coffee. Any kind. Roy issued an order tersely through the intercom, and Hawkeye must have picked up on his foul state of mind, because the coffee that appeared almost immediately was halfway decent. They must have sent out for it ahead of time. Which would mean, he realized belatedly as he sipped at his cup and felt dormant brain cells kick into gear, that they had known all along what Maes was planning to do.
Traitors.
Maes sat back frowning. "Because it usually does. Even when he was younger, Roy. You never noticed?"
"I never imagined. You know that." Roy didn't have to say anything else as Maes met his gaze with understanding, then looked away tactfully. For all his guile and cunning, for all his talent at reading and manipulating others, Roy had been utterly blindsided by the realization that the one person he had always thought of as untouchable, the one person to whose presence he had thought he would always be uninvited, could and did share his feelings. Or had, anyway. He was beginning to wonder if he had utterly misread the situation.
"Well. Let's work on the assumption that it has nothing to do with you then," the Brigadier said, sitting up a little straighter. "Come on, Roy, give me the benefit of those vaunted powers of observation. Notice anything else about Ed lately?"
Roy's eyes narrowed in thought as he stared off into the distance. Maes watched quietly, knowing how the man's mind worked, knowing that Roy was currently picking through his mental filing cabinet, allowing his subconscious to wander idly and gather its own conclusions. Then, "Lost," Roy said finally. "He looks lost. Like he doesn't know where to go from here."
Left hook. Right vertical punch. A roundhouse kick. Spinning hook kick low, then middle, then high, then again in the other direction.
It was important to be able to execute moves in either direction, to give the opponent no indication of your dominant hand or foot. Ironically, this was proving easier now that he had his memories back, simply because it seemed that Auric had been right-handed whereas Ed had favoured his left hand mostly, at least, until his right arm had been replaced by automail, making it the de facto dominant arm for combat. So he was now ambidextrous in the best sense of the word, and no sense in letting perfectly good skills go to waste; he was pretty sure Teacher Izumi would have agreed with him, given her emphasis on training the body as well as the mind. He'd spent four years as a Gatekeeper, after all; equivalent exchange practically dictated that he derive some benefit from it. He continued to move fluidly through his routine, allowing the rhythmic movement to lull his mind into a blank calm in which he could almost feel the two sets of memories struggling to mesh with each other, to reconcile the quirks of the other. He knew he was getting closer to achieving a full union of sorts, but it was an ongoing struggle, and one that he found hard to articulate to anyone, because they were all just so happy about having him back that he didn't want burden them with the knowledge that just being back wasn't the happy, sunlit scenario they were making it out to be.
Jab. Jab. Cross. Cross. Uppercut. Uppercut. Hook. Hook. Backfist. Backfist. Side kick. Side kick.
Oh, it was wonderful to have Al back. To know that he'd finally kept his promise to get his brother's body back and return him to a normal life. And, he had to admit, he was looking forward to seeing Winry again, and to have Granny Pinako grumble at him, and to see that adorable namesake niece whose face he knew through the photographs Al had shown him and from the memories of Auric's brief encounter. It was good to see and be working with Hawkeye, and Havoc, and Hughes and Armstrong, and all the other familiar faces who, he had only realized afterwards, had come to mean so much to him. The familiar buildings of Central had never looked as grand as when they had finally stepped off the train back from the front and he had been caught up in the giddy melee of a relieved populace. Was he happy to have this life returned to him? Yes. Yes, he was.
The problem was, he'd been happy as a Gatekeeper too. So he hadn't known who he was before, but he had had friends, and a community to belong to, and Al, in a way, and life had been simpler. Be loyal to the Guild. Help the people. Live or die with honour – the Guild wasn't too fussed about which, as long as you did it in a manner that would enhance the Guild's reputation, and he could see the logic in that. All the bargaining power they had for their survival lay in their collective reputations, after all. Stay close to each other, keep others at a distance, because emotional ties are messy things. And never worry about the future, because every Gatekeeper knows how his life will end, anyway. Dying of old age was, generally speaking, a purely theoretical matter for a Gatekeeper. It had been a good life, in many ways. Laughing with Alp on the road to another spy mission, laying down the law to some overbearing district squire who was meddling in another's affairs, loving and leaving some young lass or laddie – again, the Guild was indifferent as to preference, as long as you didn't get emotionally attached – every now and then. Laugh. Fight. Help. Love. Die. Simple. He could see how Auric had come by that detached confidence that seemed to have been his defining characteristic – it came from knowing exactly who you were in this world and what your purpose was. And when Auric had crossed over, that fatalistic state of mind had helped him redefine his purpose. Save Al in this world. Help out in the war. Be kind to all and sundry as long as they didn't try to kill you. Remember to keep a sense of humour along the way, because what was the point of a long life if you were miserable? And if he survived all that, well then he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.
Back kick. Back kick. A spinning leap. Butterfly kick.
Ed just wished he could adopt that mindset as easily. However, not to flog a dead idiom, but from his point of view, he'd crossed all his bridges and the path beneath his feet had abruptly died away and faded into the underbrush. As it should have. He'd known that bringing Al back would require his life in exchange, and he'd been ready, willing and able. He'd made his peace with his decision. Said his goodbyes. Part of Winry's rant on the phone earlier had been about the letter he had mailed her the day he disappeared, asking her to take care of Al, telling her he was grateful to have had her in his life, and asking her to forgive him for leaving one last time. "You actually expected that letter to be enough?" she had shrieked tearfully. "Did it never occur to you how I'd feel? How Al would feel? For a genius, you're the biggest moron alive, Edward Elric!" It had apparently arrived at the same time as the telegram with the details of his disappearance and request for her presence at Al's bedside, and Winry had had a nervous breakdown on the doorstep. In front of the postman. Which she had never lived down, Risembool being a very small town. Oops. He winced mentally in chagrin – on hindsight and with the benefit of four years of maturity, it did seem a little brusque. But back then he'd been so focused on finishing it, on crossing "Get Al's body back" off his list of things to accomplish, and he had been so certain that it would end with his death, that he hadn't really given too much thought to what would happen afterwards. As the current situation with Mustang demonstrated all too clearly.
Elbow strike. Backfist. Side kick. Roundhouse kick. Spinning hook kick, high.
After the initial euphoria of wrangling his way past the Gate, of seeing Al, of finally giving that creepy Homunculus his comeuppance, it had seemed only natural to ride the wave of daring and adrenaline into Mustang's arms, because he had missed the bastard, missed arguing with him, missed sparring with him, missed the sight and sound and smell and taste and feel of him. He hadn't had time to worry about whether the sentiment was mutual. And there was no denying it…the man could kiss. Ed's knees went wobbly at the memory, which of course insisted on calling up older ones of that one night when he had taken his courage in both hands and decided that if he was going to die, he was going to live first. Die being the operative word here.
Damn it, he hadn't thought he would have to come back and face the man! The sixteen-year-old naïve alchemist in him was mortified and wondering what exactly that bastard thought of him. Sure, he seemed interested, and was being suspiciously kind, but you couldn't trust that manipulative bastard as far as you could throw him. The twenty-year-old veteran Gatekeeper in him was highly amused and quite willing to pick up where the sixteen-year-old had left off, cocksure in his certainty that the General was willing to be engaged. The mind games were all part of the fun, anyway – but there was that matter of honouring his contract, and Guild rules did specifically prohibit getting involved with a client. And the product of the two was developing a migraine trying to figure out how to deal with the dichotomy. At the moment, the best he had come up with was avoidance. Which, judging from Al's increasingly dubious glances, was not going to work much longer. And he'd agreed to swear the idiot in as Fuhrer next week anyway, which would mean having to stand before him and look him in the eye. He scowled accusingly at the punching bag before attacking it in a flurry of blows that somehow ended with a sai quivering in the middle of the bag, which hissed sadly as sand began to dribble out through the rip in its skin, and a couple of broken mirrors.
"Shit. Um. Al, a little help here?" Ed knew he could fix it himself, but didn't trust himself not to destroy a couple more things in his current state of mind.
Al sighed as he gave up on the pretence of working out and put his hands together to fix the mess before Major Hawkeye heard about it.
