Outside the window, Ashley watches the barn burn. The fire keeps flaring up through holes in the roof, out the broken sides. It can't burn as freely as it wants to because of the rain, but that probably means that they're not in any danger of the house catching fire.
Lightning lights up the yard, followed by a crash of thunder that makes her startle.
"How bad is it?" Agent Rossi asks her when she draws her attention back to his wound.
It's a gut wound and had bled a lot. She doesn't like either of those things, but the only thing she can really do is keep it clean. At least the bleeding has slowed and Rossi is still conscious.
"Hard to tell," she says honestly. "I'll feel better when we can get you to a doctor." She lifts the pad of paper towels away from it to see it's just oozing.
"If Roy wakes up, he can probably cauterize it," Hughes offers from where he's cleaning Mustang's face.
"You'd trust him to cauterize an internal wound?" Dr. Reid asks, and he sounds like he's a little on edge. "Maybe I can use the stone…"
"I wouldn't," Hughes interrupts. "I'm not the alchemist here, but the only alchemist I've ever heard of using alchemy to heal was an actual trained doctor. I wouldn't risk it unless he's in imminent danger."
"But you'd let Mustang cauterize it?" Dr. Reid challenges.
Hughes looks over at him, unusually solemn. It seems wrong to Ashley, like a mark of how messed up everything is. Maes Hughes shouldn't be solemn like this. "Yeah, I'd trust Roy to do that. His control is pinpoint."
Agent Prentiss and Detective LaMontagne come back in with bowls and more towels.
"Hot water," Agent Prentiss says.
"Probably should boil some too," Ashley says, thinking aloud.
"Good idea," Agent Prentiss nods. She's looking a little shocky. Not that Ashley blames her. Watching Mustang burn Kimblee alive… A chill goes through Ashley. She'll think about it later. It can be something to discuss with her therapist, hoping she doesn't give the poor woman a new set of nightmares.
To distract herself, she takes one of the towels and dips it in the water while Detective LaMontagne sets the other bowl next to Hughes. She sets aside the pad of paper towels she'd been using to try to clean the wound with the hot water. Agent Rossi hisses, but it doesn't bleed much worse.
There are tiny wounds all around the larger puncture, like shrapnel. For better or worse, it looks like only one penetrated deeply.
"Reid," Agent Prentiss says with a particular tone that attracts Ashley's attention. "I think the danger with alchemists is past. I think you should let Ashley hold onto the stone."
If she hadn't been listening before, she's certainly listening now. "Wait, me?" she asks.
"I'm the only one here who actually knows how to use it," Dr. Reid points out calmly. "It would be useless in Seaver's hands."
Ashley hears the defensiveness in his voice, the resistance. He's holding himself closely, something about his posture reminds her of an addict.
"Spencer," Detective LaMontagne says, a little firm but still gentle, and Reid's head whips around to him. "Why do you still need the stone? The only alchemist we have left is Mustang."
"And if we need protection from him?" Dr. Reid demands, but he seems to be grasping at straws.
Hughes snorts. "If you need protection from Roy, you're already screwed. You weren't able to do more than hold off Kimblee." He turns his attention back to cleaning off Mustang's face. She can't see very well from where she's kneeling, but it looks like it's mostly blood.
"How is he?" she asks, trying to diffuse the tension.
Sighing, Hughes puts his own pad of paper towels aside. "Most of the scratches look superficial. Not sure about the eye though," he admits with a frown. "I'm barely competent with field medicine. I don't really want to touch his eye. I think he might have a concussion though. When I checked his other eye, the pupil was dilated." He then holds up his arm so the room can see his wrist glowing that same ruby red of the stone, the same red that had danced over the barn as Reid had used it. Ashley thinks she hates that color. "I don't really want to try and wake him up if he's communicating with Edward, though."
"He was certainly quick to burn Kimblee alive," Dr. Reid says, almost accusatory, as if eager to have a target. "I guess that's what specializing in flame alchemy means, huh?"
The tension in the room is suddenly thick enough to cut with a knife. It had to come up. They had to talk about it. People just don't go around burning other people alive. The people who do? Those are some of the people that the BAU are meant to track down.
Hughes dips the towel in the rapidly cooling water and carefully wipes Mustang's face again, moving his hair out of the way to see more clearly. "Yes," he says. "That's what specializing in flame alchemy means."
"That's why you pulled the gun on him," Agent Rossi says, watching him closely. "You knew what he was capable of. You know how dangerous he is if he goes rogue."
"I do," Hughes says, sounding resigned. "I think maybe you're finally starting to understand what alchemists are. Particularly State Alchemists. They are the front line of force for the Amestris State Military. They're human weapons, and Roy was one of the most terrible." He strokes Mustang's hair as though it hurts him that Mustang was the monster.
Maybe it does.
"So the stone doesn't go to him," Detective LaMontagne says.
Shaking his head, Hughes says, "Roy won't take it if there's another choice. He doesn't really need it anyway. He was dangerous enough when he just had his flame alchemy. Before I died, he couldn't just clap and do alchemy like he can now."
"So basically, he's a war criminal," Agent Rossi says, sounding tired.
Hughes laughs, a humorless sound. "We all were. We signed up for a military with a hidden agenda and we didn't have much choice but to follow orders or go to jail. Someone like Roy would have been killed, I think, if he hadn't toed the line, followed orders. I told you we decided to change the system from the inside out."
"That doesn't usually work," Dr. Reid points out softly, as if repeating something he had said before.
"Military dictatorship," Hughes replies with a shrug. "I don't have all the details of what happened, but I believe in Roy. I believed that he could do it." He wipes some more blood away, being careful of the eye. "I still believe he can. If Edward is by his side… I believe in it more than ever." He falls quiet for a moment, and at least the tension isn't as terrible as it was.
Dr. Reid paces, seeming agitated. "You really believe a man who is willing to burn people alive is the best choice you have?"
Hughes meets his eyes with a flat glare. "If he were like Kimblee, rejoicing in his destruction, celebrating the horrors he participated in, I'd put a fucking bullet in his head and end it. The Roy I know would want me to. I'm not the only failsafe he had, to make sure he didn't go power crazy, to make sure that he stayed on the right path."
Ashley doesn't have an answer for that, and it seems like no one else really does either. They don't live in a military dictatorship, and they honestly can't relate to what that might be like, what options they might have.
She can see Dr. Reid chewing on his lip, but he steps over to Ashley. She opens up her hand and isn't surprised when Dr. Reid drops the stone into it.
"I think this might be better kept by someone who can't use it," Dr. Reid says, though it looks like saying it aloud pains him.
The stone is solid when Ashley closes her palm around it, but it feels bizarrely light, like it's maybe made of plastic. It's also warm to the touch, and she has no idea if that's residual warmth from Dr. Reid's hand or if it's just part of the stone. She doesn't really want to find out, but she doesn't like touching it. Looking into it, she feels like she can hear Kimblee's screams in her head again, only multiplied, like she's hearing a dozen or more voices crying out in pain.
It makes her skin crawl, and she shoves it deep into a pocket. Once it's not touching her skin, the screams in her head seem to quiet. Heart racing, she tries to focus on Agent Rossi's injury, tries to forget those screams. She doesn't know how Dr. Reid could stand to hold it. If anyone else notices that her hand shakes when she dips a clean part of the towel in the now mostly-cool water, they don't say anything about it.
"No offense, Mr. Hughes," she says, "but when Mustang or Elric figure out how to get everyone home? I really, really hope that they take their alchemy with them."
Hughes chuckles, but again, there's no real humor in it. It's the kind of laugh someone makes when the option is to laugh or cry and crying isn't really an option. "I don't blame you, Agent Seaver. I don't blame you at all."
The storm lasts most of the night. Water is eventually boiled, wounds cleaned and bandaged to the best of everyone's abilities. From what little Ashley gets to see, it doesn't look good for Mustang's eye, but she doesn't make an effort to get closer. Today has given her enough nightmare fuel; there's no good reason to go and add more to it unless it's actually necessary.
The stone stays warm in her pocket, and Dr. Reid still seems agitated, but he doesn't ask for it back. She doesn't know what it costs him to stay away from her because she's pretty sure he almost asks at least three times, but he doesn't. Ashley thinks that maybe she should be proud of him, but it feels condescending, and, honestly, she's too emotionally worn out to be anything other than relieved.
They take turns keeping watch over Agent Rossi and Mustang and getting naps. The naps leave them all grumpy and irritable, but they have all done this kind of shift sleeping before, and they know it's better than no sleep at all. Fortunately, neither of them start showing signs of either infection or fever.
When the barn finally gives up the ghost and collapses into a pile of smoldering rubble, they all jump. The stone wall that Dr. Reid had created, the one that had compromised the roof, follows on the heels of the rest of the building. Ashley's just relieved they're not going to have to explain where that wall came from, though there's another one on the grounds. She doesn't think about explaining that.
Detective LaMontagne's phone is the first one that finally manages to get through the storm as it tapers off, and he immediately calls for an ambulance and the fire department. They probably don't have to worry about the barn catching anything else on fire, but better safe than sorry.
Hughes uses a bandage to wrap up Mustang's wrist, and they all hope that by the time a doctor gets around to checking it, the glow has stopped. No one knows how to explain it, and they're probably all too exhausted to try to come up with any even somewhat reasonable explanation.
Ashley goes with Agent Rossi in the first ambulance.
"Thank you," Agent Rossi tells her as they start the ride to the big hospital that's over an hour away.
She looks at him, surprised. "For what?" she asks.
"Keeping a cool head through this." He squeezes her hand.
"That's what we do," she says.
"Eh…" Agent Rossi draws out the sound skeptically, and it makes her smile. "What we've been through the last few days… it's above and beyond."
Ashley takes a deep breath that lifts her shoulders before letting it out. "We're not out of the woods yet," she says.
"Not yet," Agent Rossi says. "But hopefully soon." He settles back and closes his eyes, but he keeps a grip on her hand, and Ashley won't begrudge him a little sleep now.
They're not out of the woods yet, but she hopes they're closer than not.