Chapter Sixty-Three
Edward sat on their bed next to Roy as dawn crept closer, his fingers brushing over the fabric of the gloves he held. Roy was sleeping soundly beside him, and had been since they ran out of hot water the night before. Hazel was nowhere to be seen, likely wherever Roy had stashed him the previous day.
He tapped a finger restlessly against the gloves a moment before forcing himself to put them down on the nightstand. They'd do Roy no good if they went incorporeal for a time. Instead he reached back to grab his stuffed red panda in lieu of the normal pillow, hugging Garnet to himself and letting out a low breath as he looked over at Roy with a soft expression.
Only to smile just as softly as he noticed the man was now awake, watching him.
"Hi," Edward whispered, "you still have a few hours, if you want to sleep more."
Roy hummed, voice rough with sleep, "different idea," he yawned and slipped his arms from underneath the blankets to hold them out, "come here."
Edward's smile widened, a laugh catching in his throat as he happily went. Soon enough he was laying through Roy, admittedly, but the man's arms curled around them both anyway. "You really should get some more sleep."
"I can sleep more tonight." Roy whispered back as he closed his eyes again regardless. "Five more minutes."
Edward chuckled and closed his eyes as well, "five more minutes then."
If five minutes turned into another hour, Edward was hardly about to try and wake the man back up. So he laid there quietly with Roy, letting himself soak in the comfort that automatically came from being so close to the man.
Eventually though Roy did stir fully awake, and it was with regret that he got up for the day and headed to his bathroom. After tending to necessities in there, he washed up, grabbed his medical kit, and came back into the bedroom.
Edward had sat back up, "are you sure you don't want to call Maes for that one? It was a nasty gash."
"It's fine," Roy reassured with a faint smile as he stripped.
While Edward wasn't exactly capable of flushing, as memories of last night abruptly rushed forefront to his mind, he still forced his gaze down to Roy's leg with a swiftness that didn't go unmissed by the man he loved.
Roy was smirking as he began fiddling with the slanted scissors, his foot propped up on the bedspread. "Enjoying the view, love?"
"Don't get distracted," Edward told him instead, although wasn't wholly able to fight back a smile.
Roy chuckled and turned back to his task, and slipped the scissors into place before snipping.
Edward shuddered as he watched Roy thread the stitch out of his leg, until the only thing left to show from the wound was a pale pink line of new skin. It was after Roy had put his foot down and was closing up the medical kit that he raised his gaze to the man's face. "That's it, then."
Roy looked over, meeting Edward's silver eyes, and with a thin smile, nodded. "I'll get dressed, and then we'll leave."
Edward stiffened where he sat, watching as Roy went to grab a uniform, feeling as if his nonexistent heart was in his throat and hoping his voice sounded normal as he asked, "what do you want for breakfast?"
"A repeat of what I did for dinner last night wouldn't go awry." Roy admitted as he began to get himself dressed. "Anything heavier won't sit well, the adrenaline is already starting to kick in."
"Okay," Edward agreed quickly. This? This was something he could do, something to make himself feel even a slight bit in control at the moment.
"Edward," Roy called after the ghost quickly, turning to see Edward reemerge the slightest bit from the floor the ghost had begun to drop through. He smiled, "I love you."
Edward had wished many times to be able to hold Roy, to hug him, but never before had the desire and the knowledge that he couldn't, as much as he might wish it otherwise, felt like it could crush him. "I love you too," he whispered earnestly, before forcing himself to drop down through the floor before he lost complete control over trying to keep his unsettled nerves from his expression.
Roy stared after where the ghost had vanished for a moment, before drawing in a deep breath and turning his attention to getting dressed, making sure that everything down to his boot laces was perfect. He met Edward downstairs, forcing down his breakfast before checking on Hazel who he'd locked in the laundry room. Just in case, for the next few days he needed the squirrel out from underfoot. He could only imagine that Hazel sensed the tension in the air, because in a rare display of agreeableness, the squirrel didn't try to dart for freedom in the rest of the house.
They left the house, with Edward stopping to look back at it with uncertain eyes, before quickly following after Roy.
The drive to Headquarters was silent, although the entire time Roy had his hand resting palm up on the center console between them, with Edward's resting through it.
Roy returned the sedan and by all outward appearances as he made his way up to his office, he was acting like it was any other day. Edward couldn't discern any stress or even the anticipation that Roy had mentioned last night. It was honestly a bit unsettling to him, just how good a mask that Roy could wear, just how good a show the man could put on, that even he would have been fooled had he not known any better.
They reached the office complex before Roy showed any true emotion.
Roy took note that everyone he expected to be there was present, and he gave them a thin smile and a short nod as he made his way to his own office without pause, only saying to Riza in a low tone as he passed her desk, "tell Armstrong to begin."
Riza smoothly reached for her phone and dialed, speaking into it quietly when it picked up as Roy vanished inside his office.
Roy didn't take a seat at his desk, he only crossed over to the windows behind it, staring out down onto the grounds as he drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He saw the faint glimmer of Edward's silvery light come up next to him, but he didn't look over.
"I'm scared," Edward admitted softly beside the man, his tone apologetic.
Roy smiled faintly and looked over, meeting the ghost's gaze. "I know."
"What if it makes me fuck something up?" Edward asked worriedly, even as he felt the shame close in on him for the thought. For the knowledge he was actually even feeling this way.
"You won't." Roy told him in simple assurance, no trace of doubt in his voice, much less in his mind. "I know you won't."
"How could you possibly know that," Edward huffed, forcing his gaze away to stare out the window as well.
"Because it's you," Roy answered softly, "and you won't let being afraid stop you. Not from protecting me. Just like I wouldn't let it stop me from protecting you."
Any other day, Edward would have pointed out that he didn't need protection. He was already dead, after all. But this wasn't any other day, and so his only answer was to shift closer to Roy as he tried to settle his thoughts.
Not quite twenty minutes later, Alex Armstrong showed up at the prison which shared a wall with Laboratory Five.
It took the prison guards all of two seconds to decide that although they didn't have orders stating that the State Alchemist was expected, they also didn't have orders saying that he wasn't allowed to speak with his most recent capture. In those two seconds they had decided that they didn't really feel like making a call to confirm to higher ups, not when the towering mountain of a man was staring them down.
Once he was buzzed in, Armstrong wasted no time in marching his way to the correct cell block, the guard who was supposed to unlock the cell door for him trailing in his wake and panting to keep up.
"I'll show you to an interrogation room, sir." The guard said, once he'd managed to unlock the cell door and haul it open with an ear-splitting creak of un-oiled hinges.
"Not necessary." Armstrong declined, enthusiastically cracking his knuckles as he stared down the man in the cell who visibly shrank back. "This won't take long. Go."
The guard didn't argue, the only sound he made was that of footsteps hurrying away. None of them were honestly paid enough to argue with a State Alchemist, much less one so physically intimidating as the Strong Arm.
Alex was left alone in the dimly lit labyrinth of cells and their occupants, the lights that still worked humming and spluttering and flickering as they bathed the area in patchy yellowish light. Around him, he could feel eyes on him, hungry gazes thirsting to witness whatever violence he was about to inflict upon the common murderer that he'd caught about a month ago.
The common murderer himself, shackled at the hands and feet, and looking wraith-like from the sporadic and meager meals that the prisoners were served in this hellhole of a prison, was seemingly doing his level best to vanish into the floor. Gone was the rabid killer he'd once been.
Alex waited a moment, letting the tension rise in the cell block until he knew he had everyone's attention, and then he moved. Striding forward he yanked the prisoner up by the shirt collar, and ignoring the hands that instinctively tried to claw him off, the feet that tried to kick him away, and the very inventive cursing, he hauled the man out of the cell.
"Do you have any idea," Armstrong began in a loud, furious tone, "just how much damage you've done!"
He continued on with rather generic, increasingly loud, angry commentary until he found the proper wall. It didn't look at all special, but he knew it was the right one. This was the wall that connected to the Laboratory.
At that moment, Alex rounded on the prisoner, expression thunderous. "What was that?!"
"I didn't – " the man coughed out, struggling weakly like a worm from a hook as he dangled from Armstrong's grip, " – say anything!"
"Try again!" Alex demanded, and silently wondered if he was setting this guy up for a psychotic break. But honestly, given how this man had killed his victims, he didn't have much sympathy. He proceeded to toss the man away from him, towards the wall. Hard enough to look real, but not hard enough to actually cause damage aside from some, honestly, well-deserved bruises.
What followed was an impromptu beat down of the wall, wherein Alex did his utmost best to seem furious beyond control. Especially control of where his fists landed. Naturally, he did get in a few lighter jabs to the prisoner himself, but the majority of his handiwork soon caused the wall itself to collapse, along with part of the ceiling.
The entire thing took only less than a minute, and if Alex was perfectly content to leave the prisoner a bit stuck under some of the rubble, well, he doubted the families of this guy's victims would complain. So he strode away looking satisfied, and no one but him had to know that there was now no possibly easy way for Grand to escape through that wall. Any hidden passage had been caved in by now.
He at least had the good grace to act apologetic and a bit embarrassed for losing control of himself as dismayed guards swarmed in and around to assess the damage, but after what he'd just done so easily to a reinforced wall, no one dared try to lay a hand on him as he began to go back the way he'd come.
Within an hour of getting to Headquarters, Roy had his confirmation that Armstrong had pulled through.
There was always the risk that they'd send in an alchemist to repair the damage far quicker than a regular construction team could, but Roy was banking on Grand being far too concerned with more pressing and urgent matters to worry about the fact that a potential exit had been cut off through Armstrong apparently having a violent outburst towards a man that none of them could argue hadn't deserved it. The location of said outburst would more than likely be seen as coincidence, unfortunate, and entirely organic.
No, Grand had his own skin to worry about saving right now. He wasn't about to spare a thought to a wall just yet.
"One thing you never told me," Edward said as he sat cross-legged in the air, just above Roy's desk where the man was sitting and not even pretending to work. "When are we doing this? Broad daylight or tonight?"
Roy smiled as he leaned back, watching Edward contently. "As soon as it's gone dark. No specific time past that. Fuery and Breda need to finish up on their end and give Riza the all clear, and Havoc and Maes need to get to their positions. You and I will be leaving here sometime after Riza does. We need to give her enough of a head start that she can pick a good position for that beast of a sniper rifle she has, but we want it to be dark. That potential chimera seemingly patrolling the lab will have more limited eyesight in the dark, and I really want to avoid tangling with it. I don't need Grand realizing I'm there before I've even stepped foot inside the Lab."
"And Falman, he's still watching the Lab?" Edward double-checked.
"Yes," Roy confirmed, "and Alex will be joining him in that from a different position shortly, if he hasn't already."
"Okay," Edward breathed out, followed by him settling down onto the desk. "And we're not doing any work today?"
Roy smiled and shook his head just a bit, "it's work for a different man, now. Or, it soon will be."
"And Hawkeye is just going to let you get away with that, is she?" Edward's eyebrows rose.
"By the time she realizes, she won't need to care." Roy told him just a bit smugly, then shrugged. "As things stand, I wouldn't be able to devote proper focus anyway. My head isn't in the right place for office paperwork."
Edward met his gaze, silently contemplating everything a moment, before deciding to ask. "What sort of things will we be focusing on once you are Brigadier General? I can only assume it won't be being the Fuhrer's lapdog, like Grand has been all this time."
"Different sorts of paperwork," Roy admitted with a slight grimace, while at the same time knowing that once he reached his ultimate goal there would be no chance of ever escaping paperwork. Yet he did brighten as he added, "there's going to be a lot of travel required during certain times of the year. I'll need to go to other Headquarter locations, outposts, that sort of thing, to do assessments of the commanding staff officers."
Edward couldn't help but grin at the thought, eagerly leaning forward towards Roy. "I get to see more of the country? And we'll get paid to do it?"
"We?" Roy laughed, openly and without care to volume, he knew Riza was the only one left out there, and gone were the days he had to worry about keeping Edward a secret from her. "It's our paycheck now, is it?"
Edward huffed at him, "yes. I do half your paperwork, it's also mine."
Roy grinned widely and didn't bother trying to convince Edward any different. Because honestly, the ghost was rather right. Not even taking into account the fact that he'd happily and willingly provide for the ghost without a second thought. "Yes, we'll be able to travel more. I'll do my best to try and plan any travel dates around a good time for me to take vacation days as well, that way we can go explore for a while before we have to come back home."
Edward's mind was a flurry of delighted possibilities when Roy spoke again, the words causing his thoughts on vacations to come to an abrupt halt.
"But also a lot of figuring out how to get rid of the Fuhrer." Roy had added, a far more serious look on his face as he contemplated the logistics of the whole thing.
Edward's lips thinned and he tapped his fingers against his thigh a moment before saying quietly, "we'll discuss that once you're healed from this, should you be injured. He's going to be different. A lot different. And none of the others will possibly be able to help you."
Roy gave a soft huff of a laugh and tipped his head back to look up at the ceiling, "which really drives a complicated wedge into the fact that I'm going to want to get him out of the city, as far away from anyone else or any other collateral damage. He doesn't trust me, he has no reason to and he'd be a fool if he did. He won't exactly go alone."
Edward considered a moment before saying quietly, "let me worry about anything like someone else joining him. I only want your focus on that homunculus, and nothing else. Let me worry about dealing with anyone else he brings along. They won't see me coming, and I've learned that for the majority of people, an enemy they can't see is among the most terrifying. I'll have their complete attention."
"You know I won't want that," Roy couldn't help but sigh, even as he knew that given the probable situation, it would likely end up being the best course of action.
"And you know I won't care what you want," Edward mentioned firmly, a small smile playing on his lips. "We'll save that argument for later though, yeah?"
Roy considered Edward in silence a long moment, before a fond smile crossed his lips. "I don't know, every time we argue I'm pretty sure you end up getting your way and I end up apologizing for being an overprotective bastard."
Edward smiled slyly and gave a smug shrug of his shoulders. "Don't stop trying to argue with me, I enjoy winning."
Roy groaned in answer, causing Edward to laugh across from him. It was that laughter that, as the hours passed, Roy kept working on plying out of Edward, even if it was at his own expense. He didn't want Edward to dwell too closely on what was to happen today, not yet. Edward deserved to have a few more moments of reprieve from worry, and that, he felt, would also be reason enough on its own to convince Riza that paperwork was not what was essential while he was in the office today.
It was creeping towards mid-afternoon and Roy was sitting quietly at his desk watching Edward work when Riza knocked on the door and slipped inside.
"I've brought lunch." She declared as she walked two trays over.
"Joining us?" Roy queried as he noted the number of meals she was carrying and reaching out for one of the trays.
Riza gave him a bit of a nod.
Roy jerked his head towards the left side of the desk, "he's a bit sprawled out right now, lazy ghost. You won't be accidentally touching him over there."
Edward, who was indeed a bit sprawled out at the moment, jerked his head up from the cradle of his palm in order to glare frostily at Roy. "Are you implying that I am somehow smaller than the top of your desk?"
"I am not implying it, my love," Roy corrected as Riza made her way around the desk in question, and added with a wicked smirk, "I am confirming it."
Edward's eyes narrowed, before he suddenly sat himself up to turn towards where Riza had just settled down at the desk in a chair she'd pulled up. He was still holding his notepad and his pen, and he flipped to a blank page to begin writing.
Riza managed not to startle at the objects seemingly moving around of their own accord, and truth be told she was actually quite surprised at how quickly she'd begun to acclimate to the phenomena. Although, she supposed, knowing the cause behind it and already having an uncharacteristic amount of trust for Edward was helping significantly to desensitize her. But when the pen stopped its writing and the notepad was turned towards her, she jerked in surprise.
On it was written, 'please be safe.'
A smile slipped onto her face as she read the words, and looking up to where she felt that Edward's head might be, she nodded. "I will be. I promise. And you and I will have lunch together again when it's all over."
The remainder of the lunch conversation focused mostly on Riza quietly updating Roy on the rest of his team. Apparently Armstrong and Falman had divided and conquered for a more complete surveillance, Fuery was employing Breda to be an errand boy while he finished hacking into just about everything that could be of use, and Maes and Havoc were standing by for additional support to come in behind Roy. Riza herself had spent the weekend finding the ideal spot for her sniper nest, and was ready to start roosting in it as soon as the hour was right.
And when Roy had asked at Edward's behest if she felt her new exploding bullets would be able to bring down a chimera of the size and type they suspected it was, her smile would have sent chills through the ghost had he still been able to feel them.
Edward was grateful she was on their side.
Eventually Riza did leave, closing the door behind her again, and Edward turned back the page on his notepad.
"Why the extra circle?" Roy prompted curiously as he watched Edward tap the butt of the pen against the notepad with pursed lips and a frown.
Edward looked up at him through the silver bangs that had fallen across his face again and brushed them back behind his ear, "it's one of the few things I noticed that my dad would do with me. Before he left. I only figured out after he was gone that what he was doing was working," he paused, frowning and casting his gaze aside as he searched for the right words, "training wheels, I suppose you could say, into the circle. To make sure there wasn't a chance of me getting hurt."
Roy blinked, then blinked again. "You are going to use alchemy training wheels on me."
Not bothering to actually say anything, Edward merely arched both his brows in reproach as he stared the man down.
Roy only managed to last a few seconds before he was raising both hands in surrender. "Right, right. I'm sorry. I didn't think before I spoke."
Edward smiled at him, "I suspect you won't need them for long. However, I want no part in picking up pieces of you for surgeons to attempt reattaching. I'll redo the circle gradually, until there's no need for the extra control buffer. But you'll thank me later," he told him without doubt, "I can't protect you with alchemy myself. So I'm going to make sure you have the next best thing."
"An alchemy circle drawn by an overprotective ghost?" Roy filled in with a fond smile.
Edward met his gaze levelly, "an alchemy circle drawn by a son of Hohenheim. You have a vague idea of how good that made me, when I was alive. You honestly know nothing. But you will once I complete this and you try it out, because even with the training wheels, I'm drawing this for battle with a homunculus."
As Edward went back to fussing over the circle, Roy sat there watching in contemplative silence. Really, Edward was right, he barely knew anything about what the ghost had been capable of when he was alive. The fact that human transmutation had been something Edward had attempted as a child had admittedly given him some idea, but in fairness with all facts considered, that's all it was. An idea.
As the hours ticked on, it became more and more difficult for Edward to ignore the nerves that had begun forming a tight ball inside him, until finally he handed the notepad to Roy as the sun began to dip down past the roofs of the tallest buildings beyond the window behind Roy.
Roy locked the notepad back inside the desk.
"Riza hasn't left yet?" Edward queried in his best valiant attempt at a normal voice.
"She will have," Roy stared at the locked drawer a moment more before looking up to meet Edward's silver eyes, and stood. "We should be going."
Edward sucked in a breath he didn't need and couldn't feel, but made him a bit more settled all the same, and nodded as he floated up off the desk and into the air. He landed on the floor, hoping that the feel of pressure underneath his feet would help ground him, and he looked over to meet Roy's eyes when the man came up beside him with a silent question in his dark eyes. "I'm ready."
Roy nodded and offered the ghost a bracing smile, "you are."
The two of them departed Headquarters with Roy by all appearances acting as if it truly was any normal day. The man continued to act entirely normal as they walked until dusk had fallen and the streetlamps were beginning to flicker on, and then in the dark space between two such lamps, he ducked into an alleyway.
From there, Edward took to the air in order to keep up without having to run to do so. Not that Roy was running, but annoyingly the man's legs were longer, and Roy had significantly picked up the pace. He kept up without question or complaint and didn't speak a word until Roy finally came to a stop.
Out of the darkness and across a deserted street, stood a building that on first glance appeared to have seen better days. The walls were pitted, the grounds behind the rusted iron gates were overgrown, and part of the roof seemed to be crumbling in towards the interior. It was altogether a rather unimpressive structure to be housing what it was, but that was the appeal of using it. No one would ever think that the Fuhrer was forcing Grand into making a philosopher's stone in this dump.
The street and the sidewalks were silent, with no trace of anyone around. It was eerie, to Edward, seeing that and still knowing that somewhere nearby were Maes and Havoc, and Falman and Armstrong. It was eerie, but also impressive that he couldn't seem to spot them.
"Stick right with me, no deviations." Roy murmured under his breath, not taking his eyes from the building even as he shifted his hand out towards Edward's own in order to brush his fingers through the silvery light of his beloved's hand.
Edward looked up at him with resolve, "I will. So don't worry about me. And Roy?"
Roy chanced a look back down at Edward.
"I love you." Edward told him in a whisper. "You can do this."
Roy knew he could, he'd always known, but for some reason hearing Edward say it in this moment was something he treasured deeply. He smiled, "I love you too, wife."
Edward gaped at him as Roy looked back towards the building. "Husband," he hissed. "And I'm not even that either!"
Roy managed to choke back a laugh, and refocusing, gave a decisive nod. "Come on, darling."
Edward darted after Roy, and together they crossed from the alleyway to the opposite side of the street in a matter of seconds. While Roy made short work of melting the lock off the gate and yanking it aside enough so that he could slip through, Edward had already gone inside the grounds, looking around on high alert and with quite a bit of suspicion.
"Ed," Roy hissed under his breath, already moving towards the door.
Edward frowned, ignoring Roy, as he slowly floated in deeper onto the grounds, his eyes trained on the weeds that were crunched into the dirt and gravel. He tilted his head, eyes narrowing, before he looked over at Roy quickly. "Not the main door!"
Roy paused, torn between the need to get inside and out of the open, and Edward's shouted warning.
As it turned out, the pause served him well enough, as the creature that had been making the tracks that Maes had warned of now crashed through the main door. Roy stumbled backwards a step before finding his feet and darting out of the way of a steel-reinforced main door that had gone sailing towards his head.
The two of them barely had time to take in the sight of a decidedly not chimera, but instead a towering suit of armor wielding an axe, and that had begun to laugh in perverse delight, when a shot rang out.
Roy shielded his eyes as the helmet and its glowing eyes exploded into shrapnel.
Edward thumped to the ground, mouth open wide as he slowly walked up to Roy's side to say, "well, that was anticlimactic for us. Remind me not to piss her off."
Roy smirked and was about to respond, when instead the both of them jumped out of their respective skin when the suit of armor began to pick itself up off the ground. Sans helmet. "The fuck…" Roy trailed off, before snapping his fingers together and lighting the suit up in searing flames as it began to stagger towards them, axe raised.
It took only a few seconds, but it felt far longer, for the metal to cave in on itself, melting into a pile of red-hot liquid on the ground.
"I retract my words," Edward offered out weakly as he stared at the molten pool, "everything has been very climactic. No need for additional danger or excitement."
Roy snorted.
"It was… hollow?"
"We'll figure out how that was possible later," Roy muttered and moved towards the main entrance once again, now wide open to them.
Edward darted after him without hesitation, but did cast a bewildered look back to the steaming liquid in the moments before he followed Roy inside.
The interior immediately before them was a small room covered in dust and cobwebs, but with a defined path of boot tracks through the dust that led off to a side door, beyond which a low yellow glow of a light could be seen.
"Follow the lights?" Edward guessed as he glanced around, before noticing the security cameras and pointing at them. "Did Fuery…"
"Fuery will have taken control of the live feed to start recording on his end, and looped any monitors that were otherwise connected." Roy muttered, "which means I'm probably going to have to end up coming clean to him about you."
"We'll deal with that later this week." Edward told him and started for the side door that seemed to be the one most used.
Roy wasn't exactly about to argue that, and he followed after Edward closely.
The hallway beyond the door was markedly in use, lit by sporadic bulbs buzzing from above their heads. Together they crept down it quickly, following the numerous scuffs in the layer of dust. Neither of them said a word to each other, too focused on making sure they could hear any sign of anyone who may try to sneak up on them. The suit of armor had been plenty of additional excitement for them both. It took them nearly five minutes of doggedly following the path through the dust, having gone through a seeming labyrinth of hallways and more dimly lit rooms, before they seemed to descend towards the basement level of the derelict laboratory.
Roy paused, hand on the door as he drew in a deep breath and looked through the small latticed window near the side of the door. The staircase down was dark, but he could see the faintest glow of light down there.
Edward stood beside him, watching him closely. He could see nothing but resolve in Roy's expression, could see nothing but steely determination in his gaze. He hadn't expected that in this moment, any fear would be washed away. Replaced instead by the same, and by a surge of trust that he had in this man that coupled with a flare of pride. Perhaps, deep down, he was still scared, but in this moment, watching Roy, he felt calm.
"Keep watching me like that and I'll think you're about to propose to me." Roy whispered, managing to keep his expression serious until Edward's hand swatted through him.
"Roy!" Edward scolded, purely on principle. "This is not the time and definitely not the place!"
Roy shot him a smirk and eased the door open, cringing as the hinges squealed. "What are the chances you think he didn't hear that?"
Exasperation filled Edward's expression.
Roy figured there was nothing for it now, as far as sneaking up on the Brigadier General. And so squaring his shoulders he jerked his head for Edward to follow, and began to make his descent.
The light grew the further down the stairs they went. The darkness soon being cut by the glow of bright white lights at a workstation, but more so, by the reddish glow of numerous large cylinders filled with red liquid.
"I've been wondering if you'd show." Said the figure hunched over the workstation.
Roy gave a bored-sounding hum as he crossed further into the basement, forcing himself not to look as Edward moved off towards the cylinders and a transmutation circle painted onto the cement floor. "I never keep my fans waiting too long."
Grand shot an annoyed side-eye back over his shoulder to his fellow State Alchemist who prowled closer to him moment by moment with a gleam in his dark eyes that Grand remembered all too well from their past. "You have a lot of annoying habits that you really should break, Mustang. One of these nights," he sneered as he straightened from the workstation, "they're going to get you killed."
Edward's startled gasp was drowned out by the sound of the gunshots, and before he could stop himself he'd whirled around to see a wall of flames explode upwards, bullets raining into it but melting before they could fully pass through. But it was the sound of a metallic grinding that caused him to shift his focus onto Grand, and the sight of Grand that caused him to feel faint.
The Brigadier General was disappearing into a shell-like armor of multiple, massive rifles and outright cannons.
"Roy! He's – "
"I know!" Roy called out over the roar of the fire and the sudden ear-splitting echo of fucking cannon fire, and quickly readjusted the wall of defense flames to compensate even as several shots whizzed past his arm when he'd been too slow to adjust in time. "Don't worry about me! Take care of that stuff!"
Edward swore and whirled back around.
Roy chanced a quick glance to be sure Edward hadn't deviated again, then raised his other hand and snapped.
The edges of his defensive flame wall exploded towards Grand in a rain of firebombs, crashing in around the Brigadier General relentlessly as the flame wall vanished bit by bit. Used up in an attack that was keeping Grand relatively blind and unable to fire. Knowing it wouldn't last long though, Roy snapped another flame wall into existence just as Grand emerged like some sort of sadistic turtle from his shell of firearms and opened fire once more.
Roy wasn't sure if Grand was using one of the old stones made by Marcoh or not. He wouldn't be able to ascertain the extent and progress of the work that Grand had managed to complete until he was able to speak to Edward, and that sure as fuck wasn't going to be happening easily just now. So he knew his only course of action was to keep defending, and keep attacking, and hopefully both wear down the stone Grand was using as well as cause him to get a bit too hot in that armor shell of his.
The basement they were in was old, and structurally not that sound as it was, and it was certainly not built for an alchemy battle between two alchemists with very dangerous talents.
Edward yelped as he dodged some scaffolding that gave way from above, riddled as it was with bullet holes, and he shot a glare over at the pair. "Don't mind me," he grumbled as he turned his attention back to the cylinders filled with the red liquid he knew could only be the material necessary to create the philosopher's stones, and the transmutation circle on the floor he had rather quickly realized was meant to be used to transmute a stone.
And if his father was right, and about alchemy he usually was, the fact that there was so much material meant that the true philosopher's stone hadn't been completed yet. But, given how many cylinders contained red liquid suspended inside them… the number of souls needed wasn't too far off.
Roy was busy now in full just trying to fend off the fact that Grand had switched to just all out cannons, and was shelling him with enthusiasm. It was taking far more fire to push back the attacks, and leaving him not much opportunity to attack. Which he could take one of two ways, either the stone Grand was utilizing was running out of power and the man was panicking, or Grand was getting tired.
Either way, Roy would take it. He may be unable to attack at the moment, but he was in far better physical health than Grand right then, and his endurance to focus and control his alchemy was a far sight better than Grand even on one of Grand's better days.
He just had to outlast the Brigadier General.
Edward was hurrying around to each cylinder and vat of red liquid, one by one, activating the power to the machines. The liquid that had sat calmly was now beginning to rumble and bubble in its vessel, the reddish glow of light beginning to grow stronger the more power switches he flipped.
It was that increased light that caused him to notice the flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, from a doorway behind Roy he'd not paid attention to, and who neither Grand nor Roy were near.
"Roy, get down!"
Roy knew better than to disobey those words, and he spun and dropped to one knee, still maintaining his wall of flames even as thin, fabric-covered spikes of some sort drove into the cement floor just next to him. He maintained his wall of flames even as one of those spikes yanked out of his shoulder and recoiled back towards the shadowy figure of a woman standing in the doorway.
Edward stared in horror as he watched liquid dribble along the floor back towards where the woman stood. That… that was blood. That was Roy's blood. He jerked his head over to look at Roy, and while outwardly Roy was giving no sign he was injured, he wasn't surprised the man was concealing it.
But the realization of how she could have done that, as Edward watched those spikes slide back into slender fingers as the woman stepped into the light of the basement, chilled him.
"Fuck," Edward whispered.
Roy drew in a settling breath, ignoring the sticky sensation of his blood running hot and wet down his arm, and keeping his focus on the strange woman, he shifted so that he could snap together another wall of flames to try and keep her at bay, or at least blinded to where he was, as well as keep at bay the artillery fire that hadn't ceased this entire time.
"Think, Ed, think…" Edward whispered to himself as he watched her stalk towards the fire, frantically digging through his memories of everything his father had told him about homunculi.
Because there was no other explanation for what he'd just seen her do, and honestly? He was a fool for not having expected that the Fuhrer, a homunculi himself, wouldn't have been working with another one.
He didn't have her bones, that was for damn sure, so he just had to make sure she died enough times. But with Roy also needing to keep Grand back…
The glow of the last cylinder of red liquid finally reaching full power somehow caught his eye, caused his racing mind to quiet as he looked at it. His silver eyes growing thoughtful for a brief moment, then narrowing.
"Buy me a few minutes!" Edward shouted over the roar of the flames and the rapid-fire artillery as he hurried to where he'd seen the cans of leftover paint stashed.
Roy didn't chance a glance to see what Edward was up to, only rolled his eyes as beads of sweat rolled down his forehead. "Like I really have another option right now," he hissed, and swore under his breath as through the flames, those same fucking spikes shot out at him, causing him to throw himself fully to the ground.
His wall of fire jostled as a result, and several overcompensatingly large bullets whizzed over him, and must have struck the strange woman, because he heard a rather satisfying – to him – scream. But he quickly got both walls of flames up again, even pushing them outward a bit as he scrambled to his feet.
If he played his cards right, he might be able to get the she-devil to spike Grand.
Edward was darting around the alchemy circle already painted on the floor as fast as he could paint while still getting the lines clean. The last thing he needed was to fuck up his plan because he got sloppy. He trusted Roy to hold his own, so he needed to focus. Especially considering this was purely theoretical.
He only hoped it would work. It should work.
So he painted a new alchemy circle, one far more complex, with far more layers, and, if it worked, capable of reversing the power of a philosopher's stone and rendering all of the material to create another which resided in the cylinders, inert.
Edward forced himself to take a moment and double check his work.
"Right then," he whispered, and wholly banking on his theory that the power of the red, liquefied souls alone would be able to activate the transmutation circle in conjunction with one of the symbols he'd painted, he backed up to the cylinder nearest him.
He rested his hand on the lever which controlled the valve.
"Roy?!"
Roy jerked his head around to where Edward was. He was floating next to one of the cylinders, his silver figure glowing a bit red in the light from the red matter of an incomplete philosopher's stone.
"This won't hurt you!"
Roy had no fucking idea what that meant, but he didn't exactly have time to ask as he was forced to dive and somersault out of the way when the strange woman, a homunculus he'd long begun to suspect, walked through his wall of fire, completely unrecognizable as anything but a human-shaped lump of charcoal still smoldering at the core, and lunged for him with an unearthly shriek.
Edward whipped his attention back frantically to the cylinder, but in doing so, his gaze caught on one of the complex transmutation circle he'd painted. On one symbol in particular. And an emotion he'd never felt before, and couldn't describe, settling over him as something his father had told him not too long ago came back to him, and he bowed his head.
It was strange, feeling so weightless, when he was already nothing but an apparition. It was strange to feel such sadness envelope him, even as resolve firmed his hand around the lever.
Looking back over his shoulder, Edward saw Roy manage to blast back the homunculus and send a fiery barrage at Grand, and the rush of affection was nearly enough to stagger him.
He really did love that man.
Edward pushed the lever.
As the red liquid began to drip from the nozzle, Edward looked back over his shoulder again at Roy. He smiled.
The instant the first drop of red liquid hit the transmutation circle, it lit up in a blinding flash of white and blue light, electricity arcing around it violently. The unexpected flare of light caused not only Grand and Roy, but the homunculus as well, to pause. All three turning their attention to the activated transmutation circle, but only one of them able to see who had activated it.
Roy's eyes met Edward's silver ones, and somehow, in an instant, the way Edward was looking at him so softly, he knew. It felt like ice water had doused him, despite the lingering oppressive heat from his flames. "Edward, no!" Roy screamed, lunging for the ghost even as the initial shockwaves sent him flying backwards and to the floor where he impacted hard enough to force the air from his lungs and his vision to spark with color. Yet desperation sent him into another attempt to lunge for Edward.
The walls of the room exploded outward from the sheer power they could not contain, the homunculus screaming as the Stone inside of her was reduced to ash and her body following, and just as Basque Grand with his life being so linked with a Stone in that moment fell to the floor as nothing more than an incredibly injured mortal, Edward chanced a last glance back at Roy.
Hoping, beyond hope, that the man would understand.
That he had done enough.
That he would be forgiven.
Roy couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, could only stand there in those first, horrifically real seconds as Edward vanished from sight in a burst of pure white light. And then he was running, stumbling forward so quickly he nearly fell, until he did fall, collapsing where Edward had been with a raw, wordless scream as he swept his hands over the floor frantically as if he could find the ghost there upon it.