Chapter three

Riza was panicking inwardly.

She was mad.

Completely, utterly MAD.

Yet here she was, waiting calmly... or so it seemed... to meet her new charges. Where the time had gone since her coffee with her boss and until now, she really had no idea. He had left after fifteen minutes, Riza had found some pillows and had lain down on the couch, only to find birds chirping and to have sunlight blinding her after what had seemed to be mere seconds.

And now here she was, waiting anxiously to meet the Elric brothers.

Then they came, Alphonse staring at his feet, Edward glaring at her, the latter daring her to even look at him differently. What she immediately noticed was that neither of the boys looked to be particularly tall for their ages.

"Here you are, Ms Hawkeye. This is Edward and Alphonse Elric."

"'Miss?' So you don't have a husband? Is that how they're trying to fix me now?" Edward demanded, scowling at Riza and at the smiling thirty-something brunette in the brown sweater that had brought them to her.

Riza extended her left hand towards the boy, having met plenty of kids that had been acting just like him. After all, it was more or less in her job description. "Hello, Edward, my name is Riza Hawkeye."

"I see they warned you about me," he said, eyeing her left hand, not grasping it. "The one-armed freak."

"Edward, believe me, I do not see you as anything but an incredibly brave boy. And I am very sorry about your loss." She looked at them both as she said it.

"Well, I'll leave you two with Ms Hawkeye," the smiling woman said and moved away, leaving them in the corridor alone.

"I'm not gonna shake your hand, so you may as well just drop it. You're just gonna want to get rid of me anyway. You said 'yes' because you pity us, but once you discover how shitty I am, you're just gonna leave us again like the rest of them."

"Edward, I do not believe you to be shitty. I have yet to meet a single child that I would even consider to call that."

"Well, congratulations! And what exactly do you work with that brings you in contact with these un-shitty children?"

"I'm a police officer."

At that, Alphonse looked up at her with fear. "You're not taking us to him?"

"No, of course not. You two will be coming home with me. I'm afraid I don't have a car yet, so we'll have to walk," she told them kindly.

"Yet?" Ed looked up at her suspiciously.

"I only moved here yesterday. I thought you two could help me find out where things should go over at the flat, but first we'll be stopping for ice cream, how does that sound?" She wasn't about to tell them that her getting a car would be miles off into the future with how her economic situation was turning out to be. She didn't exactly want them to feel like they were unwanted and unpractical. And definitely not have them thinking that she had only taken them in out of pity. They weren't objects to be moved around like a pair of chess pieces.

"Thank you, Ms Hawkeye," Alphonse whispered, now back to looking down at his feet.

"Please, call me Riza."

Alphonse gave a single, barely visible nod, while Ed seemed to not hear it at all and was just glaring at her.

She was fairly certain that this was going to be a lot more work than she had originally thought. But with their mother gone in such a way and their stepfather in prison, that was hardly surprising. Their files just seemed to have left out quite a bit of detail. Well, Riza was just going to have to be patient and more stubborn than these boys, that was all.

"Do you guys have any luggage?" Riza asked.

In response, Alphonse left down the corridor behind him and returned quickly with a blue bag thrown over his right shoulder.

"I can take that for you if you want," Riza offered.

Alphonse still didn't look at her as he handed her the bag. It wasn't heavy and Riza had a feeling that it merely contained a change of clothes for both boys and their pyjamas and jackets, as well as their toiletries and a second pair of shoes.

"Well, I suggest that we get going then. There's an ice cream parlour a five-minute walk from here."

Ed was back to just glaring at her as the boys followed her outside.

"I'm afraid that the flat will be rather cramped with the three of us, but we'll make do. You two will get the bedroom while I'll sleep on the living room couch. It's about twenty minutes from here."

"Why are you single? I thought you needed a steady partner to be able to qualify as a foster home?" Ed kept talking in his annoyed, bitter voice as he said it.

She felt her stomach clench slightly. "Because my ex-husband decided to leave me little over a month ago. We were registered as a foster home before that, and I was still in the system, which is how they found me." Riza had more than enough training with talking to people who acted as Ed did and she was just going to patiently answer their questions as they came up, but without rising to Edward's taunts.

Patience was key.

"He did, huh." Ed seemed like he was frustrated by his lack of ability to cross his arms over his chest. "That pretty much explains it... They think we're gonna bond over the way that your husband wronged you, and because Barry definitely did that to Mom, you can 'relate to our trauma' or some other bullshit... Then they just think that you're gonna be therapeutic for us cos you understand how 'traumatic it must have been for us cos of your profession...' Am I wrong?"

"Do you know Roy Mustang?" Alphonse asked quietly, obviously trying to avoid Ed scaring her away.

"Yes. He's my new boss. I'm a detective sergeant and I'm his new partner. And as for your question, Ed, then yes, that is the general idea. However, that part of the reasoning doesn't matter to me much. You're not objects, but a pair of kids that need a new place to live, and so I said I'd do it."

Ed scoffed and glared without saying anything.

"C-could you thank Mr Mustang for saving Brother?" Al asked in barely more than a whisper.

"Of course I can. You can thank him yourself on Monday if you'd like, he'll be picking me up to give me a lift to work." She spoke kindly whilst Ed kept his distrustful glare on her.

"N-no. Please just do it for me, Riza."

"Very well, I will."

"Thanks."

No matter how much she tried to get the brothers to talk after that, every single attempt was unsuccessful. She still kept trying to engage them in conversation throughout their ice cream cones, until Ed suddenly slammed his fist down on the table the second he was done eating so that his hand was free.

"Okay, lady! Just exactly what are you trying to pull here?! We don't want you! Just get the hell away from us!"

The man behind the counter came over to them. "Is everything all right here?"

"No! This lady is trying to make us live with her and is bribing us with ice cream!" Ed said angrily.

Riza sighed and pulled out her identification card. "I know how that sounds, sir, but believe me, I'm a police officer and I have only just picked these boys up because I have become their foster mother."

The man took the ID card from her, read it and handed it back to her with a frown. "Very well, Sergeant, good luck."

"You're not my mother and you have no right to call yourself that!" Ed shouted at the lady. They had got a damned policewoman to take care of them. Control them more like it. They thought he was a delinquent no doubt. Well, Ed was gonna make her life hell for this. He didn't want a new parent. Nobody could replace Mom and with what Barry did…

Ed felt the space where his arm should have been starting to ache just at the thought. He gripped what little remained of his right shoulder by reflex. Everybody was staring at him because of his missing limb. He wouldn't have done anything differently had he been in the same situation again, but now people were always looking at him funny. Because now he was different.

"Edward, I am not trying to force you to see me as your parent. I am simply giving you and your brother a home and will be there to talk if you ever want to. I only want to help." She spoke kindly and patiently just like everyone else did in the beginning.

But then they would stop. They had seen that for themselves. All of them had just stopped.

"Well screw you, because I don't want your help! I don't need it!" Ed didn't want anybody to help him. Six other people had said they'd wanted to do that, only to leave them after a few weeks, and before that, there had only been Mom. Barry had said he wanted to help them too, to be a good father, and look at what he had done.

Ed didn't need any more help like that.

And Mom had never talked about helping them, she had just been Mom. She had never been their parent out of the goodness of her heart. She had just been Mom.

And he missed her.

This would never have happened if it hadn't been for that bastard Hohenheim. If he hadn't left, then Mom wouldn't have needed to move to East City when Ed had been three because she had needed a job. They wouldn't have lived in that small flat above their flower shop and she wouldn't have met Barry two years later. She wouldn't have married him three years after that.

And he wouldn't have killed her two months ago.

Al and him wouldn't have kept being treated like they were contaminated because of what they'd been through... Because they had been living with a murderer for more than three years and so it made people scared of them... And because Ed had lost his arm.

And now they were being taken in by a damned police officer. Probably because of Ed. Because he was no doubt a delinquent. Because he had punched one of their previous foster fathers because he had tried hugging him while he had been having a nightmare and Ed had thought that it had been Barry trying to kill him. And the man had got angry with him because he had thought that Ed had done it on purpose because he hadn't liked Mr Wells. And Ed hadn't liked him back because he hadn't known him, but he had never meant to punch him. But that hadn't mattered because Ed had just been a hopeless, one-armed freak.

And still was.

And so they had been sent away again.

It just showed how nobody but Mom had understood them, but she was gone.

She was gone because of their fake father.

She was gone because of Hohenheim too.

So now the Social Services people had given up on giving them fathers.

Ed didn't want another father.

He didn't want another parent.

Because nobody could ever replace Mom.

And Ed had been fooled twice by people who had been calling themselves his father. First with Hohenheim who had just left and then with Barry who'd been pretty cool, he had thought, and Mom had cared deeply about him. And Ed had thought that Barry had loved her too. He had liked Barry and had been happy for Mom. Barry had helped them with their homework and Ed had thought it had been kind of cool that he had been a butcher.

But then he had butchered Mom.

And he had attacked Ed.

Edward was standing in the kitchen with Al, hearing Barry coming home from work and greeting Mom just like he always did. But then she screamed and Ed looked out of the kitchen door to see Mom fighting Barry off while he was holding a meat cleaver. She was already bleeding from her left arm.

Ed ran forwards to stop the man while he heard Al phone for the police. He tried to drag Barry off Mom who was bleeding even more now and Barry was laughing and swinging the meat cleaver while Mom screamed for Ed to run, but he couldn't because Barry would kill her and then he got an elbow in the face and was thrown against the wall and watched as Barry cut her into pieces while his head hurt. Then Al was suddenly there and Ed panicked as Barry smiled at his little brother.

"Hello, boys! How about we find out just how tiny little pieces I can turn you into?"

Alphonse screamed and they were backed into a corner and so Ed threw himself in front of Alphonse who was screaming and crying and next second Ed couldn't feel his arm any more and it hurt so much and he shrieked with pain and terror and he knew the arm was gone and it hurt, but he had to save Al even though it hurt and he would surely die from the pain and Barry had taken his arm and it was gone.

Then he was suddenly being pulled backwards and Barry was surely going to finish him off, but he couldn't escape and it hurt and he screamed for Barry to take anything he wanted if he just let his little brother live.

And the next thing he knew, he was lying in a hospital bed, feeling weaker than he had ever done and his arm hurt, but it was gone. It was gone and his fingers were burning, but they weren't there and Ed screamed and the nurses came and gave him something to calm him down and then he blacked out again.

Ed's arm was hurting again and it brought him back to the present. He massaged his stump to try and ease the pain.

Riza-lady was looking at him and so was Al, but the odd thing was that for the first time, a grownup actually seemed to understand what had just happened to Ed. There was something in her eyes that Ed hadn't seen before with the other adults. Except for Mustang at the hospital, but he had been there when it had happened so he didn't count.