He learned when he was two that crying when Daddy was home only resulted in beatings and the smell of sharp drinks all over his clothes.
He learned at three that Raina messed up at least once a night to keep the anger off him, burning the food or spilling milk on Daddy's reports so the punches go to her and not him.
He learned at four that Mommy drank more than Dad did, and that's why she never left her room, even when Raina screamed when her arm broke or when Dad broke all the plates in the house.
He learned at five that Mom and Dad didn't want him - hadn't planned him. That when he was in Mom's tummy it was Raina who hid the alcohol and cigarettes and made Mom take vitamins by sticking them in her food. Learned that Dad wasn't there when he was born in the bathtub, and it was Raina who had to help the birth. Raina who had to walk him to the hospital to get his birth certificate. Raina who chose his name.
Maes she named him, with a small smile and careful lettering.
"Why?" Maes had asked her once, when she was tucking him into bed. "Why did you name me Maes?"
"Maes is the name of a man who loved so much he died for his family," Raina answered in her slow, even tone.
"I wouldn't die for all my family," Maes wrinkled his nose. "Only for you."
"Family doesn't end with blood," Raina had just smiled. "And it doesn't have to start there either."
Maes learned at six that he had a middle name too: Conan. Raina said that it meant 'wolf.'
"Why?" Maes had asked again.
"Because you are a wolf," Raina assured him. "Hidden in a sheep's clothing."
When Maes was seven his father got shot in the right shoulder, and his nerves became so damaged that he lost nearly all movement in his right arm. Raina made him angry after he came home from the military hospital by breaking a bowl, and all his fingers did was twitch.
On his right hand, at least.
Both of his parents drinking got worse after that.
They never left bed, drinking and drinking and occasionally even eating what food Raina brought them every couple days. They were withering away and miserable, and it was scary to see even if Maes had long ago stopped loving them.
But their father's leave had ended.
"We need money," Raina said. And she sat down to write.
She wrote in a slightly sloppy hand, looking over Thomas Hughes' journal to mimic the pattern of his words and letters. She wrote of an ill wife and a simple daughter, of a son too young to be left alone. She plead for assignments that could be completed at home and sent by mail, as his shoulder was still too painful to travel. She spun words like magic and fabricated lies, and when she was done she signed with their father's name.
She sent it later that day.
And the brass were sympathetic. They sent manuscripts to be looked over and numbers to be confirmed. Sent research grants to be reviewed and reports to be summarized - because for all their father was a drunk and a bastard he was smart, good at his job.
And Raina did every bit of it, signing their father's name.
But looking at all those papers made Raina cry one day, for the first time that Maes could ever remember. She wouldn't say why, only shaking her head.
"I learned something, is all," She brushed off.
After that, she taught Maes. Taught him everything.
"Come here, little wolf," Raina would beckon him from where he was doing his homework on the table. "Read this report and tell me how I know he is lying."
And Maes would. He would walk over and lean on his tiptoes to squint at the letters on the page. He would read the words that he didn't know, occasionally grab a dictionary when he couldn't guess based off context, and then he would answer the best he could.
"If he fired his gun twice …" He might say, "Then why did he file a request for four bullets to rearm himself?"
"Good, Wolf," Raina would nod. "So what does that mean?"
Raina worked day and night completing each and every form, pacing their mailing as if she was a very busy husband and father was pressed for time. She recorded notes, things to remember. Looked over the files Thomas Hughes had kept, or slipped from work, and in between her labors and Maes school she taught him things.
She worked with a fever, and every moment she could she taught him.
"Never trust someone telling the truth, Wolf," Raina told him once. "Someone with power who tells you the truth is hiding something much worse."
She taught him math far more advanced than his teachers knew, and talked about science and people. How people lied and why, how to sway a room your way. What governments do, how they mess up and how they lie - and what kinds of governments you could overthrow and how.
And she never relented, never stopped or gave up. She gave and gave and learned more so she could give him more. She had never even gone to school, and she learned all she could to give him.
When he complained about not wanting to know about government or lying, she merely shook her head.
"Knowledge is power, Wolf," She would say, taking notes on a new correspondence in a carefully coded notebook. "But if that is the case, what is ignorance?"
"Weakness?" Maes guessed.
"And just as you can be exploited for your weaknesses," Raina nodded. "You can exploit someone else's."
"So never give them one, but always look for someone else's," He quoted an earlier lesson.
"So learn everything you can," She concluded, scratching away with her pen. "And don't let your enemies know how much you do."
Rubia Hughes died drinking herself to death on the third day after Maes turned eight. Warrant Officer Thomas Hughes died hours afterwards, out of some kind of sympathetic reaction, said Raina - but certainly not of grief.
"That man didn't have enough love in him to grieve," Raina scoffed, and then she rolled up her sleeves. Then she ordered him to make the biggest fire he could, and to not come upstairs no matter what.
The fire was blistering hot, and Maes was too afraid to follow his grim looking sister up the stairs to their parent's bedroom.
Hours passed - the fire had to be stoked and more logs piled on - before Raina came back down. She told him to take everything out of the room and to cover the furniture with sheets. As he complied, she oh-so-carefully sketched a circle on the chimney. Alchemy.
Maes liked alchemy, but he wasn't as good at it as Raina was.
Maes paused to watch as the fireplace extended, as the brick extended as a type of overhang, a hood. He moved slowly closer as Raina sketched another array full of symbols on a fire poker.
He watched as stained, bundled cloths were pushed into the fire and prodded with the poker - the array on it crackled and then made the flames rise higher.
The pile bloody clothes was large and then it was gone, and then buckets of a liquid too thick and dark to be water was hit with another circle until it was just rusty powder. And then that too was burned.
Maes knew what Raina was doing.
It was … he knew that they needed to stay alive. That's what Raina always said.
And Raina would do that for them.
Raina would do anything for them.
Raina composed a flawless letter, detailing the recent death of Rubia Hughes, 'his' wife, and how it was necessary to take over her family's business to honor her. How he wanted more time with his kids, and how he hadn't even come in to work for years and how it would be best to part ways. And how sincerely sorry 'he' was for his departure, and how he was glad to be of service to his country.
Maes marveled how all they got in response to that was a kindly worded letter and a check, the first of many from their late father's pension.
And then Raina's teaching came in ernest.
Maes learned how to lie, how to put up a front. How to see through half-truths and spin some of his own. How to get a room on your side, how to disarm a suspicious person.
"Remember," Raina clutched his hands, eyes locked on his - the same startling green. "Out there, you are Maes - you create who that is. In here, you are Wolf."
"Are we not the same?" Eight year old Maes/Wolf had asked, not understanding. "They're me."
"Maes is the part of you that follows their rules," Raina's mouth twisted at the word. "But Wolf is the part of you that is free."
"How do I make him? Maes, I mean." Raina's brother asked, squeezing his sister's hand.
"You distract," She said. "You put up a face, of ignorance and distraction and excitability and rule following and affability and geniality and being just another pretty face - and you create that out of yourself until he can stand alone."
"And that's it?"
"Almost. But it's not easy." She warned, "Be careful who you make yourself into, Wolf: you're the one who's going to have to live with him for the rest of your life."
Later he would be brave enough to ask.
"Who are your two sides?" Wolf asked, flipping through an alchemy textbook absentmindedly. "Raina and … who?"
"Rubia named me Lauren," His sister replied, lips twisting. "Lauren is slow, cannot speak well, and never had the brains to go to school. She can keep house, and that is all."
"And Raina?"
"Raina," Raina smiled - really smiled. "Raina teaches her little brother, who she raised herself, how to lie in a military dictatorship. Teaches him political theory and thought experiments and math and alchemy because one day he's going to need it. Raina tricked the military for years, disposed of two bodies at the age of twelve, and is actively plotting how to fake a death that already happened. Raina is a force of nature."
Wolf bared a grin worthy of his namesake.
"I like Raina best."
"So do I, little Wolf," His sister agreed. "So do I."
"Be wary of people telling the truth," Raina warned him when he turned nine. "Your truth is not the same as other people's truth. And be careful, people telling the truth always have something to hide."
Wolf wondered what it meant that Raina never seemed to keep anything from him.
Wolf was the best liar in his class, because of Raina's teaching - and once Raina tested every bit of his mask with a fine scalpel, Lauren came out.
It was slow, integrating Lauren into Maes' life. Lauren began to stop by to pick him up from school, or lingered long enough to be seen by the parents of his classmates in the market.
Wolf was the best liar in his school, but Raina was in a whole class of her own. Lauren was slow, sweet, and never talked back. Lauren took ten minutes to pick out potatoes at the grocer's stall because she takes so long to examine and choose. Lauren smiled at everyone and started no conversations, only using small words and always handing over the wrong number of cenz, every time.
Raina pulled the strings, making people dance as Lauren made her way slowly through life. Maes' older sister was known as the sweet, stupid, but kind girl who tried her best to help her family even if she wasn't very good at it. People passed her sweets to eat and gently corrected how much she paid with. Local soldiers recognized her and walked her home, and the older ones kept flirting johns away from her.
Raina moved everyone like puppets on strings and Wolf was in awe.
"Why?" Wolf asked one day, bolstered by Raina's insistence that he question everything - even, if not especially - her. "Why do we hide?"
"Because you and me, we know too much," Raina explained gently, correcting one of his lines on the array he was sketching. "And I am a woman - I would always be underestimated far more than you would be. So I use it."
"What's your goal?" Wolf asked after another moment, cleaning up the chalk and trying again. "Why do you work so hard?"
"Because one day you're going to need Lauren, in order to get me."
By the time Maes was ten, Wolf had developed the perfect way to not stand out. Do almost his best on any assignment, then learn it in depth and for real after the grades come back. Hide alchemy and science and political know how, because the military would snatch him up or kill him faster than he could say 'oops.'
Become known for an enthusiasm for photography, showing off photos of trees and dirt like a proud parent - over the top and with too much energy and making people uncomfortable when he comes too close with a pile of photos. Gush and rush about the unimportant, and only lose the energy when Lauren was around - instead going soft and slow, the accommodating younger brother helping his challenged older sister.
Lauren Hughes was five years older than Maes Hughes, and to the rest of Amestris it was Maes in charge.
If only they knew.
Raina and Wolf were sixteen and eleven when Maes dressed in his slightly dirtied school uniform and walked into the military police station near his house with a grim and worried frown.
And he made them dance.
Between babbling about how 'Mom and Dad went to East cuz Mom was sick - but that was months ago' and how 'Big-Sister was buying food with the money from her job' and how 'Dad was an officer too,' Maes plied them with photos of trees and Lauren cooking dinner and the little shop that Raina had opened bustling with customers.
Eventually, a search was sent - but no one stopped by the house because they had been fine for months so far.
Eventually, Lauren came in to sign emancipation and custody papers, because it had been 'months' and the East was full of danger and Thomas Hughes wasn't a Warrant Officer anymore.
The military didn't care, so the only shit they gave was making themselves unaccountable for any mishaps and canceling his pension.
Didn't matter. They hadn't touched a bit of it, putting it away into an account in the bank to save.
Wolf didn't know what Raina was saving for, but she was insistent.
And nothing changed. Lauren became the face of the shop, selling pottery and wares constructed by alchemy and carefully disguised as honest work. Maes became the enthusiastic boy who worked on his homework behind the counter and helped his Big Sister count out the right amount of change sometimes. They got regulars both out of pity and out of appreciation for their work, and Maes got grumpy when the baker's boys started flirting with Lauren.
Raina and Wolf laughed at their expense, even as Wolf used the tricks he learned to try and pry out of his sister if she really was interested.
Key word being tried. Raina knew his tricks - she taught him his tricks.
Raina only laughed.
When Wolf turned twelve, Raina gifted him with a weekend discussing the best way to stage a coup for various forms of government - and what kinds of governments would be most effective to install in their place.
When Maes turned twelve, Lauren gifted him with a camera with double the film capacity.
When Wolf turned thirteen, Raina quizzed him on alchemical theory and had him scribbling out arrays. Maes was no great talent at alchemy, but he could understand the theory well and it was always good to have an ace in his pocket. Once he proved he could scratch an array into a metal chair using a rusty nail, Raina gave him a sheath of throwing knives to strap to his back - with the sheath itself merely a thin layer of leather over an array covered skeleton of metal, enough to twist into dozens of knives to spare.
When Maes turned thirteen, Lauren got him lessons at a local dojo known for its vicious style - for those good enough to earn it, that is.
When Wolf turned fourteen, Raina taught him about codes, verbal and written. Taught him how to spot codes and how to begin to decode them, how to break down an alchemist's notes and how to spot arrays hidden in meaningless gibberish and lines.
When Maes turned fourteen, Lauren bought him a new pair of shoes - like the kind the rich men who courted her wore, and let him run the shop on his own.
When Wolf turned fifteen, Raina taught him how to cook, to clean. How to run a household and how to manage a budget. She taught him how to save money and how to invest it, how to keep his reputation as a businessman and how to build alliances and open negotiations.
When Maes turned fifteen, Lauren bought him lessons on how to drive a car and how to fix one.
When Wolf turned sixteen, Raina taught him in depth about the power of scapegoating, of victimizing. Described the power in making someone inferior and the sway over claiming superiority. She taught him how to spot the lies and decipher stereotypes about people, and how to see past what everyone 'always says.' She taught him that love was universal, that skin and hair and eyes had melatonin and pigment and how none of it mattered in the end. She talked about gender and sex and love and attraction and taught him to recognize when someone is a victim and when someone is only asking for pity.
When Maes turned sixteen, Lauren bought him a nice tie and a rusty old car.
When Wolf turned seventeen, he sat Raina down and told her he was going to join the military.
When Maes turned seventeen, Raina filled out all the forms he needed and only left the space for him to sign on the dotted line.
When Wolf turns eighteen, he realizes he may be in love with the shy girl that Lauren hired to work in the shop for when he left to join the Academy.
When Maes turns eighteen, he asks Gracia Bisset out on a date.
Maes first began to pay attention to Mustang because the alchemist could see his lies.
Not see through his lies, of course. Only Raina could do that - and that's because Raina taught Wolf how to lie in the first place.
But the perfectly constructed facade that he puts forward, the Maes Hughes that everyone sees, is not him any more than his shoes are.
Maes is a worn and familiar outer shell, but he's not flesh and blood any more than leather is. A faded imitation only, given structure and polished to a shine.
But Mustang is the first person to see just how much Maes keeps hidden, even if he doesn't know what is behind the mask. And that intrigues him just as much as the flame alchemy he pretends that he's not deconstructing in his head, and the slant of the man's shoulders that says I belong here no matter how little Wolf can see he believes it.
They eye each other, steer clear even as they catalogue each and every move. Something tells Wolf not to underestimate the Flame Alchemist.
By the way the other man's eyes sharpen whenever Maes whips out a photo of his girlfriend or when he gushes about how good her pies are, he'd say that Mustang felt the same about him.
Maes turns nineteen in a warzone, surrounded by the stench of charred flesh and the torn earth, stained with the blood of red eyed children and white haired men and bronze skinned women.
Wolf turns nineteen in a warzone, and sees the Flame Alchemist as the face of what his sister had always striven for. Roy Mustang is the man that could make it to the top of the pyramid, and fix their stupid, genocidal country. And Wolf is ready to put him there.
Maes feeds Roy bits of code, tests the other man. And Roy was brought up in a brothel, one that doubled as a hub for information brokers, so he caught on quick. Roy even as started to try and pick Maes apart too, trying to see how a shopkeeper with a knack for gathering intel would know how to speak without ever being heard.
Slowly they begin to talk. Commenting about Gracia and democracy in the same sentence, and about scuttlebutt and alliances in the same breath. And soon the sniper Maes has heard stories about and Wolf has a skill-based hard-on for, The Hawks Eye joined them too.
The young blonde woman reminded Wolf of Raina, with the look in her eyes speaking of death and determination and the fierce desire to protect.
Maes turned twenty the same week he was to be sent home, intel unneeded after all the Ishvallans were either too scared to fight back, too young, or just too dead.
Wolf turned twenty with two new allies, powerful allies, and working out a plan to put Roy in the Fuhrer's chair for Raina to look over.
When Wolf turned twenty-one, he finally began to leak more and more of himself into the time he spent with Gracia - and was enthused to find that the woman he loved had no problem adapting and accepting.
When Maes turned twenty-one, he started ranked as a Sergeant Major for his work in Ishval and began to become the most reputable upcoming Intel officer.
When he came home to his sister after a long day laboring in Central Command, Raina gave Wolf a slim, bulletproof vest carefully lined with blood packets and Lauren gave Maes the keys to his own apartment.
When Maes turned twenty-two he had perfected the coded correspondence between Roy and himself, finally reaching not only an ironclad alliance but a solid friendship. Roy and he discussed democracy and socialism and fascism and communism, and Roy soaked it up like a sponge while still prying as subtly as he could into just how Maes knew so much about the revolutions and counter-revolutions of governments.
When Wolf turned twenty-two he edited the manuscript that Raina had written - looked over the book that Raina had written as the first crack in the wall. The beginning of the flood.
A Perspective on Government, Raina named it with a smirk, signing Thomas R. Mason on the byline.
And then, at twenty-two, he gathered the money that his sister had carefully hidden over the years and mailed it and the manuscript to a carefully scoped out publishing house with the payment for a rush order.
A month later Central Command finally caught on, sent out orders to collect and regulate and seize all the copies. Maes worked in earnest with the rest of Intel to try and track down the untraceable Thomas R. Mason, years of practice biting his tongue keeping his face clear of the amusement he was stamping down on.
No one suspected the hardworking and loyal soldier or his slow, uneducated sister.
Even as Roy sent a letter marvelling at how similar Mason's ideas on government were to Maes' - and all Maes could say, displaying sincerity and honesty Roy that had learned to as genuine, that he didn't write it, and hadn't been involved in its conception.
Only, Maes didn't say, it's execution.
When Maes turned twenty-three, Gracia moved in with him and began to learn about the skills he pretended he didn't have.
When Wolf turned twenty-three, A Perspective on Government was banned in all legal circles - pretty much guaranteeing a loyal and borderline cult following in less legal ones.
Raina and Wolf had toasted to that and Raina was already started on part two.
When Maes turned twenty-four, he realized that as a Captain he was forever a higher rank than Thomas Hughes ever had been, the bastard.
When Wolf turned twenty-four, he added a preface to Raina's new book An Understanding of Power under the name Rey W. Lawrence.
Lauren mailed the manuscript that time, to a publishing house that had proved unafraid to circulate A Perspective under the radar.
When Roy, ever connected and hyperaware, got his own copy of An Understanding and read the preface, he called Maes up.
"Are you trying to say the same?" Roy asked cryptically, the accusation imbedded in a story about the stupidity of his current CO.
"I wouldn't say that," Maes answered back with a smirk he didn't have to hide.
"I want to meet him," Roy slipped in later that call, next to a comment about someone called Van Hohenheim.
"You know, maybe he's a woman!" Maes had suddenly exclaimed, channeling humor into theatrics. "No one can pin down what this guy looks like, after all."
Roy, the flirt, only became more insistent after that.
When Maes turned twenty-five, he was a Major and leading his own men in Intel and Roy was a Lieutenant Colonel with Hawkeye as his ever loyal shadow.
When Wolf turned twenty-five, he asked Gracia to marry him after he confessed exactly how divided a man he was - only to have her kiss him and whisper his names in his ear.
When Maes was twenty-five, his late birthday gift was a confession from Roy that he had been trying to hunt down and recruit alchemists to function under his command -
And he found two prepubescent boys instead of Van Hohenheim, each having suffered from attempting the taboo of human transmutation. Somehow, at least, they came out of it alive.
It was a gift he could've done without.
At some point in the months that passed, Lauren had Gracia watch the shop while she packed a bag, took the car keys, and left only a note for her brother.
Three days later, she returned with a car stuffed full of books and books and books and a trunk with boxes of knick knacks and photos.
"Those boys were going to make a choice, and it was going to be the wrong one," Raina said cryptically, filling out the forms for a storage space purchase. "And one day, they're going to be thankful."
Maes may have the authority to compel pretty much any civilian and a large number of the military to follow his orders, but Wolf had no way to get Raina to answer properly.
He settled on not knowing - for now.
Roy first met Lauren essentially by accident, as Roy and Raina both report it. Roy was in town to visit Maes during their leave, and had a day to kill in Central before meeting up at The Bar.
The carefully obscured alchemical marks on popular wares was enough to get him in the door, and only once he was inside did he notice the shop's name - and more importantly, it's symbol.
"The Timber Wolf?" Roy had apparently read off once he stepped inside and saw the sign Lauren had carefully painted one day.
But his eyes were focused on a seldom used alchemical symbol used to represent stability - safety - painted in simplified blue strokes.
It was the kind of message only an alchemist would get - and only one that studied the older Xerxian styles, not the modern ones.
Most would write off as a crude caricature of a wolf, but Roy studied with the foremost expert in Flame Alchemy before he took the title himself. He knew how to read old symbology. Maes himself had realized the same, years ago, but never really got the answer as to why.
From how Raina told it, Roy had poked around and tried to figure out who put that symbol there while Lauren had been oblivious and confused the entire time. Roy eventually gave it up lest the other patrons take action against him, and had resolved to come back in uniform and with Maes in tow.
Lauren had called Wolf after Roy left, and when Maes met up with Roy that night he let himself laugh at the subtle nod to his sister's shop.
"You knew someone at that shop," Roy guessed, realizing that Maes' humor was real.
"That woman you tried to pry information out of?" Maes smirked, sipping at some high proof rotgut. "That was my sister."
It was amusing to see Roy's feet swept out from under him - didn't happen much to the Flame Alchemist these days.
"The … slow woman?" He clarified tentatively, mind racing. "Lauren?"
"She taught me lots, especially photography," Maes smiled cryptically, and the respect that carefully bloomed behind his friend and ally's eyes was satisfying - only Wolf had ever really known Raina's worth.
"She teach you your letters too?" Roy made the connection, "How to write?"
"She did."
"Maybe I should drop by The Timber Wolf sometime," Roy mused with an entirely fake leer. "Meet her properly."
Wolf just laughed.
Maes is twenty-six when he marries Gracia, and Wolf is twenty-six when he 'allows' Roy and Lauren to meet.
He is under no illusion that if either of his most trusted had really wanted to meet, they would've by then.
Though with Roy as the best man and Lauren as maid of honor, keeping them apart was unreasonable … but part of him was worried, even if he doesn't know exactly why.
But the day is the best in Wolf's life. Gracia, the love of his life, walked down the aisle and took his name- and right before the officiant said 'you may kiss the bride' Gracia whispered in his ear:
"I do take Wolf Hughes as my husband," She barely breathed, and he was the happiest man in the world in that one instant.
Gracia and Wolf had their first dance, and when the second verse started Roy extended a hand to his sister.
Lauren danced and danced and smiled and nodded and gave a short, slow speech about love that had sympathetic glances sent her way and had Maes giving her a warm smile - and Roy hovered about her like a protective guardian.
What no one bar Gracia and Wolf - and probably Riza - understood was how they were more than just dancing with and around each other, Roy and Raina. How all the codes Roy had learned from Maes, all the knowledge and skills he picked up his whole life, were being put to the test.
Convince me you're worth it - right here, right now.
From the glimpses Wolf got when he wasn't enraptured with his wife, Roy still had a lot to learn.
Maes is twenty-seven when Edward Elric becomes the youngest state alchemist and earns the title of Fullmetal.
Wolf is twenty-seven when his beautiful, perfect, intelligent, wonderful daughter is born.
Maes names her Elicia, and with Gracia's permission Wolf gives her the middle name of Regina - in honor of the real strength of within his sister.
He is twenty-seven when 'Rey W. Lawrence' publishes a book of his own, titled The Scapegoat.
Roy gets an advanced copy, and within two days of its publication the book is banned with the strictest of consequences if found in one's possession.
Roy hugs him extra tight the next time they meet, whispering 'thank you' and pressing their cheeks close together.
Maes hears from Roy one day that the Elric Brothers - kids, just kids - burned their house down just before Edward joined, with all of their possessions inside.
When Maes drops by Lauren's apartment to 'check on' her, Wolf decides that enough is enough.
"How do you know?" He demands, level with her and demanding in a way he has never been. "You knew those boys would burn their house down - that's why you took their books, their keepsakes. You knew I would become a soldier, that I would need to know everything you taught me. You knew that I would try to overthrow the government."
Confronting Raina is dangerous and brash and more than just a little unreasonable and far fetched. But it's Raina and she could do and did do and does do things that defy explanation.
"I won't lie to you," Is all she said.
"When we were kids, you used alchemy to burn Thomas and Rubia to nothing," Wolf switches tactics. "Why?"
"Because I couldn't let them take you from me, split us apart."
"Why?"
"Because I do everything I do so you make it to thirty," Raina answered, sure and firm. "I realized that I doomed you. So you will make it to thirty. And then forty, then fifty and sixty and to a hundred if I can manage it."
"When did you …?" He started to ask, studying her eyes - their eyes. "When did you decide I was worth more than your own ambitions, life?"
"You are my ambition, my life," Raina corrected him, squeezing his hand. "Don't you forget that."
When Maes is twenty-eight he becomes a Lieutenant Colonel and finally has his own, proper, office.
When Wolf is twenty-eight he meets the Elric brothers, let them into his home, and tried to keep them both sheltered and informed - paradoxically - the best he can.
Wolf stays up late into the night, giving Al - who he can feel the blood seal on - what little he can. He chats and comforts, telling stories embedded with lessons and anecdotes full of warnings. He gives him copies of A Perspective, An Understanding, and The Scapegoat - old and beaten and dirty copies - by asking him to sort through a box of books he had bought from a pawn shop but hadn't looked through yet.
When the younger, though larger, boy eventually read through them, Hughes paid no suspicion to his too-pointed questions, his posed hypothetical situations. Alphonse wasn't subtle, yet, but he would learn - he would have to.
Wolf taught the youngest Elric everything he could even as he taught him nothing, and thanked his lucky stars that it was Al and not Ed stuck in the armor. Ed didn't have the patience or the temperment to see the world through the eyes of Mason and Lawrence - of Raina and Wolf. The Fullmetal Alchemist could barely keep his head on straight when the military was involved as-is. Political theory, at this stage in the game, would hurt more than it would help.
Wolf is twenty-nine when he looks into the pattern of bloody deaths across the country, the truth behind the Philosopher's Stone echoing in the back of his mind.
Maes is twenty-nine when something, that looked first like Second Lieutenant Maria Ross and then his wife, pulls a gun on him and shoots him in a phone booth.
Maes "Wolf" Conan Hughes makes it to twenty-nine, and all the can think as he slumps back against the base of the phonebooth with blood pooling all around him is how furious Raina was going to be.