Roy learned at two that his sisters worked, and sometimes after the men left they cried with bruises on their arms and faces and it made his anger big. But they were too small to stop the bad men and they needed the work, and Roy was too small too.
Roy learned at three that living in The Bar meant that the other kids on the street wouldn't play with him. No matter how much he wanted them to.
Roy learned at four that Madame Christmas was In Charge and that anyone with a brain listened to her. But sometimes it was the meanest people who were the dumbest, and didn't know how to follow the Rules in The Bar.
Roy learned at five that numbers didn't lie like people did. That science and numbers and alchemy were rules that everyone had to follow, no matter what. And it was only when you broke the rules that someone got hurt. And Roy learned that all he really wanted was for no one to get hurt.
Roy learned at six that his last name was Roy Mustang, and that Roy meant 'king' and Mustang meant 'horse.'
He also learned that he didn't have any more names, like some of the kids on the street had. The names their mommies and daddies yelled when they got in trouble or needed to wash up for dinner.
"Why don't I have one too?" Roy had asked Madame Christmas when he plucked up the courage.
"If you want one so bad, choose your own," Is all she said, sipping at the tumbler in her hand.
Roy decided to wait - he wanted to pick a good one.
When Roy was seven he realized that other kids don't talk like he does.
Other kids don't know the periodic table or how to roll a cigarette or how to read really well. Other kids don't know how to tell when someone is lying because they're drunk or because they break the law or because they don't want to be mean, and other kids don't have sisters and Madame Christmases like he does.
And being different and small and not having blonde hair and bright eyes like everyone else meant that other kids decided to hurt him too. Like the mean men hurt Rebecca and Julia and Mary and Chloe all of his other sisters.
"If you're different, then learn to blend in," Madame Christmas told him, only vaguely sympathetic. "It's a big bad world out there, and Amestrian school children are only the beginning."
So Roy learned to walk and talk like they did. Used not too big words or and didn't talk about science and learned how to play like normal kids did. And it was strange.
He enjoyed it, he guessed, and it was nice to live like the kids down the street did …
But he missed writing equations and drawing arrays and playing cards with Madame Christmas and picking pockets with his sisters. He missed the things that made him different, and he finally asked Madame Christmas again what to do.
"I said learn to blend in, Boy," Madame had scoffed, eyebrows raised. "I never said change who you are. Make a mask, Roy-boy."
A mask.
That he could do.
By the time that Roy turned eight he realized that there was something really wrong with Amestris.
In Amestris, no one important listened to people like Madame Christmas or his sisters or the orphans that worked in the less nice part of town. In Amestris, unless you had power no one cared and no one listened and no one protected you. Ever - that was the rule.
Amestris was like The Bar: there was a pyramid. In The Bar, Madame Christmas was on top and his older sisters were close beneath her with some of the bartenders. Then there were the younger girls, the busboys, and then the patrons and johns.
But Amestris wasn't like The Bar because The Bar didn't have the strength to make people obey the pyramid. Because sometimes the johns had more power than the girls, and sometimes patrons could even have more authority than Madame Christmas. The pyramid didn't stay like it should've, not in The Bar.
And Roy didn't know where he fell, in either pyramid.
He explained his dilemma to Madame Christmas in coded, snippets of phrases, and she just rolled her eyes.
"You're outside the pyramid, Boy," She scoffed, for once blunt. "You have no real power, only perceived."
Amestris was a country where the pyramid was everything. The Fuhrer had all the power, and you had to be in the military to have any influence at all.
But it was the people outside the pyramid - like Roy and the johns and the military men that came in on their nights of - that were the most dangerous to the pyramid. They had enough power to affect people, but no one to hold them accountable.
Amestris didn't like people outside the pyramid.
So Roy had to either become so influential outside the pyramid of Amestris that he could protect his sisters … or he had to get as high in the pyramid as he could.
And in Amestris, that meant that Roy had to join the military.
Roy was nine when he decided that he was going to become a soldier.
Roy was ten when he decided that he was going to put off telling Madame Christmas that as long as humanly possible. Madame Christmas had no love for the military.
In the meantime, he did everything he could to get ready. He read books on history and politics and tactics and alchemy. Snuck in to watch the classes at local dojos and bribed some of the less savory of patrons at The Bar to teach him to fight in exchange for small alchemical tasks. He learned languages and codes and listened covertly as he flitted around The Bar.
If Roy was going to be a soldier, he was going to be the best soldier there was.
When Roy turned eleven, Madame Christmas gave him a thick tomb on alchemy with the brochure for a military prep class on tactics, fighting, and procedure. Swiftly followed by a stern talking to on trying to keep secrets.
Madame Christmas wasn't happy, but she knew that once her Roy-boy got started on something, he wasn't one to let it go.
Roy just hugged her and pushed back his relief.
By the time Roy turned twelve, he was top of his class and had recruiters sniffing around him, trying and for the most part failing to be subtle.
By the time Roy turned thirteen, he had several military contacts, both from The Bar and from his classes. That's how he met Major General Grumman.
When Roy turned fourteen, he drafted a letter requesting apprenticeship to Berthold Hawkeye, at Grumman's recommendation.
By fifteen, Roy hopped on a train and waved goodbye to The Bar, intent to get as high in the pyramid as he could.
Roy turned sixteen a month after his apprenticeship was terminated, Master Hawkeye none too pleased when he found out Roy's aspirations.
He had learned everything he could.
Roy turned seventeen when he thought 'fuck it' and got back on that same train to get the secret to flame alchemy from the crotchety old man.
Seventeen when Berthold Hawkeye died in his arms, succumbing to illness at last, and seventeen when Riza Hawkeye showed him the tattoo on her back.
He didn't know how much he would regret ever going back, back then.
Roy finished basic training when he was eighteen, and became the youngest state alchemist in history at eighteen and a half.
The Flame Alchemist had a certain ring to it.
Roy was nineteen and halfway through his more advanced officer training - he didn't want anyone to think he got by on his title alone - when he realized the depth of Maes Hughes.
Roy wasn't even exactly looking for it, as a matter of fact. He was too focused on the upward slope, he had neglected to see who he was ascending with.
Maes Hughes was the best liar he had ever met. Better than Madame Christmas, better than Lieutenant General Grumman, better than him. And unlike with him or Madame Christmas or Grumman no one could tell what kind of wolf they let into their pen.
It was fascinating.
More so, even, because for all his lies Hughes exuded a surprisingly authentic level of care for those around him. Those not around him. Those in newspaper articles and distant stories, in gossip and lies. Hughes cared, and that was the one thing he never lied about.
Roy had to lie about what he really cared about to protect them. It made him wonder what Hughes was protecting if he was so open about the love he had for his fellow man.
And it is that, more than the mask the Sergeant wears, that makes him wary.
"Never trust someone until you know what they're protecting."
Roy turns twenty in a warzone, surrounded by the stench of charred flesh and the lingering feeling of disgust that never could leave him. Innocents - men women children innocent - dead by his hand. By the gift that Riza gave him, so he could protect his family.
He is protecting his family by killing countless others.
He's not worthy to call his sist- to call the people at The Bar 'family' anymore. They would be ashamed of him.
But he has never been more determined to make up the pyramid, make it to the top - because if he can't change this then every moment of his studying and efforts have been wasted.
And, he thinks, just maybe Hughes can help him get there.
Learning from Maes is every bit as satisfying as learning alchemy was, all those years ago (or maybe it was less, even if it felt like more). Maes teaches him codes and phrases and ways of twisting sentences and their meanings, and once Roy masters them -
Maes knew things.
Maes knew about things he never considered - what other kinds of governments do, are. How alliances and rules and laws and controlling the media and propaganda all lead to something far more dangerous than a few beat up whores.
It sickened him. And it made him wonder just exactly who Maes was, to know so much about something a liar and a rogue like Roy had never even thought about.
Because just as he learned about scapegoating and discrimination and prejudice and warmongering, he learned bits about where Maes came from.
He learned that Maes was a shopkeeper and the son of a Warrant Officer who retired due to injury. He was an orphan, like Roy, though later in life. He was a shutterbug and was completely in love with his girlfriend and that's all that Roy really believed from Maes' mask - and none of it really matched up.
But he did know that when he made it to the top, he wanted two people by his side. Riza Hawkeye, who gave him everything he had, and Maes Hughes, who could give him everything he needed.
Roy was sure that Riza didn't completely understand Maes' value. Didn't fully grasp the layers that the intel officer had. She, bright as she was, didn't live in the same level of subterfuge and borderline illegality that Maes and Roy did. Sure, she was the daughter of an alchemist - a damn paranoid one - but she had a lot to learn about seeing truth in lies in truth.
But, between Maes and Roy, they would get her up to scratch.
Roy turned twenty-one the same week he was to be sent home, flames unneeded after all the Ishvallans were either too scared to fight back, too young, or just too dead.
He went back to Central with a title as 'Hero' he didn't deserve, a post out East, and the smell of charred flesh following him wherever he went.
Maes wasn't coming with him … but at least Hawkeye was.
When Roy turned twenty-two, he had two people he could trust and less than ten he could tolerate. He got his own men and he trained them well, scouting for the like minded and the talented, the ones that were overlooked because they were young or brash or stiff or too smart or too kind for their own good.
The kind of people that would follow Roy into hell, and the hellfire he brought with him.
He was the youngest Lieutenant Colonel in history, and dammit he wasn't going to stop there.
When Roy turned twenty-three he celebrated with nightmares and a letter full of code disguised as birthday wishes. The years since the war between them had been full of talk tantamount to treason - if only not explicitly outlawed because no one had ever really gone so far as to comment on democracy and socialism and fascism and communism - and Roy and Maes traded ideas and debated concepts like they had been doing it all their lives.
Part of Roy was growing sure that, somehow, Maes actually had.
And every piece of intel and idea and thought experiment and hypothetical revolution was invaluable, because he would need all of it. To stage his revolution and to protect his from the next.
And Maes never said a peep on where he got it all from.
It was Madame Christmas, not Roy, who found the book first.
They hadn't talked for years, not since Roy became unworthy to call The Bar his home, but one day he wakes up to find a courier parcel dropped outside his shitty military apartment. One with the word 'Boy' written on it in an achingly familiar hand.
He couldn't open it for two days. Nearly bit Fuery's head off before Hawkeye told him - in no uncertain terms - to get himself together or get a bullet to the knee.
'Read it and use it,' Madame Christmas wrote on the inside cover. 'And if you have an ounce of sense, come home for a drink before your sisters mob East Command.'
Short and blunt. Felt like home.
A Perspective on Government by Thomas R. Mason.
It was dangerous. Like how Roy was dangerous - how Maes was dangerous. And it was the kind of dangerous that was very familiar.
Every concept Maes and he had discussed over the years, and even more, was within these pages in glaringly clear text. It was power, unimaginable power, and the name 'Mason' close to damming.
But a quote stood out:
" It must be said, however, that as much as the change of government is inevitable, the war that may come with such a revolution is not. At least, not necessarily. War is the result of stupidity, whereas a quiet revolution is an act of genius. And furthermore, it must be noted that the people must not shy away from violence on principle alone, and treat violence as anathema to such a quiet revolution, as violence is as much an aspect of change as peace - all is one and one is all, and change would not exist without two sides to the coin."
Those were the words of a genius. Of a madman. And, Roy could scarcely believe, of an alchemist .
And as far as Roy knew, Maes Hughes was no alchemist.
And Maes, when written to, denied any involvement, and for all his lies … Roy believed him.
When Roy turned twenty-four, he went home to The Bar and sat down next to Madame Christmas and … had a drink.
He brought his copy of A Perspective for inspection, battered and worn and covered in coded annotations in The Bar's style. It was met with Madame Christmas' quiet approval.
He started visiting more after that.
A Perspective on Government was banned in all legal circles - pretty much guaranteeing a loyal and borderline cult following in less legal ones. One of Roy's many duties when working towards his redemption was to sit with the more politically minded staff of The Bar and break down exactly what the book was saying.
He had what may amount to an insider's perspective, after all.
When Roy turned twenty-five, he realized that he was a Lieutenant Colonel and a 'war hero' and the youngest state alchemist in history. He had men under his command and, other than Maes, he had more intimate knowledge about the revolution of a government than anyone in the entirety of Amestris.
Except for, it seemed, Thomas R. Mason and a new player on the field - Rey W. Lawrence.
An Understanding of Power was a book on lies and manipulation, from governments and lovers to criminals and soldiers - and this Rey W. Lawrence wrote a preface for it.
A quote stood out:
'To grow up around lies can make words meaningless. To grow up when words are meaningless makes promises disposable. The only way to overcome the lies that we must tell, to survive and thrive, is to ensure that our genuine word is our bond. To speak plainly is a rarity, to be blunt a gift. An Understanding is such a gift, and although I may have not written it I still give it all the same. To each and every one of the people in this world who cannot believe another's words, but still decide to trust all the same.'
'Rey' he called himself. Roy had to hold back a snort at that. It was a nod to him, he was sure, that Maes couldn't help but include.
"Are you trying to say the same?" Roy asked cryptically, wondering if Maes would try and deny his involvement yet again. No doubt with even more completely truthful loopholes.
"I wouldn't say that," Maes answered back with a smirk in his voice he didn't bother to hide.
"I want to meet him," Roy slipped in later, meaning both Mason and the ever elusive Van Hohenheim.
"You know, maybe he's a woman!" Maes had exclaimed, a joke and a layer of truth all at once. "No one can pin down what this guy looks like, after all."
A woman who knew all that.
Roy may have fallen a bit in love at an idea like that.
When Roy turned twenty-six, he used a letter and some rumors to hunt down two talented alchemists in Rosembol, far east.
Instead he found two genii, foolish children who lost everything to try and bring back their mother.
He left an offer to the elder - and hoped in equal measure that he would hurry on and grow up already, and that he would run while he still could.
Roy visited Maes partially on a whim, and partially to have a slightly less coded talk about who exactly Mason was. Due to timing issues, he found himself wandering around Central's more residential area when he spotted the wares.
Pots, pans, clay. Art and whimsical glass. Every piece of value and sturdy and still appealing to the eye.
And every piece made by a very talented alchemist.
"The Timber Wolf?" Roy read aloud when he walked into the room, spotting the amaturely painted sign. And then his eyes locked on the symbol painted in a simplified manor underneath the careful lettering.
Stability and safety, an archaic symbol with considerable power, disguised as a simple caricature of a wolf drawn with blue paint.
Safe to say, that for a good minute contemplating the possibilities successfully distracted Roy from the gorgeous woman behind the register.
Warm skin, long black hair hanging in waves, and piercing green eyes. A simple dress and a simple figure.
But her eyes - oh her eyes were sharp - until suddenly they weren't, and Roy was left thinking that he imagined it.
The Timber Wolf wasn't the place to stage an interrogation, and part of Roy had a feeling that the symbol wasn't for him. If it was, then someone would've come out of the woodwork to meet him the moment he walked in.
But then, he wondered, who would it be for?
Roy sat at the bar in The Bar, pondering the best way to bribe Maes into giving up some of his intel on The Timber Wolf. Maes was generous, sure, but he still liked no debts perceived between friends.
Roy typically greatly appreciated that gesture, but at times like this - when his brain went blank on what to offer his fellow soldier - he wished they could just do IOUs like normal people.
On the other hand, when had Roy ever been normal?
He was so distracted, he barely noticed when Maes sat down.
And Maes started to laugh the moment he mentioned wandering through the shopping district earlier that day.
"You knew someone at that shop," Roy spilled when he realized how truly genuine his humor was.
"That woman you tried to pry information out of?" Maes smirked at him, sipping at some of the disgustingly cheap killer booze Madame Christmas shoved at Roy every time he came by. "That was my sister."
'I knew it.'
He knew that those eyes were too sharp, that they saw too much and hid too well. But ...
"The … slow woman?" He asked, just to be sure. "Lauren?"
"She taught me lots, especially photography," Maes bared his teeth with the truth hidden well behind them, and even in the safest place for them to talk Maes is still protecting them with layered phrases.
"She teach you your letters too?" Roy couldn't help but joke, thinking of the books he alchemically hid behind his bathroom wall. "How to write?"
"She did."
"Maybe I should drop by The Timber Wolf sometime," Roy joked with an entirely fake leer, even if he was seriously considering wooing a woman like that . "Meet her properly."
Maes just laughed.
Roy is twenty-seven when Maes finally makes an honest woman out of Gracia, and it was only at the rehearsal dinner that Maes ever allowed him and Lauren to meet - properly meet.
Maes was under no illusion that if Roy had really wanted to - and, Roy suspected, if Lauren had - then they would've met earlier. But loving and lying are both beasts of burden, and neither Maes nor Roy enjoyed allowing the two monsters to mix.
Even still, Maes still looked nervously at the two of them - as if he hadn't known what it would mean when he made them maid of honor and best man.
Maes is over the moon, and although only years of practice and experience tell Roy so, barely a lie nor a false word passed through the groom's lips the entire day.
That is, to say, the groom's lips.
But Lauren -
She was a majesty.
They began their game at the rehearsal dinner, began to trade words when they first met. They were both too good at telling lies and living lies to dive right in, at least not too deep. They bandied words for hours and Roy always felt a step or two behind.
The subterfuge only reached a shade of genuine when Roy extended a hand for Lauren to dance.
"May I ask you?" He smiled his charming smile, seeing the way he easily saw through the layers of his question. May I ask you to dance? May I ask you more? May I ask you about whatever I can between these layered words?
"If you are brave," Lauren replied, her speech slow and her words short - the perfect image of a less intelligent, well meaning sister of the groom.
It was amazing. She was where Maes had learned … everything - she was the most powerful person in the hall, alchemy be damned, and nothing that anyone could do or say would convince Roy otherwise.
Through the night all the codes that 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,' Her eyes seemed to laugh. 'And then we'll see.'
Roy still had a lot to learn.
They spoke of writing behind flowers, and treason behind family, of war behind friendships. And every time Lauren smiled, nodded, spoke a slow word - Roy couldn't help but step closer to her. To shield her. Because Lauren was everything that Roy needed. She was Riza, but more. Maes, but more . And the thought of having all three of them at his back when he made it to the top of the pyramid ... was too much to hope for.
And Lauren was incredibly, horribly, vulnerable.
The government he was in had it out for Thomas R. Mason - and they wouldn't hold out if they found her, or "Lawrence".
And any protection after today that Roy could give her would only draw danger near.
Roy is twenty-eight when Edward Elric becomes the youngest state alchemist and earns the title of Fullmetal.
He is twenty-eight when Rey W. Lawrence publishes a book of his own, titled The Scapegoat. When Maes does - for him.
Roy gets an advanced copy by discreet courier, and it is only because he knew how much the previous two books changed his life for the better - giving him back his family, his hope - that he's able to get past the dedication. Past the lump of emotion choking him.
'This book contains all the words I could never say aloud,' Rey W. Lawrence wrote. 'Because our government will not allow it. So allow me to be genuine: sometimes the heroes are the ones who suffer the most.
'For a Hero with belief in the government - those whose job is to protect everyone - is the most tortured of all. Governments are never as we wish them to be, and Heros never can bask in their glory - knowing that the scapegoat lies in their grave because of them.
'I dedicate this book to the Heros that are soaked in blood, and whose hearts are only still beating so there would never be another "Hero" again.'
Within two days of its publication the book is banned with the strictest of consequences if found in one's possession. Roy alchemically, painstakingly makes a copy for The Bar and gives it to Madame Christmas behind the cover of an old cookbook the day it came out.
Sometimes books say all the apologies you never had the words for.
Madame Christmas ordered him to come by more often after that.
When Roy sees Maes again he can't help the atypical hug he gave his best friend - and when he whispers a simple thanks in his friends ear, he knew that Maes saw right to his core. As he always did.
When Roy is twenty-nine he becomes a Colonel and finally has his own, proper, office.
When Roy is twenty-nine the Elric brothers are under his command, and when the little rascals meet Maes it's all Roy can do to shove the boys at his friend and hope for the best.
Gracia and Maes always were ones to open their home to the broken - like Roy was.
And Maes always knew how to calm the storm raging inside young, powerful, traumatized alchemists like him - like those brothers.
Roy stays up late into the night, every night, trying to work out how to save the Brothers and help himself and his country in a way that wouldn't leave him with more guilt than he already had. That wouldn't make him like the people he was trying to overthrow.
He buys his wares from The Timber Wolf, and in the quiet moments in the store he and Lauren talk shop. About the military and the climate and the cost of knowledge. It was she who suggested that he kept them busy, away from Command, chasing leads so they wouldn't get stir crazy. Wouldn't rub up against the brass too much.
She always knew what to say.
And Roy realized after a couple months that he and Raina … weren't talking just shop anymore.
Maes is thirty when there is a serial killer after alchemists and the Elric Brothers broke into an old research facility and Maes told him with coded words and a disgusted tone what exactly the Brothers had been hunting down all these years.
Roy is thirty when the operator tells him that he was getting an emergency call from an outside line, thirty when he picked up the phone and called out his friend's name.
Colonel Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist, who chose the Ishvallan name Ayuub when he was drunk and covered in the smell of the charred dead - for its meaning: repentance -
Roy Ayuub Mustang, who only ever wanted three people by his side while he climbed the pyramid, saved his people - all people -
Roy Ayuub Mustang heard through the phone line the sound of a gunshot, and the sound of his best friend's body hitting the ground