The Mirrors
"But I don't want to," Edward said, and hated like burning the fact that it actually made him sound like the teenager he was.
Behind his desk, hands folded and smug almost-smirk locked firmly in place, Mustang blinked at him. Blinked at him so innocently, the bastard.
"And yet," he said. "Here your compliance is about to be. Because here we are, and here I am, about to order it."
Ed clenched his fists. Considered stamping his foot. Decided against it, as he really was trying to act anything other than seventeen.
"I have stuff to do," he reminded Mustang, with a truly impressive amount of calm. "Important…stuff."
"You're researching leads," Mustang shot back with a pleasant smile. "And while that might be important in your extremely limited worldview, it also doesn't take up every single second of your time. Also? I actually do possess a piece of paper that says you need to whatever I tell you, with your name on it and everything."
Edward hunched his shoulders.
"Bet you couldn't even find it without Hawkeye helping you," he pointed out.
"Regardless," Mustang said, and Ed almost laughed, because that really wasn't a denial. "I have it, it exists, and now I am enforcing it. Man up, Fullmetal."
"You're not my real dad," Ed muttered, and then they both froze, because wow, what a completely terrible joke, for so many reasons.
"Right," Mustang wheezed, and Ed took it as a mutual agreement to forget the last twenty seconds or so completely. "Hawkeye has the paperwork detailing your assignment. Why don't you…go find her, or something?"
"Yep," Ed agreed, and ambled carefully out the door.
….
There was something so inherently wrong about being awake before the sun was up, Ed believed this, and yet there he was, clutching a cup of really bad coffee and hating Mustang with every fiber of his being.
The three thirteen year olds staring back at him obviously shared his opinion.
"So, listen," Ed started. "I'm not here to…be your friend, or your guru, or whatever. This is a mission; you guys were picked up after basic alchemic screening tests indicated that you had some level of ability. This has nothing to do with me wanting to train a new generation of alchemists, okay?"
One girl in the front row tipped her head at him.
"Are you twelve?" she asked, voice sharp. "You look twelve. And I'm being generous, I am, because those are elevator shoes you're wearing, I see this."
"What," Ed replied, and it really wasn't a question.
"I'm just saying," she said. "You can't really stand there and talk about 'new generation' when you are the new generation still, and just barely that."
"Are you related to Mustang?" Ed asked suspiciously, because her braided hair was black, and her eyes were a familiar dark blue. "His secret love-child or something? This is, this is a trap, isn't it?"
"I'm Vanessa," she said, and kicked booted feet up to rest on the table. "But call me Nessa. And I'm not a love-child, my parents are married, what the hell are you talking about?"
"It is your fault," the boy in the back intoned from the cavern of his arms. He had yet to raise his head from the desk. "Your fault that I am awake this early, and will be for the next two weeks. You had to go and prodigy yourself at the age of twelve and now the military thinks that they can find more mindless cash cows to enlist." He raised his face just enough to give Ed a glare out of dark brown eyes. "All your fault."
"Prodigy is not a verb," Ed replied, because he literally had nothing else.
The other girl, so blonde and bubbly that it actually hurt Ed's eyes to look at her, raised a hand. Like they were in an actual classroom, and wow, she had been taking notes on everything he'd said so far.
"Do we call you Mr. Elric?" she asked earnestly. "Major? Major Fullmetal?"
"Short stack? Blondie? Magic-hand child?" Nessa added.
"I hate everything," Ed decided, and sucked down the rest of his coffee.
….
Ed took the three kids ("You can't call us kids," Nessa reminded him. "You're only four years older than us, and I don't actually believe that anyway.") to the training ground and got them started on the basics. According to the bullshit syllabus Hawkeye had handed him, he was supposed to start this two week training by "gauging their individual levels of ability".
He handed them pieces of chalk and instructed them to draw a basic transmutation circle. Callie, the inescapably perky blonde, drew a textbook perfect circle on the stones. When Ed asked her to activate it, it produced a small, decently sized product. Mathematically balanced, perfectly neat and organized.
Jake, the brown haired boy with what Ed suspected was a mild case of narcolepsy, stared at Ed in sleepy-eyed bewilderment. After a few minutes of staring back and forth between Ed and the chalk in his hands, Jake scribbled something that closely resembled a flower on the rocks. When Ed asked him to do something with it, Jake slapped it with one hand and then yawned like the effort had been too great. To Ed's complete lack of shock, nothing at all happened.
Nessa drew something that didn't even make sense. And after Ed spent fifteen minutes trying to convince her that she was wrong, wow so wrong, she bent down and slapped her hands on it out of pure frustration. A brilliant blue light flooded the training ground, and a decently sized spike shot up out of the earth.
"What," Ed said again, as Nessa leaned back and looked smug.
He spent another ten minutes making her walk him through her process. And once she disassembled it, once he could watch her take it apart, it slipped into sudden and startling clarity.
"Go away," Ed instructed, as Nessa continued to radiate smug in his general direction. "We're done, I'm done, go away now."
"See you tomorrow, Mr. Elric!" Callie called cheerfully, and Ed considered beating his face against the stones.
….
Ed kicked in Mustang's office door. The fact that Hawkeye didn't even try to stop him was pretty significant.
"Yes?" Mustang said, folding his hands like there wasn't a broken door lying on the carpet.
"I…you…I don't actually have enough words to express my hatred. There are not enough words in the universe."
"Is that all then, Fullmetal?"
"Die in a fire," Ed snapped, and then stormed back out of the office.
….
Day Three (the less said about Day Two, the better, chalk was never meant to be used in that fashion, what the hell Nessa) demanded that Ed teach the basic mathematical principles of alchemy. So Ed gave them the equation for a basic transmutation and asked them to figure out both the product and whether or not the material exchange could be considered equivalent.
Callie got to work right away, scribbling busily on her paper with a perfectly sharpened pencil. She balanced the numbers with textbook precision, showed all of her work, and circled the calculated product once she finished.
Nessa sneered at the paper for a solid fifteen minutes before finally getting to work. She appeared to be working hard but when Ed circled by to check on her progress he found two half-hearted equations in the upper hand corner, and the rest of the page dominated by a detailed drawing of a dragon.
A dragon with Ed's face and a floppy braid.
"I am going to make you eat that paper," Ed informed her, with a worrying amount of calm.
"Yeah, whatever," Nessa said, clearly unimpressed. "Numbers are crap, Teach. That's what intuition is for."
"Intuition."
"Yeah. I mean, I never calculate out my transmutations, and they always work anyway, so why bother?"
Ed scrubbed at his eyes with his automail hand. Briefly considered using it to lobotomize himself.
"Your transmutations work because you've got a natural affinity," he said. "But that's it. Without the math, that's all they are. If you, wow Nessa, if you actually used the numbers, your transmutations could be so much more. You could be so much more."
"Numbers are boring," she said, and got to work scribbling smoke rings around her Ed-dragon. "I'm good with what I have."
Ed's teeth ground together so hard he was sort of surprised he wasn't spitting smoke rings of his very own.
"Why? Why would you settle, why, when you know you could be so much better-"
"Don't wanna," Nessa repeated, slow and deliberate like Ed was a very stupid child. "Boring."
Ed walked away, because if he stayed for one more second, he might actually give in to the urge to climb up on her desk and be a dragon for real.
"Jake," he said, slow and long-suffering, because Jake's head had been up for maybe five minutes, and now it was on the desk again. "Jake, c'mon, I need you to try, really-"
And then he glanced at Jake's paper. Which had exactly two things written on it.
The correct product of the equation, scribbled lazily underneath the rows of numbers.
And the words, This equation is not equivalent, enjoy the power rebound, hope you weren't too attached to those toes.
And that was it. There were no numbers, no calculations, to explain how Jake had gotten the right answer, how he'd noticed that the transmutation was unbalanced when textbook-perfect Callie hadn't seen it.
He'd only had his head up for five minutes.
"I like numbers," Jake explained around a yawn, after Ed spent ten minutes making incoherent dragon noises in his general direction. "One right answer. Less time spent digging around in the subjective." He dropped his head back down to the desk. "Still don't know why you keep expecting me to draw sidewalk pictures, though."
Ed stared. At the back of Jake's curly head and the piece of paper in his hand. He stared for a solid thirty seconds.
Then, he dropped himself into the nearest desk and laughed and laughed until Nessa threw her pencil at him and shouted, "Can't concentrate, shut up, you look like a crazy person, wow."
….
On Day Seven, Callie burst into tears in the middle of training.
Ed thought that he'd finally figured it out. He'd thrown the stupid syllabus out the window (literally, literally thrown it, Al had watched him with something like great emotional pain radiating off his armor) and sectioned out individual areas of improvement. Jake spent all day drawing transmutation circles, learning to connect the numbers to the pictures on the ground. Nessa did math, nothing but math, and at least once a day she and Ed got into a screaming fight when her frustration levels hit their high point (but she would be better, she would be more, because Ed knew that she could). And Callie, so precise and perfect, alternated between the two. Ed worried about her the most, actually. Because she was perfect, yes. But she was also never going to get any better than this.
Jake was a mathematical genius, and if Ed could just coax him past the black and white world of numbers and into the subjective art of circle drawing, just a little bit, he was going to be amazing. He'd be useful, so useful, in a fight when the transmutation had to be perfect, had to be fast and balanced and effective.
And Nessa. Nessa was going to be brilliant. She was complacent now, content with the little bit of power she had, but Ed was going to break her of that, smash that to little bitty pieces. Because the power sang for her, Ed knew, in the same way it sang for him. The circles, the products, the balance, they came so naturally to her, just were in a way that Ed never thought he'd see outside himself. The power came to her like intuition, and she was going to miraculous, once Ed pushed her far enough.
But Callie. Callie was a plateau. Perfectly good and serviceable, but never anything more than that. And it wasn't fair; it really wasn't, because she worked so hard. Jake finished math equations in five minutes and spent the rest of the time sleeping on his desk, and Nessa dug her heels in against anything that even resembled work or change. Callie read and studied and worked and Ed watched the frustration and the sadness when her numbers paled compared to Jake's, when Nessa's half-assed circles produced bigger and beautiful things than her textbook perfect designs.
And Ed had never wondered, never stopped to worry that she might have reached the same realization, until Nessa stopped in the middle of their latest screaming match to stare over his left shoulder.
Callie was crying. Silently. Miserably. Splashing tears onto knuckles scraped raw from drawing the same circles over and over, trying and failing to figure out what made them less, what made them not enough.
"Shit," Edward said, because he literally couldn't think of anything else.
Very carefully, Callie picked herself up off the ground and walked away. So carefully, like she was keeping herself from shaking apart through sheer force of will. They all watched her go, even Jake, his face unnaturally pale and alert.
"Go," Nessa hissed, and gave him a shove.
"I…what?" Ed asked, hopelessly adrift.
"You have to talk to her," Jake said, and he sounded so quiet, so serious, and so different from his lazy drawl.
Not stupid, his kids. From the looks on their faces, they'd already puzzled out exactly why Callie was crying.
"You have to do it," Nessa insisted, and her own voice sounded suspiciously thick, and Ed had a completely straight-faced panic attack, because Oh God, no more crying, can't handle the crying. "She needs…you have to talk to her."
"I…shit," Ed said again. "Fine. I'm going."
He found her in the pretty little picnic area, where he'd taken them for lunch one day, if only so Nessa would quit bitching about being stuck inside a classroom, and Jake could actually spread himself out and nap. She wasn't crying anymore, but her face was soft and miserable.
"Sorry," she said, very softly.
"No problem," Ed answered awkwardly. "Really, no worries, I'm pretty sure Nessa's crying too, and that's embarrassing, she doesn't even have a reason."
Callie smiled, just the barest curving of lips. It was not a happy smile.
"So you think I have a reason?" she asked.
And Ed took a moment before answering, because really, he was still a kid himself. He was not…trained? Equipped? Not at all prepared to be handling this crap.
"I think," he said, and hated himself for stumbling over his own words. Get it together, brain. "That it's hard. Really hard, to be a little less special than everyone else in the room."
Callie's lip wobbled and her eyes went wet again. Ed's brain transformed itself into one big, blaring scream of panic.
"NOT THAT YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL!" he pretty much shrieked, and okay, startled Callie back into dry-eyes. Victory? "I mean, you really are. Just in different ways, Callie."
"What ways?" she whispered, and Ed dropped down cautiously to sit beside her.
"Who else can get Nessa to close her mouth and get to work? Not me, and well, Jake's useless, we all know this."
Callie laughed, just a little. Ed chose to interpret it as a good sign, because he honestly had no idea what to do if she started crying again.
"And you're the only one that can get Jake to actually explain his equations. His brain is a crazy thing, Callie, don't laugh, that's truth, that's scientific fact. And he won't explain them to me, his equations; because I actually think he likes to see me suffer. But all you have to do is tell him that you don't get it, and he'll pick his head up long enough to help you get to the end." Ed paused, considered. "Actually, looking back on the past week, I'm about ninety-eight percent positive that I would have killed one or both of them by now if you hadn't been there, Callie."
Callie laughed again, a little bit stronger this time, a little bit brighter.
"So your skill set," Ed babbled, and he really hated himself for babbling, but apparently that was where he ended up when his brain kicked into survival mode. "Actually more useful in everyday life, I mean screw alchemic genius, doesn't mean anything if everyone is dead via temper tantrum, right?"
"You don't get an opinion," Callie informed him, and her brown eyes were still wet, but they were warm now at least. "You're an alchemic genius."
"Fine, be that way," Ed breathed, failing to be offended in the wake of his relief.
And then she wrapped her arms around him, and that was. That was a new thing. A new level of not fun, the hugging.
"Yes, thanks," Ed said, patting her awkwardly on the top of her head. "Thanks, for the arms. And uh…oh look, the tear stains on my jacket. That's great, that's wonderful, are we done now?"
Callie's grin was big and bright as she detached.
"Thanks, Mr. Elric," she said, and then led the way back towards the training ground.
The others were waiting anxiously. Jake was even on his feet, so impressive. They both started over and then stopped, like they weren't sure of their welcome.
"Jake," Callie said with a soft smile. "I can't figure out the equation. Can you show me?"
Ed had never seen him smile like that, big and bright instead of soft and sleepy and tinged with "Aww, aren't you stupid for interrupting my rest". He grabbed the paper, tugged Callie close, and started explaining the numbers with an enthusiasm that Ed truly hadn't believed he was capable of. He watched them for a moment, the sweet sense of relief starting to ease the mindless panic, until a tiny fist socked him in the arm.
"Idiot," Nessa said, shaking out her hand.
"I am going to transmute you into a tree. Or a wall. You're a menace to society."
Nessa's face conveyed just how terrifying she found Ed's threat. Which was not at all, potentially even into negative numbers, a deficit of not caring.
"Not bad, though," she added, so quietly that Ed almost missed it.
And then she bounded away, yelling (always yelling) something about, "Where are the bandages, your student is bleeding, how do you fail so hard at being a teacher, I'm actually really sad for you."
That night, Ed collapsed on Mustang's office floor as soon as the students went home. Nothing seemed so glorious to his aching brain as the carpet against his face, and so he snuggled in happily, and it only took the team four tries to figure out (through much growling and other animal noises on Edward's part) that Ed actually had zero desire to be moved.
Mustang, for his part, never tried to pry him off the floor. Just pretended to finish paperwork as he silently laughed himself to pieces behind his desk.
….
Day Twelve was set aside for something called "Combat Alchemy". In which Ed was apparently supposed to teach three thirteen-year olds to throw a punch and transmute shit at the same time.
"You do it all the time," Callie pointed out, as Ed moped and brooded and absolutely did not whine.
Ed shot her a look of deep betrayal.
"No longer my favorite," he declared, and Callie laughed.
"Whatever," Nessa snorted. "I'm totally the favorite."
"You set my coat on fire yesterday," Ed reminded her, voice as flat as the cookies they served in the Mess. "My coat. On fire."
"Yeah," Nessa agreed. "But there was, like, love behind the gesture, and stuff."
"Wow," Jake said, slumped against the wall and looking like he protested the entire institution of standing up.
"Wow," Ed agreed, and then sighed. "Okay. So, this is how you make a fist."
"Really?"Nessa whined, and Ed shut her up with a glare.
It all went south surprisingly fast. The kids had graduated from punching air, to trying to punch each other, and Ed was trying to teach them how to find that space, that tiny pocket of time to draw the transmutation circle they needed. But it was difficult, so difficult, because all the kids seemed to care about was hitting each other and them jumping away, and Ed was rusty with drawing circles in the heat of battle anyway.
But then Nessa let out a triumphant shout, and activated a circle that Ed hadn't seen her draw. And the spike that shot out of the ground about stopped Ed's heart, because it headed straight for a defenseless Callie. Ed barely managed to tackle her out of the way in time, felt the spike scrape across his shoulder, tearing fabric and the flesh underneath.
Dead silence fell across the training ground.
"Are you hurt?" Ed asked, quick and breathless. "Callie, are you hurt?"
"No," she whispered, and her brown eyes were wide, too wide in her whitened face. "Y-you're bleeding."
Ed shrugged, and then hissed in annoyance when the movement tugged his tender shoulder. He climbed to his feet, and helped Callie to hers.
Jake was against the wall again. But his face was white, white like paper, underneath his brown curls. And Nessa was standing next to her spike, eyes wide and bruised.
"What," Ed asked, soft and dangerous, "was that?"
Nessa's spine snapped straight. Her chin jutted out.
"Alchemy," she said. "You know, that thing you've been teaching us."
"Where was your control? Your accuracy? You could have gotten Callie killed."
"But I didn't," Nessa pointed out, with a toss of her hair. "She's fine, and that was a pretty impressive piece of alchemy if I do say so myself."
"That's a life," Ed shot back, and he'd never heard his own voice so quiet, so careful. "You shouldn't be so careless with it."
Nessa's eyes were hot with annoyance, and shame underneath that.
"Sure," she sneered. "Because that's what you've taught us. Because that's what those books teach us, with their entire sections on how to perform alchemy on humans. Why should I be careful at all, Teach? Because according to the books, I can knit back together whatever I break and-"
The sound of Ed's automail fist hitting the spike, crushing it into pieces, was very loud within the training ground. Nessa stood, for once stunned into silence, as rock and dirt crumbled around her and Ed loomed, white-faced and trembling and barely able to hear over the sounds of Big Brother Edward and Al, no, give him back, he's my little brother, he's all I have, give him back echoing inside his skull.
"You're not so special," the words were like static, coming out of Ed's mouth without conscious thought. "Not so talented that human life doesn't matter. You're not…you don't…you could never pay the cost it takes. Not for a human life, there is no equivalency."
"I-" Nessa started, and maybe later he'd appreciate how young she looked, for once acting her age.
"If you think that your power is so great, that a human life means so little," Ed continued. "Then leave. Go. Burn your books, I'll burn your books and your papers and everything around you that ties to alchemy, because I won't let you become that, won't let you make that mistake, won't let you pay that price, not so young, not ever-"
A hand on his arm startled him out of his ranting.
"Mr. Elric," Callie, it was Callie, crying again. "Please, Mr. Elric, enough."
Ed could barely hear her. There was a roaring in his ears, a rush of white noise. And when he turned back, Nessa was staring at his automail fist with something like recognition in her eyes, and the beginnings of horror.
Ed walked away. Turned and walked away, and if they called him back, the roaring in his ears was still too loud for him to hear.
….
"I told you. I told you that I didn't want this assignment."
Mustang didn't look up from his paperwork.
"And again, I marvel over your ability to believe that you're actually going to enjoy every mission, Fullmetal."
Ed wrapped one arm around his waist. Tried to pretend that he wasn't trembling, like he wasn't shaking himself to pieces.
"They're kids. Just kids. And they don't know…they don't understand. And I don't what you were expecting me to teach them, me of all people, Mustang."
The Colonel smiled at his paperwork. Just a little bit, just barely, and it could hardly be called a smile anyway, bitter as it was.
"That's the funny thing about mirrors, isn't it, Edward?" he asked. "How they always seem to show the worst parts of you."
"And how would you know?" Ed scraped out, and pressed a frustrated hand to his aching head. The white noise, the roar, had died, leaving behind a sharp, throbbing pain. "You've never had a self-reflective day in your life, Bastard, how would you know anything about mirrors?"
"I know that children create the clearest reflections," Mustang said, petal soft inside the quiet room. "The brighter they burn, they better they show your own failings."
Ed closed his eyes. Ground his palm against his temple. Eventually, he gave in, and collapsed against Mustang's couch.
"You've always been such a shining thing, Fullmetal," Mustang murmured into the silence.
Ed breathed deep. Turned his face into the cushions and didn't answer.
….
Ed debated showing up the next day. Half-convinced himself that the kids weren't going to be there anyway, that he'd scared them away with his serious words and his fists made of fury. But Al fluttered around him, fretting and trying really hard (and really badly) to hide and Ed couldn't take the pressure. So he rolled himself out of bed and tugged on his clothes, trooping down towards the training ground like there was a firing squad, or an army of angry chimeras, or Hawkeye without her caffeine intake, waiting for him.
There were none of those things. What he did see, upon stepping inside the classroom, was three solemn faces, busily pretending to do anything else (Callie was actually pretending to clean, wow).
And a cup of steaming coffee sitting on his usual stool.
Ed scooped it up. Studied the way Nessa refused to look at him, the angry blush that lit her face.
"I'm going to sit," Ed informed the room. "I'm going to sit, all day, and you three are going to do everything I ask. Like proper minions."
From the cavern of his arms, Jake snorted out a laugh. Callie giggled into the books she was still pretending to straighten. And Nessa grinned, slow and hesitant.
"Aw," she said. "It's adorable that you think so, Teach."
That day, during Combat Alchemy, the kids listened to Ed's every instruction. And when Jake accidentally activated a transmutation circle, sending another spike through the dirt, it was Nessa that tackled him out of the way.
Ed curled his fingers around his long-empty coffee cup, and smiled.
….
On Day Fourteen, Ed was waylaid on his way to the training grounds by an invasion. Alarms blared as Central was invaded by a particularly enterprising rebel faction.
"How is this my life?" Ed hissed as he clapped his hands and suspended an unconscious group from the ceiling.
He hurried back out into the hallway, ignoring the fact that his human leg was dragging a bit, because his kids. They'd be at the training grounds by now.
"Fullmetal!" he heard, and Mustang was there, gloves on and suddenly at his side.
"Can't talk," Ed shot over his shoulder. "Go and, I don't know, defend your borders or whatever."
"Wow," Mustang said, and then dragged him against the wall just as the bullets started to fly.
From both directions.
"I don't have time for this," Ed snapped, clapping his hands together impatiently.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Mustang hissed back, controlling his flames carefully so as not to scorch the corridor. "Is this invasion inconvenient for you, Fullmetal? Should I ask them to reschedule?"
"My kids are down there," Ed replied, delivering a solid punch to a grizzled jaw. "On the training grounds, alone, with two weeks of alchemic training. I can't leave them there, they're not ready, not prepared-"
A dragon made of dirt cut him off mid-impassioned rant, swooping inside an open window and tackling a large number of the enemy.
"What," Mustang said, and it really wasn't a question.
"Nessa," Ed hissed. "So unoriginal."
Two dark blue eyes peeped over the windowsill. Ed would never, ever own to the relief swooping inside his gut.
"That hurts me," Nessa said, clambering inside the corridor with a complete lack of grace. "Hurts me right here, Teach."
"What are you doing here?" Ed snapped, grabbing her arm as soon as she hit the floor. "You idiot, this isn't a training exercise, where are Jake and Callie?"
Nessa blinked innocent eyes at him, which was fooling exactly no one, due to the fact that she had never had an innocent day in her entire life.
"You're jealous," she said mournfully. "So jealous of my dragon, I don't even know."
"Oh my God," Mustang said, with great feeling, from the background.
Ed breathed out hard through his nose. Reminded himself that throttling Nessa would be counterproductive.
"Nessa," he repeated, with what he thought was great patience, but probably damaged a bit by the vein thumping away in his temple. "Where are-"
An explosion rattled the hallway, knocking everyone off their feet, and burying several advancing bad guys under bits of debris.
"Whoops," Jake said, blinking sleepily at his hand like he'd never seen it before. "I think I made my circle too big."
"Oh my God," Mustang repeated, from the floor.
"I hate everything," Ed muttered, crawling to his feet. Down the hall a little ways, a few straggling bad guys were doing the same, looking dazed. "Everything. Okay, Jake. Where's-"
A scream ripped down the hallway, shattering the shocked stillness that always follows an explosion. Ed's heart catapulted into his throat as he whipped around and saw those stragglers advancing on Callie, grinning at the obvious fear in her face.
Terror ripped down's Ed's spine like a rocket and he was running, running with the knowledge that he was not going to reach her in time-
Only to skid to a stop as he watched Callie use her smaller size to tuck and roll and launch three overweight goons out the hole Jake had so helpfully made in the wall.
"That's my move," Ed observed blankly. "I…taught you that move."
"That was awesome!" Callie whooped, face flushed and laughing. "Look how far they flew!"
"Just like you said," Jake yawned, how was he still yawning, this was a military invasion. "Bad guys always lose their focus if they think you're small, and scared."
"They're not very good thugs," Nessa said with deep disapproval, glaring up at the ones Ed had left hanging from the ceiling.
"Neck wringing," Ed decided. "There's going to be so much neck wringing, just pencil that in for later, that's going to be a thing that happens."
"Look, there's more of them!" Callie sang out, and then took off down a different corridor.
"Hot damn," Nessa agreed, and took off after her.
Even Jake executed a sort of sleepy shuffle in that general direction. And left Ed and Mustang standing in shocked silence and the remains of a corridor.
"If the building is not standing," Mustang said, perfectly calm and precise. "Fullmetal, if it is not standing when this invasion is over, I am telling."
"I hate everything," Ed repeated, with great relish, before breaking out into a run. "You damn idiots, wait for me!"
….
Later, much later, Ed lay sprawled against a crumbling wall, breathing hard and glaring with all the power of his internal hatred. Which, at the moment, was quite immense.
Across from him, his three students pointed at his ugly look and laughed and laughed. There was blood, just a bit, and Jake was favoring his right side, but mostly they were just winded and streaked with dirt.
In the distance, the all-clear sirens began to ring. All criminals captured, killed, or expelled.
"Best," Nessa declared, flopping over on her stomach. "Best lesson ever."
"Yeah, thanks, Mr. Elric!" Callie chirped.
Jake started snoring. He was napping against the rubble.
"I quit," Edward said, and he only sounded a little bit hysterical, good for him.
"Still got that piece of paper," Mustang said, appearing out of nowhere yet again and dropping down to sit at Ed's side. "Says you have to do what I say. I lock it up when I don't need it, it's safe, because like hell I'd ever get you to sign it again."
"The building's still standing," Ed pointed out. Mustang's jacket was covered in dirt and his face was bruised, God he was going to bitch about that shiner for weeks. But his smirk was locked in place, so they were fine. "Go away."
"Always the conversationalist," Mustang said, and dropped his head back against the stones.
They sat in silence for a minute, breathing deep, and listened to Nessa and Callie poking Jake with various bits of debris. Then, Ed murmured, "So. Mirrors, huh?"
"Mirrors," Mustang agreed, with a tiny smile.
"They always only reflect the worst parts?"
"Maybe not always," Mustang said, and if that was pride in his voice, Ed was sure as shit never going to acknowledge it.
"Sir!" someone called. An officer, slipping his way across the fallen stones. "Colonel! The Fuhrer's looking for you!"
"Oh?" Mustang went tense, tense like rock against Ed's side. "Is everything all right?"
"Yes sir," the officer said, and there was something like embarrassment on his face, wasn't that interesting? "He wants to speak with you, is all."
Mustang sighed, and started to push himself to his feet.
"Did he say what about?" he asked, passing a weary hand over his face.
The officer blushed. Looked around the ruined hallway. Shuffled his feet.
"Uh. Yes, Sir. He wants to talk about you allowing Major Elric to train a secret army." The officer coughed delicately. "He said to tell you that the idea was sound, but the property damage might not fall under 'acceptable losses'."
Mustang stared. Edward gaped. Across the hallway, Nessa shrieked as Jake finally had enough with the poking and smacked her with a well-aimed paw.
Ed started to laugh. Silently. Mustang turned to glare at him as he shook himself apart against the wall.
"I'm going to immolate you," he commented, almost pleasantly.
"Have fun," Ed managed.
Mustang withered him with one last glare, and then followed the officer away with a long-suffering sigh.
Ed just laughed and laughed and watched as his three students continued to bicker in the sun.