"It's time for me to collect your toll, Edward Elric.

Make your payment."

Roy saw him fall.

It was slow and inelegant, a limp sprawl of limbs against Justin's arm as his head was tossed to the side in a horrific spray of blood to loll like a broken doll's. His long hair fanned out with the momentum of one bullet, splashing over his small shoulders as the blood soaked them, and he just dropped against Justin's arm like a soulless puppet, head limp and hanging and body empty and still.

Roy saw him fall, straight into his murderer's arms- because he was dead.

For several moments, it was impossible to even breathe.

He was dead.

Justin had killed him.

Roy's thumb and forefinger, previously tensed and ready to snap, felt distant and numb. They trembled pathetically by his side, useless and far, far too late to matter.

Maes was touching him, he realized after a time, tugging him back because his feet were trying to drag him forward, to move to Ed, to pull him back and save him from that monster touching him even if it was too late. Maes was pulling him back, Maes was trying to turn him away, to hide his face in his shoulder so he couldn't see, couldn't keep staring-

But it was all too late to matter.

Ed was gone.

Roy didn't even realize the choked, bloodcurdling, gasp of a scream came from him until it strangled itself to an end in a desperate, hollow sob.

He was gone.

There was more chaos and confusion, for a time. Yelling and shouting and more gunshots, Maes' arm still around him, and Ed just- just flopping limply as Justin hauled him away again, foot dragging uselessly on the ground, head hanging like a puppet with its strings cut, bloodied hair showered over his face. Roy didn't really hear any of it. Just more noise, a cacophonous background symphony to the roaring in his ears as he stared at Ed.

More shouting. More screaming. More chaos.

Justin moved again, this time shoving Ed's body away as he tried to withdraw, escape. Roy's hand twitched spastically again, this time the forgotten fires that had tormented him for months flickering in his mind's eye- and god help him, he wanted to see them. This time he remembered the screams of agony he knew he could call at just a snap of his fingers, and he wanted them.

He wanted to see him torn to shreds, blasted apart into nothing, burnt alive and to ash, his heart ached with the need of it-

But what did it matter?

It was all too late.

It was all too...

Roy, his mind still caught in a tumultuous storm and his body feeling as if it was caught in a terrible freefall, his heart pounding through his chest and his glove hand shaking so hard it was as if he wanted to fall apart, stopped.

In the newly formed silence of the room, he stared at Ed.

Justin had shoved him away. Justin had shoved his dead body away as he'd pulled back, and left Ed entirely on his own.

So...

Why hadn't he fallen over?

Because, now entirely on his own, Justin not even touching him, nothing and nobody touching him at all- Ed was still standing. Perfectly upright, not even unbalanced with his just one leg, head still bowed and face still hidden but that bloodied bullied wound still boring through his skull.

An uncomfortable, eerie sort of silence fell.

This time, Roy was not the only one staring at him.

He opened his mouth, starting to call his name, but the uncertain word died in his dry throat.

He just stood there like an unnatural statue carved from marble, perfectly balanced on one leg alone, and perfectly upright even with blood still trickling down from one fatal gunshot carved straight through his head.

For several seconds, there was nothing. Not even Justin was moving now, his gaze just as rooted on Ed as the rest of the room's. While Ed just... strangely stood there. Unmoving and perfectly still, when by all accounts, such a thing should have not been possible.

And then:

He began to grow back his missing arm and leg.

They were limbs, Roy recognized amid the stunned gasps all around him, but they were not human limbs. An eerie, otherworldly white- something- ghostly particles collecting at his shoulder and thigh and solidifying into the shape of an arm and a leg, coalescing out of nothing until they'd formed two seamless, featureless, human but not limbs. He looked like a patchwork doll, most of him slumped and bleeding in place and fully human, but then just those two strange, unnatural things sprouting out of him, fully an unnatural white...

And then, half human, half not, still balanced perfectly upright in a way that was creepily unsettling and certainly not something close to human at all, blood still gently trickling down into his hair... he raised his head.

Roy's heart stopped.

Ed was alive.

Or... at least, there was something inside him that was.

Because that thing was not Ed.

It smiled to him, it smiled at them all, but it wasn't Ed's smile. It wasn't small and mischievous, or bold and confident, maybe, inspiring one last bit of strength in him when he'd all but run out- it wasn't one of those slight but familiar things that he knew so well. It was huge, almost too big for his face, and... and wrong. Too big, too sure, too cruel to be Ed. And he looked at Roy, he looked around the whole room, but it was with eyes that weren't Ed's either.

Instead of that warm gold that he knew, it was the same cold, eerie, inhuman white nothingness of his new arm and leg.

It looked around at them all with inhuman, pupil-less white eyes, and it stood there on an inhuman, ghostly white leg with an arm to match, and it smiled a smile that was all teeth and no warmth, bullet hole crushed through his brain still leaking blood down his face and splattered on its forehead- definitively dead but at the same time, alive.

Roy shivered hard, an involuntary jerk of terror that shook through him from head to toe, and slowly stepped a back against Maes.

Whatever that thing was, it was not Edward Elric.

"Greetings, alchemists," it said, and smiled even bigger.

Its voice, again, was not Ed's.

And its focus was not on him.

Slowly, awkwardly, almost like a possessed doll getting used to its limbs, the creature in Ed's body began to turn. Some part of Roy was immeasurably, selfishly relieved when those eyes were no longer on him- and that same part of him then promptly enjoyed the most delicious, anguishing schadenfreude at the look on Justin's face when Ed's terrifying gaze landed on him instead.

"Justin Everson." Its voice echoed upon itself a thousand times, impossibly deep and inhuman, a chorus of a dozen voices coming out of his mouth alone and even when all Roy could see was the back of his head he knew that terrible smile was broadening all over again. "I have been wanting to meet you for a very long time."

The alchemist again withdrew, pale-faced and wide-eyed and his face slack with shock. He hit the wall at his back and just kept on trembling, clearly at a horrified loss for words. This time, even with Maes' arm across his chest now gone completely slack, Roy didn't try to break free to follow him.

He didn't want to be anywhere near whatever Ed was right now.

Justin jerked back, gasping and all but whimpering, and suddenly the gun was back in the air again, a gunshot banging through Roy's ears and the flash stuttering his heart- but this time was different than before. This time as horrible as the sight was he was able to keep watching and he saw how Ed didn't fall, didn't even flinch when the bullet tore through his head and splattered blood and skin and hair.

He just stood there only half with his own limbs and he looked at Justin and he smiled.

He smiled, and every alchemist's instinct in Roy's stricken body screamed to get away.

"You sent another alchemist to meet me in your stead," Ed forged on ahead into the dusty silence, the only one to move in the space where all the rest had been frozen, paralyzed by his proclamation in that unnatural, too loud, too wrong voice. "You tried to circumvent equivalence by having another pay your price. You tried to cheating the Gate." He paused for a moment, steady and sure, cold-hearted and perfectly still, that terrible smile still palpable in that unnatural voice alone.

And then, he laughed.

"There is no cheating equivalence, alchemist," he said, and reached forward to the man before him. Finger by finger, he removed the gun from Justin's suddenly slack, unresisting hand, taking it into his own- his own, not Ed's, but that strange, unnatural white arm instead- and he raised it himself. Straight up and with a steady arm and aim that turned towards Justin's own head without the slightest hesitation. "You have been taught the principle of equivalence since the day you drew your first array. You knew this. You knew that there is no cheating equivalence, and today, you and every alchemist complicit are going to pay the price that you tried to force another to pay."

There was an impossible, horrifying moment of silence.

Then Ed, or whatever it was that had taken hold of his body and spoken using mouth and smiled at them from his face, pulled the trigger.

This time, it was actually fatal.

This time, Roy still crouched across the room and held back only by his own shock and his best friend's limp arm, stood there and watched as the man who'd taken away everything that he knew, tormented his body, scarred his mind, and torn his life apart, dropped dead from a single bullet.

Ed's body remained still for several moments more.

In fact, the entire room remained absolutely paralyzed, and Roy found himself utterly powerless to be any different.

Then he laughed again, a cold and careless, dismissive display, and the gun clattered to the ground like forgotten trash. Calmly, he knelt down before the slumped body before him, and unlike Ed had just minutes ago, Justin did not get up again. He reached one eerie white finger forward gently, touching it to his head like a mother might to a child... or, perhaps more accurately, like an owner to a pet.

"Humans," he said quietly, a distracted, dismissive sort of murmur. "You all rely so heavily on the nature of equivalence, yet are always seeking to defy it. You always are reliant on a price to pay... without it, you'd fly straight to the heart of the sun."

Roy's heart stumbled another beat, hammering impossibly hard and fast in his chest in a miserably unsettling mix of discomfort and terror. He didn't know what that meant... some of the words somehow rang true, but he didn't know what it was trying to say, or why it was saying it all...

But somehow, he felt as if the words were directed at him.

But the thing was not looking at him, or even facing them at all. Instead it remained knelt down before Justin's slowly cooling, bleeding, dead, dead, dead body, finger against the new wound on his head, too still to be natural. It just knelt there for several long moments, unmoving in the thick silence, blood still dripping down from those terrible wounds shot straight through his skull to mat his hair and stain his skin and lurch at Roy's heart.

Then, with another eerie sort of grin, because he had never stopped smiling, the creature reached down to Justin's hand again- his gloved hand. The glove that Ed had taken from Roy, and Justin had taken from him. Slowly, with an unerringly sort of calmness and dexterity, he slid the glove off of the man's unmoving hand, and instead tugged it onto his own.

Again, not Ed's flesh and blood one, but instead the creature's ghostly, inhuman one.

He snapped once.

There was nothing- no sound or light or fire. There was nothing at all except Ed's newly gloved hand in the air, held perfectly still, thumb and forefinger still resting gently together. Roy wasn't sure what he'd expected but certainly not that, the almost disturbing lack of heat or flame, but whatever it was that had happened, Ed seemed satisfied by it. The inhuman figure calmly lowered his gloved hand after several moments, neatly pivoting around to face them with that too big smile and those white, empty eyes, and Roy's heart lurched again.

"You will find," it said carefully, "that every alchemist here today that supported what he did has now met his same fate. Equivalence has been settled, and balance, restored." That nasty grin spread a little more again as that white, ghostly hand rose, lifting up towards the still bleeding bullet wound on Ed's head.

This time, there was a red crackle of alchemy.

And before Roy's stunned eyes, the wounds healed.

Tiny little red sparks of electricity just gathered around his fingers, no array in sight, Roy staring in shocked amazement as the ugly bullet wounds through his head sizzled and steamed and bit by bit actually closed. The blood was still there, matting his head and soaked through his shoulders, but the wounds themselves were vanishing before his very eyes, easing shut and melting into his skin like they'd never been there in the first place.

He would've been relieved, if he hadn't been paralyzed and rooted in place by the sheer impossibility of it all, and the terror of looking at Ed, at the one person that he knew and could rely on and remember- and not seeing anything that he could recognize as him.

Not even when the boy then turned towards him on his ghostly leg, and walked towards him with his inhuman eyes and steady smile.

Maes made a small, alarmed noise next to them, finally coming back to life as if to stand in between them or push him back, but Ed didn't pay attention to him in the slightest He just side-stepped around the man like he was no more than a featureless pile of rubble to plant himself right before him, soulless white eyes only for Roy as he stared up at him from a face that did not belong to him and that sent spikes of cold fear straight through his heart.. That unnatural gaze pierced straight through him, like hot iron binding him into place or searing through his very soul, all-encompassing and all-knowing, and this time, when that smile broadened, Roy knew it was meant directly for him.

"I look forward to our next, and more genuine, meeting, Roy Mustang. And..." He paused here, a gentle lilt in the unnatural cadence of his voice to allow him room for another private, perhaps crueler smile. "Do tell Edward that I am looking forward to when next I meet him, and his brother, as well."

What...? Does he mean... Alphonse?

Roy swallowed hard; his voice was utterly lost in his throat and at least a big part of him was much, much more content with letting his terror silence him and just hoping that- thing- just got away from him as quickly as possible. "What do you mean?" he forced out, voice unsteady and in comparison with Ed's, suddenly frighteningly small. "What do you mean you're looking forward to... to meeting him? ...To meeting me?"

Ed's broad smile into something of a crueler smirk.

Then, he simply raised his ghostly hand, and waved.

"Until we meet again, alchemist."

There was several moments of perfect silence, Roy rooted into place and Ed still unmoving, just looking at him with that unsettling smile and his hand still up in a wave. But there was something electric in the air, something that felt like it was changing, and then as Roy watched- Ed did start to change. Little by little, the disturbing vestiges of whatever it was inside him started to fade- the ethereal glow about his arm and leg, that smile on his face, that light in his eyes. It was all slow and gentle, the softest fading of the ghostly aura around his limbs, the way his smile slowly slipped slack, but Roy found himself unable to look anywhere but into Ed's eyes.

Somehow, he knew that it would be there.

That was where he'd see the Ed he knew come back-

And he was coming back.

He would not believe otherwise.

It happened bit by bit, at first. The slow way the white, empty glow that ate at everything began to recede in his eyes, dwindling first in intensity and then in size, undulating in on itself to collapse and the white fading grey like smoke. And that was all it was, for a heartstopping moment of terror, the death or exit of whatever that thing was but not the return of anything that he recognized, not the light of anything that meant Ed, and for that one heartstopping moment Roy nearly cried out in agony.

Then Ed blinked, and when he opened his eyes, they were gold again.

Gold, and alive.

There was a heartbeat of thick, impossible silence, in which Roy all but sagged with relief, and really might have collapsed if not for Maes' now completely limp and useless arm.

In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that he didn't, because the first thing that Ed said, in a voice that was dazed and distant but so wonderfully entirely his own, "Truth is such a magnificent bastard," and then the first thing he did was collapse.

Roy broke free of Maes in an instant, dragging himself forward on his numb legs to catch him before he hit the floor, one arm grabbing around him and the other cushioning behind his head. He made it just in time, Ed dropping into his arms barely an inch before he'd have hit the rocky ground, obviously faint and dazed and now shivering, but alive, and Roy was so relieved he wanted to sob. "Fullmetal?" he half-asked, half-begged, shaking him as roughly as he dared, "Fullmetal? Is t-that- is that you? Fullmetal?"

Ed didn't answer for several moments, still blinking confusedly up at him with unfocused eyes and working his jaw like he'd forgotten how to speak. He wasn't gone, not like before, but Roy couldn't tell how present he was, either, and with each passing second the uncertain cloudiness on his face got more and more worrisome. Anxiety clenched around Roy like a vice, squeezing through him as Maes knelt down beside him to share a distressed look, clearly just as troubled as he was. "Come on, let's lay him down-" his friend started, already moving to help him.

Being touched and moved again, however, seemed to be all that was needed to shake Ed out of his daze.

His whole face brightened, the clouded stare clearing like the sun burning out after a rainstorm, and suddenly he was beaming, beaming as if all his troubles had just been vanquished in one fell swoop. "Truth," he said again, "is a magnificent bastard," then let out a short, startled laugh, so sudden it was jarring, and was still laughing as he flung himself forward to wrap an arm around Roy's back.

Roy stiffened, almost flinching in alarm at the sudden hug. Ed was still laughing against him, and by all means he sounded perfectly fine, more lighthearted than Roy had ever even seen him- but he was now hiding his face in his shoulder and hugging him tightly and shaking, and that couldn't be normal. He sounded almost hysterical, Roy realized with another note of alarm, his stomach shifting uneasily as he uncertainly, lightly hugged him back, at a loss. Maybe... maybe he just needed a few minutes to calm down and reorient himself, that was all... really, who wouldn't? It had been terrifying for Roy, and he'd been on the outside- he couldn't imagine how Ed felt, actually living through whatever the hell had just happened to him.

But Ed was just laughing and shaking his head into his shoulder, trembling faintly with the force of it but undeniably fine. Now he was even mumbling to himself, Roy realized, soft words under his breath, a muted, "...so simple, I can't believe it, it's just so simple..." and Roy found himself even more lost than before.

"Fullmetal...?"

At last, with another great heaving breath, Ed pushed himself back, shaking his bloody hair out of his eyes with a smile that was small and bright and confident and all Ed. "Don't worry about me," he managed somehow, all but gasping the words out between chuckles. "I'm fine. Promise. Totally fine."

"You don't sound fine, Ed," Maes broke in, again trying to reach a hand out. His face was tense and worried, green eyes narrowed as he looked between him and Roy once more. "Maybe you should-"

"No- nope. No. I'm okay, Lieutenant Colonel." He ran a still shaking hand through his hair, still with a bewildered sort of smile as he stared up at Roy, seemingly barely able to even toss a glance Maes' way even as he addressed him. "Promise I'm fine, but you can fuss over me all you want in a minute, okay? For now, can you give me and Mustang a moment alone? I actually really need to talk to him about something."

"What-" Roy blanched, staring between Ed and Maes in complete confusion now, wholly taken aback how Ed seemed to be the only one just taking the absolutely bewildering and terrifying mindfuck of what had just happened in stride like it was nothing more than a blip on the radar. "Fullmetal, you're not making sense..." Carefully he folded a hand back down on his shoulder, trying to make sure he had a way to keep him steady in case he should fall again. "Maybe- maybe we should have someone look at you, just in case- your brother, that should be okay, right? Maes, can someone go get Alphonse?"

His best friend nodded worriedly, already casting a dark glance around as if in search of a soldier to order to that very task, but Ed did not seem satisfied with that response. Far from being put at ease by the mention of his brother's name, in fact, he actually seemed more agitated now, narrowing his eyes in something of a glare as he worked himself to his knee. "Hang on, I said I was fine- bastard, I'm serious! I need to talk to you about something! You," he went on, frowning at Maes, "don't you go anywhere, I need to talk to Mustang before Al."

Again, Roy found himself frowning, an uncertain anxiety clenching around his heart again. Somehow, Ed coming back absolutely, totally Ed, confident and brazen and talking and seemingly perfectly untouched by his ordeal, was more concerning than if he'd come back needing to calmed down or in tears. He didn't know how to handle this and increasingly found himself as unsettled as he thought Ed should be. Slowly, he dropped another hand on Ed's shoulder that was meant to calm himself more than the confident alchemist before him, heart pounding to a tune of uncertainty, and he shared another anxious glance with Maes. His friend seemed just as troubled as Roy, and Roy found himself now even more sure of himself that someone needed to go track down his brother.

Ed glared around at both of them, bright eyes still narrowed and alive with so much intelligence and sudden strength it was all but breathtaking. "Haven't you guys learned to listen to me yet? Come on, it's been years, and I'm always right..."

The words were confusing, just like everything else Ed had said so far, but this time it took Roy a few seconds to key on directly as to why. And even then it was a vague, distant sort of a realization, barely managing to register underneath the more pressing awareness of just what the hell Ed was doing with his hand.

Because when Ed had apparently realized his words weren't going to get him anywhere, he had instead focused in on the blood on his finger, and begun to draw something on the ground. Drawing a... a circle. It was an array, Roy realized in shock, a neat circle with perfect little symbols arranged inside, drawn with a perfectly steady hand as if by muscle memory alone.

As if he... remembered...

And then, without even a moment of hesitation, Ed reached out to forcefully tug him forward with one hand, planting him firmly by his side, then slapped his hand down on the array.

The wall shot up out of the ground so fast and with such a sudden crackle of blue alchemy in nearly knocked Roy in the head.

That was what it was, Roy realized in shock, a solid neatly formed stone wall that split in between them and the entire rest of them in barely more than a heartbeat. A chorus of alarmed shouting split his ears, calling out from the other side of Ed's wall and Maes foremost among them, calling out while Roy just sat there in shock, but Ed plainly had been ready for this turn of events, too.

"I told you!" he shouted, "I told you I had to talk to Mustang!"

"Ed... Edward Elric, you take down this wall right now! Ed!" There was a fist pounding on the wall, then fingertips scrabbling along the top as if Maes were trying to vault himself over, and with absolutely no success. "Roy, are you okay? Is Ed okay? What's going on?!"

"I- I d-don't-"

"I told you, Hughes, everything's fine! And your friend is also fine, but he'll be even better in a second if you just let me talk to him!"

Roy stared in a now escalating panic, because Ed was way too confident to be normal now and he was starting to think that something was actually seriously wrong with him. Whatever had possessed him had done some sort of damage underneath the surface and something was not right with him, and now it was entirely down to Roy to keep him calm and safe until the others got through that wall. As much as he wanted to believe that Ed was okay, he wasn't, and he couldn't go on pretending that he was no matter how much easier it would be.

So when Ed turned back to him this time, evidently settled on ignoring Maes now in favor of whatever it was that was so important he'd gotten them off alone, Roy did not let him. When Ed reached out to grab him by the shoulder, using it to push himself upright, Roy grabbed his hand instead, both supporting him and stopping him from drawing another array in the same grasp.

"What-" Ed started, trying to pull his hand free, his brow furrowing when he could not. "What, you too? Come on, Mustang, I know you're a bastard, but don't start pulling this kind of shit on me, Hughes and Al are overprotective enough already..."

Roy just shook his head slowly, the too confident, too easygoing words brushing over his head to not even touch the chaotic worry nestling deep inside him, and the fear that something was just not right with him. He knelt and searched into Ed's almost too bright eyes, one hand still gripping his while the other moved to his face, resting lightly against his cheek to nudge him up by his chin and thumb over his cold, cold skin.

There was no glimpse of that ghostly white, eerily grinning creature from before, nothing in there that didn't strike him as genuine. His eyes were clear and the glow was gone, and the smile had transformed into an exasperated, impatient sort of glower that was so very, very Ed. Everything about him was so perfectly, wonderfully, beautifully Ed, alive and present and well...

And somehow, all of this only intensified the concern tightening in his chest.

"I... look, Fullmetal," he cautioned gently, swallowing hard as he pushed lightly at the kid's face again, keeping him there and refusing to let him break away. "I know you're upset, but, but after what just happened- what you just did-" His breath caught in his throat, stumbling over the horrible memory of Ed grinning cruelly with white eyes and a gun in his hand a blood in his hair, and this time something near panic caught around him again. "God, what was that? What just happened?! Do you even know, I- what was that thing, why did it... it talked like it knew you! Fullmetal-..."

The kid, however, simply averted his eyes, shoulders hunching a little with an almost nervous stare. The steady confidence flickered away for the first time and he withdrew into himself just a little more, equal parts frustration and uncertainty glimmering in his eyes. "It's... it's complicated," he muttered under his breath,, glaring to the floor. He tugged a shaky hand through his matted hair, again still refusing to meet Roy's eyes but now simply dodging the question; there was no denying that now. "Look, it's- it's really complicated, and even if I tried to explain it now you wouldn't get half of it- god damn it, Mustang, this all will become a lot simpler if you just let me do what I have to do. You'll understand in a few minutes, okay? Just let me do my thing."

"Your- your thing. Your thing? What even does that mean? Fullmetal-"

Roy broke off, interrupted by the sounds of rubble shifting outside. He could hear Maes yelling something in the distance, probably someone to come over here and bring Ed's wall down. Somehow, while Roy knew that was supposed to relieve him, he only found himself growing more and more uneasy, and when he looked back down at Ed, it was clear he was not alone in his sentiments.

But this Ed, unlike the Ed he'd grown over so many months of suffering to know so well, was not beaten down by the uncertainty.

This Ed was emboldened.

This Ed was stronger.

This Ed pushed a hand onto his shoulder again, eyes bright like fire as he used it to rise up to his one leg, balancing before him and staring down at him with enough determined, burning confidence to simultaneously silence Roy's protest in his throat and reassure him more than any sound of Maes outside ever could have. "Mustang," he started steadily again, then stopped, brow furrowing. "...Roy."

Roy, something wordless and taken aback catching in his throat, fell silent.

Even with whatever that thing that had been in him gone, his gaze was somehow even more powerful than before.

"Roy, you told me once before that I had to trust you. You saved my life that night. Well... this time you have to trust me." He paused gravely for a moment, still looking him right in the eyes and as sure of himself as Roy had ever seen him. "Okay?"

Once again, the steady words and absolute, unwavering determination in his eyes silenced any protest that he ever might've been able to give.

He remembered. He remembered, without Ed even having to remind him. The night that they'd broken free and ran for their lives, the very same night that Ed had had to watch Roy have the tattoo burned straight off of his back, and know he was going to have to suffer through the same fate himself.

He remembered that the only reason he'd gotten Ed over that line was because Ed had trusted him.

And he looked at Ed again, he stared over his blood matted hair but healed skin, he searched into his piercing, confident eyes, and he remembered what he had just seen him do. He remembered seeing Ed stand up as a half ghostly demon, gleeful murder in his eyes and smile, laugh in a voice that was not his own, and pull the trigger.

He looked at Ed, and did not see any of that thing anymore.

He saw the child that he knew, at heart, he trusted.

Roy took in a deep, slightly shuddering breath, and nodded.

There was a moment of tense, guarded silence. Ed continued to watch him, now with slightly narrowed eyes as if prying through him to ensure there was not even a hint of a lie.

Then, the alchemist squeezed his shoulder, and grinned back.

"Then do me a favor, Roy, and stay right there. Just for a minute... everything'll be fine if you can just manage to give me just one minute." Still grinning, yet almost wickedly, now, Ed continued to use his shoulder to move, this time limping around him to reach his back. "I told you, Truth is a magnificent bastard," he went on, raising his voice slightly now so Roy could still hear him even without seeing him. "He planned all of this, the son of a bitch... you know how nobody could figure out how Justin's array worked, Roy? How they said his old version wouldn't work, but while he obviously had a new version that worked, because it worked on us, nobody could figure out how?"

"I- yes." Wincing, Roy shifted a little on his knees, unable to help a prickle of unease knowing Ed was staring at him from behind. What was Ed going on about now? What was any of this about? "And...?"

"Well. I'm pretty sure I know how it works now."

Again, there was a startled, dead moment of silence.

Then, Roy nearly whirled around in shock, another stunned gasp driving itself from his chest, and would've succeeded had Ed's hand not landed right back on his shoulder and kept him still. "Y-you- you what?!" he coughed instead, because that was impossible- "Fullmetal, how-"

"Because Truth is the best teacher in the dammed world," Ed laughed, hand shifting from his shoulder to move over his back again. "He's also a monster, god help you if you get an answer wrong, but nobody knows more than he does, and I really think he had all of this planned from the beginning, now. He may not like me, but he really hated Justin."

Roy shook his head slowly, the shock pressing anything coherent straight out of his head to instead make room for a blank, utterly empty slate of disbelief. What the hell was going on?!

But Ed was already going on, his hand still searching over his back. "His old array didn't work because it relied on human transmutation. Remember, they told us that...? Well, all that means is he had to modify it. In his case, I think all he had to do was make it so it wasn't permanent. His old array was set to permanently wipe someone's memory, but he fixed it. His new one would've had to merely block someone's memories, so they could come back... but to do that, you need a set of two partner arrays. One to block the memories, one to get rid of that block. But, Roy, arrays that work on the body are pretty messed up to begin with. They're complicated and full of potential to go wrong and without safeguards-"

"Fullmetal, what the hell are you talking about?"

"-and you just- ...sorry." Ed laughed nervously, the hand at his back now cuffing him on the arm again as if in apology, but he certainly didn't sound apologetic. Roy could still hear the excitement and thrilled smile just barely held back in the faint tremblings of his voice, for god's sake. "Look, I just found out a whole bunch of stuff all at once and it's cool as fuck and I need to talk it through but- but you're right. We don't need this now. Yeah." He sighed heavily, as if that might somehow help him calm down a little, then brushed at his shoulder again. "Point is. To work, this array would need to be kept on us somehow for it to work. Preferably somehow drawn on the skin."

With all of Ed's fast-paced ramblings, most of them blurring way over his head, it took Roy several moments for those words to sink in. But when Ed paused in a weighted silence, clearly expectant and waiting for him to get it, he founded himself mulling uneasily back over the rushed sort of lecture, searching and sifting through the words for meaning, struggling to hunt through all that he didn't understand to find something that he did-

And then, he gaped.

"The... the tattoos," he breathed.

Ed squeezed his shoulder again. "Exactly."

Roy continued to gape uselessly into the wall before him. His back abruptly stung, and this time it had nothing to do with whatever it was that Ed was doing behind him.

"B-but," he gasped finally, "but those got burned off- when we broke out, they-"

"No, something got burned off," Ed corrected. "It was probably another partner array... pretty complicated, but you can set up a border of sorts, draw a circle and not allow your marked object to cross the lines. For all I went at him for, the asshole was actually a pretty good alchemist." The kid laughed shortly again, but this time the sound quickly sobered as heh returned his hand to his back. "My point is, this whole time, we assumed that's what those tattoos were for. And, well... they were. Partially, anyway."

Roy shook his head slowly. God, he was completely overwhelmed now. "Are you saying there's a second tattoo somewhere?" he asked slowly, again resisting the urge to turn around. "But wouldn't we have seen it by now? Or someone else? A tattoo can't exactly be that easy to hide, we looked everywhere when we first met, we didn't see anything else-"

"Right," Ed cut in, and this time, with a hint of satisfied, almost smug triumph. "We looked everywhere." He patted his back with one quick almost slap of his palm, hand returning steadily back to rest steadily again on his shoulder. "Except for underneath the first tattoo."

"...What?"

"Underneath the first tattoo," Ed repeated, as if saying it again made it magically make more sense than the first time. "It'd be simple. Justin would've drawn the first array on us, given it a few days to heal, and when it was settled and working properly, he would've drawn the second right on top of it. So now that we've burned the second one away..."

Roy stared into space again, his heart pounding but mind, suddenly racing. He itched to turn around, to drag off his suddenly constricting uniform as if he might be able to see it for himself, but now that he thought about it...

Nobody had seen what they looked like without the tattoos. At first the bandages and burns had obscured everything from view, and Maes had tried to work with them, but Roy had refused anything more than the fewest cleanings and examinations than he could scrape by with, and he knew Ed had done the same. Nobody had so much as gotten close enough to look a them in days. Roy knew the last time he'd let Maes see them had on his own back had been sometime last week , and even that had only been for a precious few minutes while Maes helped him clean the still healing burns.

If there actually was a second tattoo underneath the first... nobody would've seen it.

Which...

Which means...

Roy's breath caught again, and his eyes widened.

Had the key to everything been on his very back, his very skin, this entire time?

Was this the moment that they'd spent so long fighting for?

Once again, his sudden, stunned attempt to turn around was stopped by Ed's bracing hand on his shoulder. "I told you everything would make sense in a few minutes," the kid promised, and now Roy could feel his hand moving, splaying gently across the center of his back with the lightest of pressures yet tickling a bolt of electricity up his spine all the same. "Well... if I'm right, then- I really did mean everything." He paused for a moment again, hand pushing gently still at his back. "You ready, Roy?"

This time, Roy's answer had no hesitation.

When Alex Louis finally brought Ed's wall down, it was not a moment too soon, because Maes had been about to have a heart attack from the prolonged wait of it all.

(His third heart attack of the day- the first being when HQ had been attacked, and the second when he'd found out Ed and Roy had, once again, gone missing.)

When Alex Louis finally brought Ed's wall down, however, it was not to any sight that lived up to any of his ramped up fears that had presently been racing into overdrive.

There was no terrible creature possessing Edward again- or Roy, for that matter. They were both fully themselves. They were both not hurt.

In fact, they were both sitting casually on the dusty floor, Ed leaning slightly into Roy's shoulder with blood in his hair slowly staining into his uniform, but clear-eyed, clear-headed... and grinning his ass off like Maes' third heart attack had been a magnificent prank and he'd pulled it off. And Roy sat next to him much the same, utterly, almost infuriatingly calm, cross-legged and pale face arranged in almost a dazed grin, one arm loose around Ed's shoulders while the other curled around his glove in his lap.

Maes gazed down at them, absolutely dumbstruck.

And Roy smirked right back up at him.

He smirked.

"Took you long enough," he said smugly, and his smirk broadened even more.

The anxious fear that gathering inside him until now, tightening his stomach into knots and hammering his heart into a frantic drum, leaving him with clammy hands and an ever escalating terror, catapulted to an abrupt halt.

A halt that this time, was tempered just a bit with his own disbelieving anger.

They were... fine?

They were completely, totally fine, to the point that they had been just sitting there calmly together on the floor and waiting for him to break through?

What?

At Roy's calm snark, Ed nearly cracked up beside him, shoulders shuddering with a brief wave of laughter as he ducked his head, hiding his face with his hair. "You are such a bastard," he said, still chuckling- and Roy continued to grin.

"Yes," the colonel said simply. Proudly, even. "I am."

A vein pulsed in Maes' forehead, and for a moment, he wondered if those two were going to- were perhaps trying to- stress him into an aneurysm.

Without another word from his goddamned bastard of a best friend, Roy then dropped his arm from around Ed's shoulders to help him upright, the both of them standing before him and still all too irritatingly confident for Maes to bear it. They both worked themselves to their feet, the colonel dusting himself off in a business-like manner while Ed aggressively pushed his hair back, barely even leaning on him anymore as he faced ahead with eyes like iron...

But something was different.

It was a lack of something, Maes realized a moment later, watching Roy neatly tug his gloves back tightly on his hands with an unerring air of neatness and confidence, watching Ed limp forward but without clinging to Roy's side the way he had grown so used to seeing. It was a lack of the hesitation, the uncertainty, the wariness as they searched each room for danger with hooded eyes and the quiet, muted fear that they both looked to him- to everyone- with, because in this delicate, painful aftermath, they were all strangers to them, and they trusted no one but themselves.

All of that was gone.

And in its place was a confidence, assuredness, and determination that he didn't know how badly he had been missing until it was back.

For the first time since they'd both gone missing, he actually felt like he was looking at Ed and Roy again.

"Well, Maes?" Roy asked, clearing his throat and giving both of his gloves one last, final tug. "Are you going to yell at us, or are you going to let us get back to it instead?" He gave him a sly glance out of the corner of his eye, smirk twitching again. "After all... I presume there's still some clean-up to be done.

There was another pause, this once broken once again by Ed's suppressed laughter and very obvious roll of his eyes, the younger alchemist nudging at his side and muttered something under his breath. Roy, however, continued to watch him instead of responding to Ed's ribbing, and a heartbeat later his smirk started to fade, instead replaced by a smaller, more genuine sort of a smile. "I did miss you, Maes. And... before you yell at Ed, you should know, he's the only reason I remember you now enough to know I better start running before you go off on us both. So at least go easy on him, okay? You know that Al's probably going to lecture him enough for us both regardless."

Maes stared at him blankly for another absolutely stunned breath of silence.

Then, still utterly overwhelmed, absolutely lost, and with not any single damn clue as to how any of this had happened, he simply did what he had now been waiting to do for weeks, and flung one quick arm around Roy's shoulders to pull him into a crushing hug, and let the other fall to rest his hand down on the top of Ed's beaming head.

"Welcome back, you two."