"Here we are, home sweet home!" Silas exclaimed, knocking snow from his boots and holding the door wide enough to let Roy through with his burden.
Roy pulled Ed closer to him as he slipped inside, closing the door behind him with his hip.
"I'm home!" Silas called, walking into the living room. As he rounded a corner, possibly into a kitchen, Roy took the opportunity to study the home he and Ed would be stuck in for the next day or so.
The house was small, not at all what Roy had expected of a doctor. If he had to bet, he'd wager that the small man made more than he did, but that money certainly wasn't going toward his living conditions. The furniture was threadbare and mismatched, set over scarred, worn hardwood floors. Every available work surface was covered in books and files and papers, scattered about like a madman's decor. Closer inspection revealed them to be patient files, and Roy felt a small stab of guilt. Just how many other lives was Silas neglecting to come to their aid?
Despite the clutter and the piecemeal furniture, everything was surprisingly clean, in its own way. The books that weren't being used were filed away neatly on the shelves, the coffee table was clear of any dirty dishes and other signs of neglect, and the rugs looked freshly beaten. There was no more than a few days' worth of dust on the dozens of pictures lining the shelves and end tables.
All in all, Roy decided it was homey. He'd lived in much worse for much longer.
"Good evening, beautiful!" Silas exclaimed, from the kitchen, snapping Roy from his thoughts. He listened, but didn't hear any sort of reply from whomever he was speaking to. Probably Regina. "And how was your day? Oh, of course, of course! But let me introduce you to our guests!"
Silas entered the room again. Roy had expected him to bring in some small girl with wide eyes and too much shyness to speak.
He wasn't expecting . . . well, the feathers.
"Roy!" Silas beamed, holding one arm slightly extended in front of him. At his elbow perched a large white bird. It had to have been over thirteen inches tall, with large black eyes and a curved gray beak. It tilted its head, then leaned forward and bobbed up and down in some absurd sort of dance, the peach feathers on its head rising in the vague appearance of a headdress. "I want you to meet Regina! Regina, Roy."
"What is that?" Roy asked, hoping he didn't sound as repulsed as he felt. The last thing Ed needed was some sort of stupid parrot screeching.
"I told you, this is Regina! Isn't she simply gorgeous?" he said with a smile at his pet. "Well, then, go on! Say hello!"
Regina bobbed her head again and spoke in a warbled, grating voice, "Hellooooo? Who goes there? Run, run, ruuuuun. Hello?"
"Ah, been listening to the radio, haven't you?" Silas asked. He grinned at Roy. "Sometimes I leave the radio on for her. She loves her murder mysteries. Now, I'm sure Ed's getting awfully heavy. Let me show you both to your room!"
Roy's legs almost buckled in relief. Ed didn't weigh much, but the automail added to his mass significantly, and Roy had been holding him for a while now. Roy would have been loath to admit that his arms were quivering the slightest bit. He was starting to get out of shape.
Silas set Regina on the back of a couch and headed down a short hallway. Roy eyed the bird suspiciously before following. "On this side, we have our first bedroom, which is where the both of you will be staying." Roy shoved past him, stepping into the small room and lowering Ed to the bed with shaking arms.
The room was nowhere near as cluttered as it had been in the living room, almost tidy by comparison. The bookshelf in the corner held a few titles, all ordered and standing neatly on a single shelf. A small desk sat under the window, chair tucked underneath and everything ordered nicely on its surface. The bed was fairly large and seemed comfortable enough.
Silas stepped up to the desk and switched the lamp on, then hurried to turn the bed covers down underneath Ed as best he could. "Well, what do you think?" he asked with a smile. "Not quite as fancy as your place, of course, but it's cozy."
"Yes," Roy agreed absently, helping Silas arrange the covers around Ed.
"I'll go and fetch your suitcases from the car," he said, turning and slipping out the door.
Roy sat down wearily beside Ed, sinking into the mattress with a heavy sigh. His eyes drifted over to the boy's still form, still wrapped in his blanket underneath the covers, blond locks splayed across the pillow. In the gentle lamplight, the fear that had been such a part of his features was finally muted, like fresh snow over a desolate landscape. He almost looked like a child again.
Roy ran a hand through his golden hair. It was late, and exhaustion was starting to make Roy's vision a bit fuzzy around the edges. It had been a long day, and though rage and the promise of finally getting his hands on one of Ed's captors had kept him going the past couple of hours, even that was starting to ebb a bit.
He kicked his boots off and propped his feet up on the bed, leaning back against the pillows on his side as he did. His eyes slipped shut a moment before opening and sliding back to Ed's sleeping face.
He sighed. "Well, kid, if anything goes as planned, I'm going to be a Dad."
Silence met the statement.
Funny. He'd always thought a declaration like that would merit more . . . excitement.
"To be honest, I'm scared of it," he said softly. "Of course, it doesn't have to be permanent. I know that. I guess we can call it all off as soon as this whole mess is over with. But still . . . it's a lot to take in, you know?"
The front door opened and shut, and Roy could hear Silas initiate a steady stream of unintelligible chatter, probably to his bird. He didn't reenter the bedroom though, so Roy turned his attention back to Ed.
"Yeah, I guess I'm just scared. A big coward. I'm not even sure why . . . will you hate me more, Ed? Will it make you despise me, for me to hold a title like that? You've always hated having to answer to me, but I've always tried to do my best by you. It hasn't been enough." He snorted, mouth twisting in a deranged imitation of a smile. "Yeah, this whole thing is proof enough of that, isn't it? I guess I can't help but let down the people that matter most.
"But all the same, I'm still trying." Roy rolled to his side, propping his upper body on an elbow as he watched his young charge sleep, his face only inches from Ed's own, as if in an attempt to reach Ed's unconscious mind with his words. "I honestly don't know what I'm doing here, and I won't always get it right, but trying has to be worth something, doesn't it?"
Roy sighed and rolled back over on his back, threading his hands on his stomach. "I wish I had more to give you. I wish at the very least I had the courage to admit to you why all of his happened . . . who's really at fault . . ." the words stalled and died and Roy pressed his lips together. "Yeah, I'm too much of a coward for that, too."
Roy rolled over to his other side, putting his back to the evidence of his biggest failure.
"Sorry, Ed."
Roy was only minutely aware of the small doctor that brought in their suitcases, and with a smile and a soft word, turned off the lamp and shut the door, leaving them alone in the night.
XxXxX
Roy woke up with a start, eyes flying wide and meeting an unfamiliar ceiling.
It took him several long seconds to realize he was in Silas' guest bedroom. Ed was still resting beside him, dead to the world as he had been the whole night. Come to think of it, Roy hadn't woken up once in the night. It was strange to wake up feeling like he'd actually slept.
With a yawn, Roy dropped his legs off the bed and sat up. He breathed deeply and was suddenly, acutely aware of the smell of bacon and eggs wafting through the house.
Roy tried to straighten out his wrinkled clothes and ran a hand through his disheveled hair before making his way into the kitchen. The light was on, but there was no sign of the doctor anywhere. On the table was a plate of bacon, toast, eggs and a note.
Gone to the hospital: we had an emergency come through. I don't expect Ed to wake up until later in the day, but here's breakfast for you, and help yourself to anything you'd like!
-Jim
At the bottom was the hospital's number with his extension and a smiley face. Roy dropped the note back on the table, more than ready to tuck into breakfast, but movement caught his eye. He looked up to see a pair of dark, beady eyes watching him.
Roy frowned. "What are you looking at?" he demanded sourly.
Regina cocked her head to the side from inside her cage, the peachy crest of feathers on her head rising. "Somebody call the doctor. Run, run, ruuuuun."
"You're not even making sense. Why would anyone want a noisy parrot for a pet?" he muttered, sitting down at the table and readily taking a bite out of his meal that had long gone cold.
The bird garbled another string of words that Roy couldn't decipher.
"Dogs. Those are much better pets," he informed. "They're loyal, and they don't talk back."
"Want a peanut?"
"No," Roy responded, then stopped as realization hit him. "Why am I talking to you?"
The bird babbled softly to itself and turned away from Roy, as if sensing the dismissal. She climbed up the walls of her cage to destroy some brightly colored blocks of wood suspended at the top of her pen and proceeded to ignore him.
Roy massaged his head. "I'm losing it," he muttered to his plate. "There's no other explanation."
The phone rang. Roy nearly leapt out of his seat in surprise, hurriedly reaching behind him to answer it from its place on the countertop. The bird made a cackling sound that came across as vaguely mocking, but Roy ignored it. "Hello?" he greeted stiffly.
"Hey, they managed to catch the late train yesterday," came the casual reply on the other end of the line. "Your shipment will be here by seven this evening."
Roy stiffened, interested by the news and concerned that Breda felt the need to use one of their codes to convey it. It was one of their lighter ones, but it implied that the team was under some heat. Perhaps Archer was already starting to tighten the noose. Perhaps he had men hovering over his team even as they spoke. "That's wonderful!" he said, pitching his voice just a bit higher than normal. "I'll pick it up tonight. Are they expecting us?"
"Yes, of course," Breda responded. "Mostly Elaine, though." Elaine was their code for Edward. Ed would have killed Roy months ago if he'd known they'd given him a girl's name as code. "Say, stay out of trouble, alright? Maybe I can catch you after work."
"I'll be waiting."
Roy hung up, suddenly very awake and mind running a million miles a minute.
So, Vasovik was due to arrive that evening at six, not seven. Archer was looking for Edward, but Roy was still in the clear, though that couldn't be expected to last. One of his team would be by to give him a ride to Central Command when the coast was clear.
What Roy was particularly interested in was getting his hands on Vasovik. It was going to be a long afternoon.
XxXxX
Roy carefully situated an unconscious Ed on the couch. He was vaguely concerned that the boy hadn't awakened yet, but he supposed Silas had known what he was doing. Roy had taken the opportunity to give the kid a bath and get him into some fresh clothes while he was still under the influences of whatever cocktail Silas had injected him with. Things like that always went smoother when the boy was unconscious.
As Roy had been unfolding the boy's blanket on top of him, he heard the first rumble of thunder and groaned. Not now, of all times! He dropped the blanket and stepped over several medical journals to reach the window, pulling back the curtain to get a look outside.
The clouds had rolled in thick, heavy and blue over to the west. Even as he watched, lightening flashed somewhere inside them, growling and snarling softly as it echoed through the snow-covered city. Thunderstorms in the winter were not uncommon in Amestris, but they were by no means frequent. And this one couldn't have timed worse if it had tried.
Roy glanced over to Ed, hesitating. Breda would be there to pick him up in a few minutes. If Ed woke up here all alone with a storm coming in, there was no telling what damage it could do to him.
On the other hand, if Archer or anyone else got their hands on Vasovik before Roy did, Roy might never get his chance to beat some answers out of the dirtbag.
Roy ground his teeth together, glancing at the clock. Half past five. Surely Silas would be home any minute now? He wasn't even supposed to have gone into the hospital at all that day. And that aside, Ed had shown no signs of life in over fourteen hours. The drugs had lasted this long. Surely they would hold out two more hours. That was all Roy needed.
He could get the answers he needed in two hours.
The doorbell rang, jarring Roy from his thoughts. He hurried to the door, checking through the peephole before opening it up.
"Colonel," Breda greeted, dressed in his blues and bundled up in his greatcoat against the chill. "You ready to go?"
Roy spared Ed one final glance, as if Ed would wake up in that split second and decide it for him. But Ed didn't move, and anymore time wasted increased the chance that Ed would wake up alone. Roy shrugged on his own coat over a uniform he hadn't worn in weeks. "Ready," he informed, sliding out the front door and locking it behind him.
Breda watched him warily, as if looking for something. Roy turned and scowled at him. "What?"
"Is Silas here?" he asked slowly.
Roy felt his irritation double, but he had the presence of mind to understand that it wasn't directed at Breda. "No."
"You're just going to leave the kid alone like that?"
"He'll be fine," Roy snapped, feeling his anger writhe like a live thing inside of him. He was so close to getting his hands on the man that had done this to Ed, and thus the entire hive of those responsible. Finally, Ed would get justice. That was the whole point, right? That was the point of putting Ed through the debriefing, and all of the nightmares and holding a sobbing child so he could cry himself to sleep night after night. This was everything they'd been waiting for. Ed was about to receive justice.
So why did something inside of him feel just a little bit wrong?
He crushed that particular thought with logic: two hours, and he would be back and Ed would still be asleep and they would be that much closer to getting things back to normal. Two hours.
"Come on. Two hours, and we'll be back." Roy stomped through the snow, leaving the portly Lieutenant to follow behind.
The thunder snapped in the distance and a trace of doubt made Roy hesitate, eyes wondering back to the house for the briefest of moments. Then he steeled himself, turning and climbing into the car.
XxXxX
Ed suppressed a choked sob and tried again, voice faint and breaking. "Mustang?" he whimpered before something strong and terrible rumbled through the room, making his very chest vibrate, as well as glass and walls and sending something not far off shifting and sliding. It stole his confidence away, and he cowered where he was, his only comfort the blanket he buried himself in.
Ed had come to slowly, like dragging his consciousness through mud, and when he was alert enough to listen and process what was going on around him, he wished he hadn't awakened at all.
He was alone. He didn't know where he was and he didn't know what was happening, but no one would answer him.
He'd been abandoned.
Ed had known it would happen. He understood the inevitability like he understood the Laws of Equivalency.
Still, though, some part of him was shocked and hurt and so very betrayed by all of it.
The roar came again, and Ed nearly jumped out of his skin. He wished desperately that Mustang was beside him, explaining what all of it was, holding him close and being his eyes. He would give anything to have him there right now.
Why was it so loud? And where was he? This place didn't smell familiar. It smelled musty and old, like dusty carpet, the air somehow feeling sharp and dangerous, like in a storm. Was that what that sound was? Some kind of storm?
He jumped at another rumble. It made sense, though. The charge in the air, the crack and growl of thunder . . . that was it. Thunder.
Which explained the terrifying noise, but it did nothing to explain where he was.
Okay, this was no problem. He could figure this out. He didn't need eyes for this. He would find a phone, dial some numbers and figure it out from there.
Unless there isn't a phone, an unhelpful part of his mind intoned. Like they'd leave a phone in the personal quarters of a looney bin.
Ed hoped with every fiber of his being that that wasn't the case.
After another paralyzing roll of thunder, Ed finally breathed enough to settle his stomach. Holding tightly to his blanket, he sat up. It was easy to tell that he was on some sort of sofa, the back rising up on one side of him. He swung his legs over the end and got to shaky legs, then took a few tentative steps forward.
His metal shin clanked loudly against a low coffee table, or at least Ed assumed that was what it was. He shuffled around it, carefully easing is way forward. The best way to get out of a maze was to find a wall and follow it. It only reasoned that this applied to any other room.
The room felt small, his quick breathes echoing back to his sensitive ears sooner than they might in a bigger space. It was smaller than Mustang's living room, and after bumping into his third plush piece of furniture, Ed decided that this was probably a living room of some sort. His hand brushed over a hinge, then the cool metal of a doorknob. The front door?
Thunder snarled again and Ed fought the impulse to curl up on the ground and hide away under his blanket. He could do this. He just had to find a phone and make a call. He couldn't afford to lose his cool just because he didn't know where he was.
Except that last rumble of thunder sounded an awful lot like the growl of a wolf . . .
"Not now," he hissed to himself, squeezing his eyes shut as he inched forward. "Not now, not now." He didn't have time for flashbacks. He had to keep his head.
"Run run run."
The blood froze in his veins.
"Run. Run run run."
Something rustled, like claws through dead leaves.
"Who goes there?" the voice grated out, a gurgling, distorted sound against the crack of thunder.
Ed's mind raced. Someone was there. Someone was in the room with him and he'd had no idea. His heart was in his throat, hammering away at his windpipe and making it impossible to breathe. He clamped a hand around his throat, backing up as blood pounded in his ears.
"Hello? Who goes there?"
Ed opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out.
An earsplitting scream ripped through the air.
Ed didn't remember finding the door, or tearing it open. He was only half aware of the freezing air hitting him across the face and the air charged full of electricity. His socks were soaked in a matter of steps as he stumbled and staggered from the house, all of his energies focused on putting as much distance as possible between himself and that terrible scream.
Well, that was almost a reasonable length of time between updates, right? xD
Yep. The verdict is in: I am a horrible person. And I have no shame c: But things are moving right along, plot-wise! That's something xD
Silas' cockatoo is being used for evil.
I'd like to thank the individual that reviewed anonymously, but shared their insight with me from having been through the whole adoption process. Your information was very helpful! I've being reading through a lot of very dry information on the subject, so having it summarized so well from someone that's been through it was absolutely wonderful.
There was also an individual that reviewed anonymously asking about what program I used for my art on dA. I use Gimp ;)
I hope you guys have a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! Dream big for '15, and I'll see you in the new year! ;)
God Bless,
-RainFlame
