A/N: I have no idea how this chapter is out already...Enjoy! Thank you to the incredibly lovely UP2L8 for her beta-ing magic.
Warnings: Horrible fake science!
"It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men." All Quiet on the Western Front
"What?" His arms relaxed, lowering the deceptively eavy body till it lay flat, his own arms now hanging limp by his sides.
"You won't believe it, it's so absurd," he says with a wondering whisper, as if his brain had yet to make sense of the idea. "He wants to use stars," he sniggered with a hint of hysteria. HIs smirk towards Roy was fractured and wet. Roy kept cool and distant.
"What do you mean?"
"As an alchemic amplifier! The moron wants to use planetary forces here on earth!" He burst out laughing and choking. Again, Roy was still and silent. From Ed's hysterics, this was no joke, there was something plausible here. It could be the final day all over again, and Roy's stomach dropped down through Ed's straddled hips and straight into the bedrock beneath them.
The blonde continued to alternately laugh and cry, bringing stiff and trembling hands to rub at his eyes,
"Fullmetal, collect yourself," he said it harsh and clipped like when Nina's entrails decorated an otherwise unremarkable East City alley. The bruise blossoming on the boy's cheek, that he himself had planted there, made his usual mask hard to muster. The sobbing quieted further and the young man's dewy, golden eyes blinked up at him. Roy felt the corner of his own mouth falter briefly. The sun was now high enough he could feel the warmth on his back. The danger of their situation increased in increments of golden, rosey light, and whatever ethical war the blonde alchemist was waging in in his heart, it needed to be set aside in favor of the real one at hand.
"Listen, we need to get back before everyone is awake," he hissed, seizing the still frigid hands of his subordinate. "On your feet." He slid off and to his feet, tugging the other man to do the same.
Briefly, the Colonel thanked whatever unknown eavesdropping powers that be that he uncharacteristically allowed the remaining me to sleep late. He couldn't offer them food, but they could rest to their hearts content.
"Major, you know the way back?: He snipped, voice carefully controlled to imply that there was only one correct answer and that it was more an order, less a question. He swallow all feeling that struggled to his lips as the shorter man started a bleary eyed salute before snapping the hand to his side.
"Yes, Sir," his voice cracked , and Mustang's heart broke along with it. He turned sharply, high ponytail a glinting banner, better than any blaze or trail of bread crumbs, body slipping with deceptively easy silence back into the trees.
Contrary to popular believe, Roy had no hand in how the young Major elided standard military short cut. The blonde had been sent into battle, tresses intact out of sheer petulance and tantrum throwing alone. Watching it bob, weave, and snap like a live wire with the motions of it's owner, he contemplated persuading the boy into a trim. As it flicked more, tempting and within reach, he smothered the suggestion that it would be more for Roy's own safety than Ed's.
Fullmetal's pace was unflagging and seemed to guidde by some inner compass that his superior officer was not lucky enough to possess. Roy though, did not mind. There was a meager measure of pleasure in surveying his back, noting that it held no trace of the child he knew not so long ago. The shoulders were broad, back straight, and stride smooth and confident, even with the microscopic impediment created by the automail. The years had molded all that energy and talent into a confident adult without dulling the keen edge of wit that sparkled in that remarkable mind.
Suddenly, the golden head whipped to the side, snapping that seductive fall of hair from Roy's reach, the man's own travel stopped by the cold blockade of an artificial arm.
"I want to check my traps," Fullmetal murmured. Roy's brain faltered briefly before catching up to the rest of the world. Before he opened his mouth in blatant opposition, Edward was already smoothing it over, like Roy was nerely some agitated cat in need of stroking.
"It's obvious we're never going to make it before someone is up. Cross is probably already up and stoking a fire for his coffee," he said, upper lip curling into a fascimile of disgust. What Cross had concoted from a variety of native leaves could hardly be considered coffee, let alone fit for human consumption. "So we may as well check my traps. I highly doubt anyone will ask questions if we come back with fresh meat," he reasoned, smile brilliant and enragingly triumphant, The dark-haired alchemist tried not to feel undermined and diligently held in place the mask he had fumbled onto his face. Needing no more evidence of his victory than the silence, he stepped carefully from the treeline. He crouched, sometimes using his hands to balance as he sidled over to the tall grass. With an unreadable expression, the short alchemist surveyed the ground when, in a flash, he plunged the metal arm up the his heavily scarred shoulder into the grass.
A shrill, unearthly noise emanated and he reflexively reached to cover his offended ears as Edward, like some twisted magician, withdrew a rabbit. As soon as he got over his shock he began to fret the comottion, but Edward quickly silenced it with one quick, innocuous flick of his automail wrist. The dusky legs automatically stopped kicking and Edward reached back into the grass to blindly reset whatever mechanism was hidden there, finally sidling back over to Roy. He beamed like a child, holding his prize catch by the long hind legs; the head swayed pendulously, and a bit too loosely, between the tiny front paws. The Colonel chose to maintain his silent bemusement, content that he had at least avoided eating crow tonight. Or so he hoped.
In total, Edward's traps yielded two more rabbits, all of them fattened by spring and dusky brown with salt and pepper like their fallen brothers. All we as well, similarly dispatched in the same casual manner that took Roy by surprise. Edward's success had lef t the young man outright jovial, their earlier altercation and his revelation pushed far from the front of his mind. Roy and his stomach could not deny the prospect of a hot and relatively filling meal was heartening. He even agreed to carry some of their bounty as the the blonde, quietly, waxed poetic about the arcane uses of rabbit organs.
"And you can even blow up the bladder. It's like a little balloon! Did they teach you that in survival training?" Roy gritted his teeth some, biting back the, Of course, Edward at paced at the back of his throat. "That's what Al and I used to do! We'd make up little games or throw them at eachother. If you can get one from a deer I bet you can carry water in it." He prattled. In addition to his alchemy, intelligence, fight ability, and growing good looks, he also had the most eviably astounding capacity for compartmentalization.
When the smell of woodsmoke reached their noses they stopped again. Or rather, Roy stopped and gave in to temptation, reaching out and giving that blonde tail an enthusiastic tug. Edward stopped sharply and emitted a muffled, indignant, squawk.
"I don't particularly want to be hit by friendly fire, do you?" Roy whispered, the barest int of a smirk returned. The taller alchemist cupped his gloved hands about his mouth and whistled. It was the same lyrical whistle from the night of the raid, and it was answered clumsily but promptly. Ed rolled his shoulders to shrug off the memory of the burning hospital.
As Edward predicted, their return was unquestioned and Ed's trapping success generated much excitement. Gutting and cleaning the rabbits was swift, cheerfully aided by another young man, raised in a small town just south of Risembool. Being so lauded by his brother's-in-arms seemed to breath nw warmth into the young man. His normally stilted speech and stiff shoulders were relaxed and he smiled freely. Rather than intrude in the moment, or tarnish Ed's now sterling reputation with his presence, Roy chose to make himself unobtrusively useful, collecting wood and stoking the fire fore their early morning feast.
The dark-haired alchemist made no attempts to contact his protege until after nightfall, contenting himself with assessing his unit from a distance. A hearty meal had done wonders for the atmosphere, dissipating the noxious undercurrent of mutiny that had been plucking at Roy's nerves for a few days. Of course, Roy already knew of the importance of a food to morale. He could still taste the sand in his nightmares. The renewed energy of the team led naturally to an extraordinary level of productivity.
Enough wood for several days had been collected and stored safe from the sudden storms believe an oil cloth, and the radio finally seemed to be functional. The few snatches of Drachman babble had a mixed reception. Several questioning eyes turned on him, and he dismissed them quickly with an errant wave and murmured "just nonsense." Edward wound down his remaining daylight showing a few curious enlisted the mechanism and method between his highly successful traps. Roy spent more time than he cared to admit watching and listening from his fireside perch. Nightfall found the air reasonably cooled driving Roy to sit, prodding morosely at the darkened coals of the campfire. All of his men had long since retired to their tents, and a chorus of snores mingled with the usual crickets and frogs. He had been sitting there for some time, waiting for Edward to return as promised. The cool damn ground made his body ache, and left him shifting frequently to find comfort.
Left to it's own devises, his mind skipped gleefully from thought to thought; from irritation at the man's tardiness, curiosity and anticipation regarding the contents of the journal. Finally, it dabbled briefly on panic that something was wrong, but was quashed by the only slightly more welcome memory of the young blonde's firm stomach beneath his hips.
He jumped slightly as a heavy weight dropped to the ground next to him with a sigh. Beside him, Edward had a thin eyebrow quirked in question and the barest hint of smirt.
"I scare you? What you thinking about so hard?" He jibed. Neither of them spoke aloud about the very real danger of such carelessness.
"I think about many things, Fullmetal," he drawled, returning to briefly unleash his aggressions on the crumbling coal. He liked the way the dark shell would break apart into dozens of firebright fragments before cooling back to black. "Especially when I'm left waiting by dawdling officers," he bemoaned, giving to young blonde a very pointed look of exasperation.
"It's not like you have anything better to do," Edward retorted casually, brushing his loose hair back over his shoulder with a sweep of silver.
"I could be curled up sleeping," Roy pressed. His subordinate merely snorted his derision.
"Whatever. We both know you don't sleep at night." Roy had no answer and sat silent, gloved hands folded in his lap eyes forward and reflecting the starry hotspots of embers. Edward was silent as well, somewhat surprised that the man conceded so easily to the ribbing without retort. If he was truthful, he did not sleep much himself. In his dreams, a trail of blood dripped from his silver fingertips everywhere he walked. It clotted in the wires of his automail and gummed up the joints. Then Winry, beautiful and precious Winry, had tried to help. She unscrewed the plates and shrieked, finding shreds of still living and bleeding flesh trapped within the mechanisms. He always woke then, shivering and damp no matter the weather. He bit a guilty lip and also starred into the mostly dead pit of embers, unwilling to meet the eyes of his commander.
"Fullmetal, are you going to tell me anything or are we going to to continue to sit here like fools, wasting perfectly good nightmare time?" Roy finally sighed. There was no use dwelling on insults. If his nightmares weren't filled with bloody sand and sniper fire, it would be snow and explosives. Instead of an answer, he heard the shuffling of pages and saw Edward flipping through the journal.
"I don't understand everything, yet," he started quietly. "But the heart of it all centers around the actual force that powers transmutation itself. Honestly, my physics is a bit weak, so I'm just piecing it together as I go." Roy nodded his understanding. Physics was still a young science, branching out to answer the many "why" questions that alchemy only answered with "because."
"Basically, he says that an alchemic reaction isn't so much limited in scale by the skill of the wielder, but by the energy available. That energetic availability is where the physics comes in. It can all be altered by electrical and magnetic fields and your physical proximity to poles of the planet. He goes into some really elementary stuff about the conductivity of the material alchemized can also vary energy requirements, but I think every alchemist on the planet knows transmuting gases is a piece of cake compared to solid stuff."
A glance confirmed Roy's suspicions that the boy was wearing an evil leer, waiting for a response to the covert insult.
"Go on,"he said, nodding encouragement. Edward did, masking his disappointment at the lack of a retort.
"His research was interested in finding a way to amplify the power of available energy, or even how to increase the power available. Y'know, like the military tried to do with the watches?"
"Are you going to get to the point, Fullmetal or are you going to give me a refresher of my entire education?" He snipped, frustration mingling with the looming knowledge that something bad would come of this.
"Shut your fat, fucking face, and I will!" Edward hissed, trying to control his volume with tents so close. "He had a few really minor successes. Interesting but not worth noticing, at least until he pulled astronomy into the mix. I have no idea how, but he found out cosmic positioning can magnify the size of a reaction to insane levels," he whispered with fever-eyed excitement Roy had seen in blood-lusting soldiers.
"How insane?"
"Fucking countries, Mustang. Like with Father," Edward let that sentence speak volumes for itself. "He even talks about alchemic changes no one has ever considered before. Destabilizing isotopes, changing the force of fucking gravity. Even the basic state changes we know like temperature and pressure he talks about using on a massive scale!" The hands that Roy had worked so hard to keep still in his lap were beginning to shake. He hid it by flicking his fingers, raising tiny sparks at his fingertips. "His pet project seemed to big finding out how to employ an increase of gravity and pressure as a weapon. Ultimately the combination would crush everyone with the field and the sudden compression would create a devastating shockwave of heat," Edward trailed on.
"Did he work with anyone else?" Roy cut in, fixing the young man with a hard stare.
"No. He died with his name in ruins. Everyone thought he was insane. The government never answered his letters." Roy let out the slightest sigh of relief. "I think it was his ranting about the Truth and the Gate that did him in. He was obsessed with seeing it again," Edward said, swallowing heavily. Roy could feel the involuntary shiver run through the young man sitting next to him. "Besides, it only someone who can activate arrays without drawing them could ever use them the way he wanted. With that many variables it's no where as simple as what Father used."
"I see," Roy replied, knowing it was entirely insufficient. The silence they continued to sit in was not companionable as much as it was resigned. Roy turned to gaze out where, were it light enough, he would be able to see the formidable mountains that housed Brigg's. It was many, many days travel from their location and through miles of lowland occupied by soldiers and civilians alike.
"Fullmetal, I think it's time I be honest with you," Roy said, barely a whisper. Edward remained disturbingly quiet and taut next to him, his warmth moving only minutely closer. "We aren't going to make it out of here alive."