Chapter 22
For a week and a half they marched, their pace slowed by fatigue. At the end of the first week the rations had long since been depleted. They made due by raiding orchards and family gardens. Edward didn't think he'd be disappointed if he never saw an apple again in his life, even if it was in a pie. Their team learned quickly that the quickest way to make yourself ill enough to wish you were dead, more than usual at least, was to gorge on unripened apples and raw potatoes. Edward did the best he could when the opportunity to trap presented itself and dabbled a bit in food alchemy. One evening he managed something that looked impressively like a bland flatbread, but tasted like dirt and grass. Still, that had sent them to sleep with full bellies.
"You're certain these coordinates are correct, Sergeant?" Roy clipped when all they found was a clearing for all their exhausted slogging. The sun was beginning to sink behind the distant pine ridged peaks they'd emerged from and the surprisingly cool air nipped at their lips and frosted their breath. Edward furiously studied his map, turning in circles and occasionally reaching to scratch at his scraggly beginnings of a beard with rough automail nails. One last furious frown and sequence of scowling at the map and then the sky, then he rolled up the map with care before striding forward into the field.
"I'm certain," he spit, toeing at the long grass, parting the gentle waves of green before crouching and picking up debris. It was a cigarette carton, soggy but intact and the brand issued by the Amestrian military. He tossed it casually at his commanding officer who caught it with a grimace of disgust. "I'm positive," he chirped with false humor. "At least the good news is that there should be a proper latrine dug out here somewhere. The grass has already had a chance to stand back up after they left. They must've bugged out shortly after we were raided." He frowned a little at the thought and once again combed at his beard.
Roy remained silent and the other men began to shuffle awkwardly, a couple stepped away from the group and began unrolling their rucks for the night. With the slowness of building tumbling, the men began to file away to prepare for the night, leaving their leader lost in his thoughts. Ed took it upon himself to take the man by the elbow and guide him away from the group.
The treeline he ferreted them in broke up their pink tinged shadows into abstract shapes that made Ed dizzy. Sharp edges of light highlighting Roy's jaw, but obscuring his eyes. The muddied blue of his chest hued purple and sickly warm.
"I don't like this at all, Fullmetal," he whispered. Somewhere across the field was a wild whoop of success. The last camp had left behind their stack of firewood. Ed stood silent, his arms feeling heavy and useless by his sides. He began to studiously study his boots, puzzling over the worn and cracking leather as Roy breathed deeply.
"It's only another week to the next outpost," he murmured, nervously tapping his fingertips to his thumbs, bobbing onto the balls of his feet.
"Do you really think we could make it that long? Let alone, do you really think they'd be willing to follow me across another 60 miles of Drachman wilderness with winter breathing down our necks?" Roy snapped. The metal fingers stopped their tapping and clenched into fists, the wind sampled the backs of their necks.
"Don't sentence us to death yet," Ed hissed. "Let's at least try the radio tomorrow, if there was a long term camp here then there must be a signal in range." He walked the line between fury and pleading, A shifting of cloth told Ed that the Colonel had nodded, stiffly. Hesitantly, the blond reached out and tenderly took a roughly gloved hand and stepped forward to press his face to Roy's ever thinning chest. With an embrace he was surrounded by the taller alchemist, drowning in the smell of pine sap and smoke. A part of his mind that he desperately tried to silence mourned that he would never know the scent and taste of Roy fresh out of a shower or the luxury of rolling in the sheets of his luxurious bed.
Roy and Ed were the first to rise, the sun just barely slipping over the mountains and the grass heavy with frost. With considerable jostling and some teamwork they managed to maneuver the radio, which appeared to gain weight at the same rate everyone else was losing it, to the highest point of their field. There they crouched, enveloped as best they could be into the always expanding enclosure of Roy's great coat, while Edward fidgeted with the knobs. His fingers trembled in the early cold and the Colonel's breath was warm on the back of his neck, but he eventually made it past the squelch and blessedly beautiful Amestrian words crackled through the air.
They didn't speak about what they heard. Merely listened, to the static garble that answered many questions and inspired just as many. Together they collapsed the antennae, and hoisted the mammoth electronic onto Edward's shaking shoulders. They walked, or rather Edward at this point shuffled while Roy's palm was a warm and comforting presence in that small of his back when the fine tremors were under control.
In total silence they put away the gear before any of the other men had fully woken slipping over to stoke the fire. In lieu of coffee or tea they had taken to boiling pine needles. The hot, bittersweet fluid enough to buoy spirits and lend a sense of normalcy. After the morning meal, the day proceeded as usually as their days could. The tents were broke down, the fire banked. Two enlisted took the map and between them and Edward's disturbing knack for topography they charted a course and began to walk.
The tense silence stretched the ranks, skipping between Roy's newly hobbled walk mimicking ed's own off tempo shuffle. The two seasons of extremes had hastened the corrosion and ed viciously guarded his automail oil like it was gold. Roy could blame nothing more sinister than age and uncomfortable bedding, though Edward's half warmth softened the throbbing of his joints to a duller ache.
Their path followed the canyon carved between the two ridges that dominated the landscape. It was late enough int the season that flash flooding was less of a concern and it would be less taxing. They didn't speak when they broke for a lunch. One soldier passing around apples just short of ripeness and they dried their mouths and burned the chapped creases of their lips. No one spoke at all, passing anxious glances between their two officers. One sandy haired man, once baby-faced but now hollow. They gray sky was beginning to seep into the very heart of them and gnaw their bones, grappling with their hearts behind the fencing of their ribs.
The silent tension unfurled in the evening as Ed laid out their bedrolls, when fingers much longer than his own curled around his wrist and tugged.
"Come with me," Roy husked and the blond snarled his retort of fuck off. Silence and a persistent gentle tug.
"I. Said. No." He could feel the grit grind between his teeth alongside the words.
"Don't be childish," Roy hissed, grip brooking no argument and Ed stood slow and stubborn, joint creaking threateningly.
Finding shadows among the trees to slide into was as easy as sliding into and old skin, and Roy grasped both their hands between his thin, work darkened hands.
"What is there to even talk about?" Ed snarled and the general swore for a second he saw a glimpse of the old insubordinate smirk.
"Edward," he hesitated a breath. "We cannot tell them, not yet," he exhaled, sliding a hand up into the young man's tangled hair.
"Can't tell them what?" Ed's voice pitched up on the edge of hysteria. "Can't tell them that Amestris has been invaded? That they're almost to Central? That their families might be dead? That seems pretty important to share to me, Roy!"
"Then what? Then what do we have left?" He hissed in retaliation eyes locked and heavy. The shadows played sharp games with the features of their faces, silence drawing taut. "What we have now is a facsimile of loyalty and compliance, Major. All they have left is hope that there is safety out there somewhere and that there is a family waiting." Unbidden came Riza's soft smile over the rim of a steaming mug of coffee.
"And what do you propose, Colonel?" Edward hissed with equal measures of venom and menace as Roy's grip on his wrist steadily loosened, and his head drooped their foreheads pressing together. The long gloved digits in Edward's hair tensed with Roy's breath and he steadied himself.
"I propose that we make go down fighting, and that we take those bastards with us," Roy whispered with a hitch as he banished the visions of his maple desk spattered with red, of Central burning, of familiar eyes gone empty. Edward puzzled in silence, coin gold eyes narrowing and reflecting light. His cracked, pink lips part.
"No," he hisses.
"Edward, do you think you can work that array?"