OUR LIVES, CHAPTER 20: SHADOWS ON GLASS

By The Binary Alchemist 2013

Roy Mustang didn't believe in polls.

"That's because you've never had anyone oppose you, dipshit," Ed told his lover. "And I'm telling you, you better start paying attention. I'm not saying you're slipping but you'd better kiss a few more babies and kiss a few more asses around the country. Politics stink, but –"

"—but there's a rising backlash against the military roots of this nation. And like it or not," Roy shook his head, "I'm part and parcel of the military. Even if I resigned my commission it's not something I could escape, even if I wanted to."

Ed looked worried. "The book?"

Roy didn't have to ask which book Ed was referring to. Blood And Fire: Alchemy, Genocide And The Ishvallan War of Extermination would be released in two weeks and the Mustang administration was bracing for a major backlash. "Don't ask, Ed. I'm not going to—"

"Goddamn you, Mustang!" Ed snapped. "You're going to just sit here and let that bitch Winchell and that hack Frank Archer publish that piece of muck-raking—"

"—pictures don't lie, Ed. Do you think I'm such a fool that I didn't know all these years that someday, somehow, the whole bloody truth about the Dahlia campaign and Executive Order 3066 wasn't going to come out? "

"It wasn't your fault!" Ed grabbed Roy by the shoulders, digging in his fingers to keep from punching his lover in frustration. "You were just a goddamn kid, following orders! Shit!" The angry grasp became a caress. "It's not gonna end like this, is it? What are we gonna do?"

###

In the days that followed Ed was to remember the clarity of Roy's expression, the utter lack of fear and his stubborn insistence in Doing What Was Right.

"We're going to tell the truth

"Aunt Ree, would you like me to call Signor Bacalla for you?" Nina looked up from the absurdly long 'must-do' list of wedding arrangements that she'd offered to assist with. "I'm the only Elric who can truly speak his language."

Hawkeye smiled a little. The child was trying to help, but the President had made the wedding arrangements Hawkeye's personal responsibility and she didn't feel comfortable delegating any of the crucial details. "That's all right, Nina. Signor Bacalla's Amestrian is quite good."

Nina's eyebrow lifted. "Think so?"

"Chef Ramsay and I have never had any difficulties getting imported foods and wines for state dinners."

"And he's overcharged you disgracefully!" Hawkeye opened her mouth to protest but Ed's daughter waved her off. She gathered up the catering estimate for the wedding supper and then reached for the phone. "I spent a year in King Claudio's palace in Aerugo. It was highly instructive, and not simply in the arts and sciences and statecraft. Listen and learn—ascoltare e imparare."

Nina dialed the international operator and waited for Mario Bacalla, Pio's half-Xingese son whose real father was the esteemed Royal Alkahestry Master to the court of Emperor Ling Yao, Dr. Kenichi Chen. Marrying Dr. Chen's Drachman sweetheart and giving Nataly's child a name had been one of the best business decisions Pio Ignacio Bacalla had ever made. Mario had a tremendous crush on the older Nina Elric and she manipulated the young apprentice merchant as skillfully and shamelessly as her beloved Poppy would have done with an office full of adoring secretaries in the Bradley command. ""Mario? Mio caro amico, sa bene a parlare con te di nuovo, questa è Nina Elric – e dal modo, " she winked at Hawkeye, "il profumo che mi hai mandato per il mio compleanno è semplicemente perfetta! " ("Mario? My dear friend, it's good to talk to you again, This is Nina Elric—and by the way, the perfume you sent my on my birthday was perfect!") "For killing moths," Nina mouthed as an aside to the older woman she'd always regarded as her auntie. "May I please speak to your papa, per favore? Thank you so much, mio amico!"

After a moment, Nina's posture changed and her voice became charming and persuasive in a manner Hawkeye had heard many times in the old days back at Central when it was Roy who wore a Colonel's stars on his shoulder boards. "Signor Bacalla? Nina Elric. I'm well, grazie. My father? Yes, he's still alive…but I wouldn't let that depress you. Now then," she adjusted her delicate rimless spectacles and snatched up the notes she had penciled in on Bacalla's estimate for catering services, "Colonel Hawkeye and His Excellency and Chef Ramsay and I have all gone over your estimate…I'm afraid that there are some items that might need to be….re-negotiated.."

Over the next hour, any doubts that young Nina had learned much as Roy Mustang's stepdaughter would be laid firmly to rest. "Tact," Roy had commented in Hawkeye's hearing, "is the art of telling a man he's a son of a bitch and have him thank you for the compliment." From that perspective, Nina handled her father's old nemesis with remarkable skill. Hawkeye wasn't quite fluent in Aerugoan but she caught a few references about horsemeat being found in sausages sold to Brigg's Mountain, fat from forbidden animal species being shipped to the Letoist restaurants to save money, undercutting the Xingese court by mixing quality spice with minute quantities of sawdust and re-labeling wines to fetch a better price. She was warm and cordial…and the threats woven into her cheery dialog were as masterful as they were slightly unnerving. Nina was never coy, never kittenish, but by damn she was playing the man with the same skill that skyrocketed Roy Mustang to the presidency.

"Si, si…by my calculations that would be an error of…" she calculated in her head, "roughly 11261.43 Aerugoan lira—that's 1351124.955 Amestrian cens ,15,000 continental exchange units—or 93277.5 Xingese Yuan. Yes, yes, I know, Signor—however the integrity of such delicate matters like a Presidential wedding—the first in Amestrian history—requires that all transactions must be above reproach…oh, and I believe you and Nataly were searching for some of the older dairy culturing bacteria strains for your cheeses—Propionibacterium shermanii and Streptococcus faecalis? No, signor, I am not joking. Yes," she was grinning now, "that would enable you to recreate some of the legendary cheeses of the last century. If….if we could re-negotiate your estimate as I suggested I can certainly provide the necessary introductions to the dairymen in the East who can provide those rare cheesemaking cultures…si.." She scribbled a new total and held it up to an amazed Colonel Hawkeye, who nodded quickly to agree. "Excellent, Signor. I'll inform Colonel Hawkeye and Chef Ramsay of the new estimate. Ciao!" She hung up the phone and the smug satisfaction on her pretty face would have done her stepfather proud. "As they say in Aerugo, 'È il pesce sciocco che cade nella rete'—only the foolish fish fall into the net.' In this case, we have netted up a big, ugly baccalᾴ," she flinched at her own dreadful pun,

since the merchant's name could be translated as 'dried salted codfish'.

Hawkeye shook her head in amazement. "I had no idea you were so skilled in negotiations."

Nina looked demure, taking a ladylike sip of her tea. "This is Daddy's wedding, and I'm not going to allow Signor Peehole to pull one over on an Elric. I spent a lot of time in the palace library in Aerugo—and while I found the writings of Signor Machiavelli to be morally vile they were highly instructive. Now," she reached for the massive wedding checklist again. "Let's have a look at the bid from the florists, shall we?"

The door opened and Havoc shouldered his way in, carrying several stacks of heavy file boxes. "Nina? I've got those receipts you asked for—had to get them out of the warehouse—whoops!" Havoc caught his foot on the umbrella stand that normally would not be placed on that side of the office door, sprawling flat onto the carpet and whacking his head hard enough to make him groan.

"Uncle Jean! Are you all right?" Nina hurried over to his side and inspected his scalp. "Let me look." Reaching into her skirt pocket she drew out a small penknife, tucked inside her handkerchief. Pretending to examine Havoc's head she made a quick shallow cut, blotting it with her handkerchief, quickly concealing the tiny knife inside her sleeve. "Oh! You've really hurt yourself!" Nina held up the handkerchief, spotted lightly with fresh blood. "Aunt Ree, you've got to get Uncle Jean to Doctor Knox!"

"But—"

"He could have a concussion!"

"Aren't you studying medicine?"

"I'm not qualified to practice on military personnel," Nina argued. "Please, Aunt Ree!"

Hawkeye felt a queer thumping inside her breast and her cheeks grew hot. Her face was as impassive as ever. "Come along, Major. I'll get you to the Infirmary."

Havoc nodded, then grimaced in pain. As Hawkeye helped him to his feet, he noticed Nina's right eye closing in a slow wink. He reached out and squeezed her hand. "Thanks for looking out for me, kiddo."

"Aunt Ree will take care of you," she answered as innocently as she could. Signor Machiavelli's writings might be unethical by Amestrian standards but, as the morning had proved, all bets were off when Nina Elric was looking after the people she loved….

In the car heading to the infirmary, he did not beg her to come back, as he would have a month ago. Instead he was quietly grateful for her kindness and spoke to her with a gentleness that tugged at Riza's heart. She could smell his familiar cologne—she had picked it out for him, and he was sitting close enough for the warmth of his body to be noticeable in ways that she found disturbing. "By the way," he mentioned, "that new experimental rifle arrived from Briggs this morning. The Enfiled EM2. They call it the Bullpup. Takes a .280 slug."

"That's not standard ammunition."

"I know, but Major General Armstrong says it's lighter to carry in the field and the accuracy is impressive."

"You've tested it?"

"I haven't unpacked it yet. I was going to do that after lunch."

"Oh."

"Sebastian and Ruby were coming to test it out at the range. Hell, ol' Sebby even said he'd bring tea. For a body guard he's got a weird sense of humor."

"Indeed."

"I think Collins is going to try and get over if Mrs. Bradley doesn't need him."

"Mmm."

"We'll all be over on Range 22 around three if you want to test things…I mean, if you want to test fire it with the…with the rest of us."

The pounding in her chest was making her ears ring and she felt distinctly uncomfortable. "I'll…bear that in mind, Major.."

###

"Get dressed. I'm calling Mustang."

Before Riza Hawkeye protest, Surgeon General Owen Knox snatched the phone off the hook and dialed his Commander in Chief. The nurse at the Triage noticed that Hawkeye was looking unwell and once she'd sent Havoc back had whispered a word with Dr. Knox. Before she could protest Hawkeye was escorted to an exam room and poked and prodded. Knox had come back, examined her chart and given Riza Hawkeye holy hell…

"Yeah. It's me. What the hell are you trying to do, kill your Adjutant, Roy? She's sitting in my exam room and when I tested her blood pressure it nearly blew the cuff right off her arm! No, I'm not joking. What the hell are you doing—driving her like a slave? She's going on furlough for a week, starting right now and by the time she gets back you damn well better appoint some staff under her so she can delegate some of that mountain of work you've dumped on her. She's only human—or have you forgotten that again?" Dr. Knox slammed the phone down and then snatched up her medical chart. "How old was your mother when she died?" he demanded. "She died young, I know. What caused it."

"About twenty-seven," Hawkeye answered. "My father never told me but he said it was sudden."

"About as sudden as a heart attack?" Knox looked like he was about to bite her. "No? Nobody ever thinks about women and heart disease. I've seen it run in families. Women who tell me that one day their mother wasn't feeling well then boom! Keels over and drops dead, no warning. And then I check their blood pressure and I see numbers I don't like." His finger stabbed at the numbers on Hawkeye's medical chart. "And I really don't like these numbers, Colonel. I'm not saying you're about to drop dead. But—" his finger wagged in her face now, "—I'm also saying that if these numbers don't go down in six month I'm going to have to consider giving you a medical discharge from the Army."

Medical discharge? Hawkeye paled visibly. "Sir, with all due respect, I can't—"

"You can and you will, or by damn I will sign your discharge papers so fast it'll make your head spin. And I'm not done with Mustang. That man has worked you to death since he's been in office—and now he's got you worrying over his goddamn wedding? That's not your problem. And you, lady, need to let your Adjutant staff do the legwork. You're tired, you're not sleeping well, you're less alert and likely to make stupid mistakes-and your blood pressure is through the damn roof. You still on the outs with Havoc?"

Before she could censor herself she shot back, "that's none of your business!"

"I'm the goddamn Surgeon General. Everything is my business, right up to and including Roy Mustang's bowel movements. All I know is that you've been cross as two sticks since before Solstice and now you're sitting in my triage looking like death warmed over and your blood pressure is absolutely not acceptable. If it makes you feel better, go boot Mustang in the ass. I don't care. But seems to me that with the wedding and," his eyes narrowed," other things, you've got a lot stuck in your craw, lady—and if you're dead you won't get a chance to get things off your chest. Now," his eyes were concerned even though his voice was snapping with irritation, "take these papers to Mustang. Here's a 'scrip for blood pressure medication and something mild to help you sleep. I want you back in six weeks and those numbers better start looking better…or else you'd better start thinking about early retirement…"

###

One of Maes' grand obsessions from earliest childhood was photography and film. At the age of five Winry had given him an old box camera that used old fashioned glass plate negatives and the boy became obsessed with it. Eventually Sig had converted an old linen closet in the Dublith house into a dark room and Maes saved his allowance for film and developing chemicals. He could have built his cameras and his crystal radios through alchemy like his sister but both Izumi and Winry insisted he learn electronics the hard way, wiring every component by hand. Eventually he went to Stoltovgrad for a summer of study and came back with his own movie camera, and while he was focusing now on building aeroplanes with his father his passion for photography and radio and film had never wavered.

Maes had been testing out some new skyrockets with some other students at the Hohenheim, capable of shooting out bursts of three colors in a great firery blossoms that lit up the sky for miles. Uncle Ling had sent a big box of them, along with a note that he hoped he would be able to come to Central for Ed's wedding along with his six favorite wives and nineteen of his oldest children. Maes wanted to rig up an electronic firing device that would be safer than running around lighting fuses by hand. While his sister wrangled on the phone with Bacalla, Maes checked and rechecked his circuitry, grinning hugely. "Nothing like spending an afternoon with explosives and electricity," he crowed, punching the ignition button on his homemade control panel.

There was a satisfying whoooooshhhhhhh as the large skyrocket took off, followed by the crash of broken glass. "I think it hit the old green house," one of his friends told him.

"Crap, You guys get out of here," Maes yelled. "Sebastian is going to be pissed!" And Dad will skin me alive for shooting off stuff too close to the house, he added to himself. He ducked into the garden shed where his Nana had given him an epic ass-whipping at Solstice and waited for the eagle-eyed major domo to come out to investigate. After a half hour the young man came out of hiding and headed up the garden path to check out the damage.

As kids they had been ordered to keep clear of the old greenhouse. It was unsafe and there was a high risk of the rickety structure coming down on someone's head. Uncle Roy hadn't ordered it razed for some reason and it eventually became entangled in wild bramble-roses and honeysuckle.

Hands on his hips, Maes studied the ramshackle mess. He grinned. ""Why the hell hasn't someone fixed it up with alchemy? Doesn't make sense, does it?" Fishing a nubbin of chalk out of his pocket he marked a simple array on the splintered wooden door and touched it carefully with his palms. His face got scratched as the rose canes blew off the walls but in an instant the framework was sturdy and the panes exposed to the sun once more. "Not bad…not bad at all," he congratulated himself "Nitwit might like this. She likes to putter around with bulbs and stuff," he planned aloud with no one but a few spiders to overhear. Spitting on a corner of his handkerchief, he rubbed at a half-darkened square of glass. "Get this cleaned up and clear, and then I'll see if the Tringhams can kit it out for her this spring…hey…what the….?"

Leaning in, he examined the smudged glass. It wasn't dirt. It was the negative image of a face he instantly recognized—it was a photographic glass negative plate and it was very old indeed. "King Bradley? Well, I'll be dipped in shit!"

###

"Shadows on glass, Donal. Shadows on glass that can change the future."

After flipping through the final publisher's proof of Blood and Fire, Donal Samuelson was shaking his head. "All those years ago…I'm surprised my glass negatives survived. A lot of the glass got resold to builders for greenhouses and other uses. Once they were coated with the silver salts solution to create the negative they were useless for pretty much anything else. I sold off most of the plates and kept copies of some of the albumen print photos because I knew…one day…I would take them all down."

Archer looked thoughtful. "You hated Mustang that much?"

"Mustang…that bastard Kimblee. Old man Comanche—glad the Alchemist Killer took him down, the bastard."

"Not Armstrong?"

Samuelson shook his head. "Didn't have the guts. Heard he broke and cried like a baby and they demoted him for cowardice. No wonder his sister hated his guts for years. But Mustang was the highest rank and did the most horrific damage—you think the pictures are bad? You didn't smell the stink of roasted bodies. You didn't hear them screaming. No," he closed the book resolutely. "Mustang was no innocent kid. He's a stone-cold killer. And I've been waiting…all these damn years for a chance to take him down. "

Something dawned on Archer and his eyes narrowed. "You were feeding information to the Old Guard. You were helping Edison and Foster and the others."

"I'm a patriot," Samuelson snapped. "And Mustang's got enough rope to hang himself now that he's insisting on making this country a democracy. Ha! I hope they hang the bastard!"

Frank Archer nodded. "You might get your wish, pal. You just might get your wish…."

###

Maes brought a bucket of water and a soft grooming brush from the stables and began gently cleaning off more of the panes of the old greenhouse, panes he had now identified as old photographic negative plates.

The old bramble-rose and the honeysuckle had kept the structure shady enough to protect a great deal of the images on the sides of the greenhouse. The winter sun was thin but just bright enough that he could study some of the clearer images. There was aA group of young men in an exercise yard. A man—a doctor, maybe?—measuring a boy's height. Another picture of Bradley, looking surprisingly young. "Wow..these have got to be from—hell, must be the 1800's. Look at the weird-assed clothes—"

"Boo!"

"AAAAHGGHHHHH!" Maes swung around, grabbing at his chest. His sister was smiling sweetly at him, looking terribly pleased with herself. "Damn it, Nitwit, don't do that! Give me a damn heart attack!"

"Only guilty people have heart attacks. You weren't indulging in any carnal vices out here, were you?" She looked around. "Hmm…there's a noticeable absence of young butlers or foreign girls about, so I'm guessing you've been keeping your hands to yourself."

Maes hefted the bucket of soapy water. "You're about to get drenched."

"And you're about to get chewed out by Poppy if he finds you out here. My, my…if you're going to indulge in the sins of self-pollution, why not fondle yourself someplace less likely to come crashing down over your head?"

"Look what I found!"

Adjusting her glasses, Nina leaned in for a closer look. "Hmmm…I've heard of such things. I heard of someone making a conservatory with old xray plates but I didn't believe it. Have you shown this to Daddy yet?"

Maes shook his head. "He and Uncle Roy have been squabbling a lot lately. And I'm not going to ask why."

"Tell Uncle Alphonse, then. At best he might be interested, and at worse he might save you from getting yelled at."

"Better yet, let's let Uncle Jean in on this. He can keep a secret."

Nina beamed. "He's on the shooting range with Aunt Riza."

Maes whistled. "No foolin'? How'd you manage that?"

"Can't tell you all my secrets, can I ?"

"Well, get Uncle Al—and see if you can get me a couple of tarps. I want to rig up something to protect these panes until I can take this greenhouse apart without having it crash down on my head."

"Tarp—check. Uncle-check. Absolute secrecy—check. Anything else?"

"What the fuck?"

"Sorry, fresh out of those. Seriously, is there anything—"

"Will you look at that!?"

One pane of glass held a negative image that looked very, very familiar. The last time he'd seen that face it was crumpled up and screaming after he'd attempted to repair a broken gingerbread house with alchemy.

"Son of a bitch," Nina whispered, "it's Selim Bradley!"

…TO BE CONTINUED…