Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist. If I did, it wouldn't be ending next month. (Moment of silence, please)
Summary: A collection of snippets out of five years of Roy Mustang's life
Author's Note: I am sooooooooooooo sorry to everyone who was so nice as to read, review, favorite, and alert Raising Roy. I do not deserve such nice people reading my fics, and I'm trying to make up for it now. I can only offer that I had huge writer's block on this fic. You see, I have scenes in my head that make full length chapters coming after this. It was bridging that gap that was the problem. Therefore, this is a collection of the little ideas that I had that I couldn't make any longer. Hopefully it's worth the wait. Please read, enjoy, and review.
Chapter 4
In five years, much to the shock of his aunt, Roy Mustang grew from a cute, sad little child into a precocious, charming boy with hints of that future she had so boldly talked about to Madame Hari. Intelligent, insightful, and good-looking, she often had reason to be proud of the young man. He could also morph into an unholy terror, though this occurred with less frequency as he aged. All in all, Chris was quite satisfied with the way the boy had turned out.
That didn't necessarily mean the road to that point was smooth.
That first night, when the girls had dragged their new "brother" up the stairs before the clients arrived, had been one of the most disturbing of Roy's life. This was partly because his aunt had left him with a dire, "Do not come down here for any reason," but mostly because the girls had taken him to a secret place with a peep-hole into the common room. And then let him watch.
"Do you do this every night?" Roy asked Brenna, who nodded and patted him on the head. He scowled: she wasn't so much older than him that she could get away with that sort of thing.
"We have to know what we're getting into," interjected Jackie, who had been eavesdropping. "One day, that's going to be us."
"Even me?" asked the alarmed Roy as a very tall man led his aunt into a side room.
"Dunno about you," replied Jackie.
Roy frowned thoughtfully. All of these girls had a purpose to fulfill. It made sense that he had one too. What was his?
The girls' attempts to play dress up with Roy continued until Roy finally worked up the backbone to put his foot down at the age of seven. It never failed to amuse Chris and her fellows. Even Madame Hari cracked laughed on occasion, and she always smiled. The sight of a screaming boy in a dress simply never became old.
Roy called it psychological torture, proving to them all that, on his first day of school, he swallowed a dictionary. It may have been, as the merest hint of it starting up again-something that occurred any time he became too irritating for the girls-would cause him to run for cover.
For about two years after she had taken Roy home, Chris felt like that all they could ever be to each other was aunt and nephew, and that he would never view her as anything close to his mother.
That wasn't to say that she wanted to replace the deceased woman in Roy's heart, but she loved him as a son. It hurt to think he didn't love her as a mother.
In the winter of his sixth year, however, Roy came down with a severe case of the flu. The fever was dangerously high, and she took off from work to care for him. The pain in her heart at seeing the little boy in such a state shocked her to her core. It was all she could do to keep from crying. In her effort to keep herself together, she shook almost as much as he did from his chills.
As she stroked his hair back from his hot, sweat-covered forehead, he began to talk in his sleep. Most of it was nonsense, about how he hoped that Jackie wouldn't dress him up in his sleep and a trip to a fair that didn't exist. But then his hazy dark eyes flicked open and he said,
"Don't cry, Mom. I'm okay."
She did start crying then, and Roy's brow furrowed when he realized that she wasn't listening to him.
"Really, Mom, please don't cry. I don't like it when you cry. It means you're sad, and I don't want you to be sad."
"Oh, Roy, you poor thing," Chris said. "It's me, Aunty Chris."
"What's the difference?" he asked, completely lucid, before falling asleep again.
His first day of school was hard for her. She had grown used to his constant presence at Madame Hari's, and found the thought of him away from her hard to bear. He was excited, though, eager to get away from the place and experience new things. Even the thought of his four-woman escort to the schoolhouse-which consisted, naturally, of his obsessively protective sisters-could not damper her excitement over the thought of school.
He would not accept a hug and a kiss from her-he was a man now, since was going to school, and men did not get hugs and kisses from their primary female caregivers-but he did think enough to turn and smile and wave at her as the five of them left. Brenna insisted on holding his hand the whole way there, and he strained against her grip until he vanished from her sight.
"You're getting awfully sentimental about this, Chris," said Kate and Vanessa's mother. "You know they have to leave sometime."
"I know," she replied. "And I'm not his mother, so I shouldn't worry so much."
The other woman just chuckled and wandered away.
Roy came back from school considerably less thrilled than he had been when he left. It turned out that the books that the teacher read out loud to them were terribly easy: he could have read them himself in half the time it took her to read them; his classmates were stupid and couldn't read it at all; and wouldn't it be better if he just taught himself from now on?
Thus, Chris found herself in the strange position of persuading her stubborn, brilliant nephew to return to a place that she had not wanted him to go to eight hours earlier.
Roy Mustang was entranced by flickering light. They drew him like they drew moths, and the look on his face created strange emotions in Chris. She didn't know what was so fascinating to him about them, but it disturbed part of her.
Alchemy, with the lighting flashes of transmutation, was one of the easiest draws. His eyes would grow wide as the blue electric arcs danced around whatever alchemist had caught his fancy. If he glimpsed the shining silver watch of a State Alchemist on the street, he would run after them and pester them for "just one transmutation" until Chris would drag him away. On occasion, he would come home late from school smelling vaguely of ozone and she would know exactly what had taken him so long.
He was attracted to the flickering of the flames too. In the winter he would sit before the fire for hours, just watching them dance. More than once, he had remained their until the last embers had died away, his eyes narrowed in thought.
What he was thinking about, and this draw to fire and to alchemy, that was what worried her. She didn't know much about alchemy, but any thought of a man holding the power to create flames was not worth thinking about.
When Roy was eight, Madame Hari retired off to the East, and Chris took over. The biggest difference in the management of the business was that the girls and Roy now helped with serving food and drink-mostly the latter-and clean up. Madame Christmas, as she now called herself, would not let the clients anywhere near the girls, but she encouraged Roy to talk to them all.
She never really knew for sure what they discussed, but Roy came away looking intrigued. She figured the little tips and words of advice they imparted to him would come up eventually, and she never pressed him for answers. He wouldn't have talked anyway.
He picked up other things, like what types of drinks she served, and who preferred what. He knew who each of his "aunts" serviced, and he finally knew for sure what exactly they did. She figured he had known for a while.
His parents, she knew, would probably be incredibly upset if they knew what she was teaching their son.
In the almost five years he had known Fullmetal, it had never really dawned on him how much the boy had grown. Until now, until the end, when everything they had both been working for was coming to head, and the young man standing in front of him, yelling at him to quite making a grand entrance, was just that, a young man. Not a child, anymore, not that kid in the wheelchair with the determined eyes and a little brother in a suit of armor. And he felt so, so proud.
Secondary Author's Note: Well, I don't know if that last bit makes any sense to you guys, but I feel rather proud of it. Feel free to burst my bubble if you disagree, I deserve it for leaving you guys out in the cold. One last plea for a review:)