Episode 8 POV Change- Chapter 3

A good thirty minutes later, Roy found himself in his office kneeling next to the couch, where Fullmetal sat, and tending to his cuts with the first aid kit that they kept on hand. Alphonse was gone at the moment to get a bottle of water for his brother and the door that separated the outer office from the inner office was shut, leaving the two, more or less, alone.

Fullmetal still refused to look at him and his only outward reaction to the first aid Roy was doing was the occasional wince as he dabbed at his arm with disinfectant.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Roy finally sighed and broke the silence, causing Fullmetal to finally look up at him.

"Talk about what?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about."

He didn't respond, so Roy just huffed quietly and reached for the bandages and began wrapping the arm.

"Have you ever been in a situation where you thought you would die?"

Roy paused for a moment, and then went back to bandaging, "Of course I have. I was in the war after all."

"…what happened?"

He paused once again, debating between actually telling him or not. "My gloves got blood on them and I got swarmed by a group of Ishvalans and taken to their… Leader, I guess you could say."

This caused Fullmetal to look up at him with widened eyes as if he couldn't even fathom the idea of his commanding officer getting beaten by anyone, which almost caused Roy to smile, instead he kept going with his story. "They were going to use me as a bargaining chip, but once they realized that the military didn't give enough of a damn to actually negotiate, they arranged for my execution. I was just about to get a bullet to the brain when the executioner got sniped himself and a group of soldiers rushed in and saved my ass." He left out that it was Hawkeye and his other subordinates that got him out, but based on Fullmetal's expression, he didn't need to.

After another moment of hesitation he spoke again, "Looking back on it, there was a few times that I could have escaped, especially during the actual execution, but I was too busy shaking in my boots to actually do anything. I was terrified that I was going to die."

"You were?"

"I'm not exactly fearless Fullmetal, no matter how much you think I am," he teased lightly, causing a light blush to spread across the blond's face.

"Sh-shut up! I never said that… I'm surprised you're not scared more often since you're so useless," he snapped, much to Roy's chagrin.

"You mean to say that you don't look up to me as a most admirable role model?"

"You wish!"

A minute of silence stretched between the two, but instead of the awkward atmosphere that they had experience before, this was more of a comfortable silence.

"You did well Fullmetal," Roy spoke with a hint of pride coloring his voice, as he laid down a final bandage to cover the deeper cut on his shoulder that had already received stitches.

"Yeah, running around and crying did me a lot of good,"

Rolling his eyes at the self-deprecating tone, Roy stood up, "You're alive aren't you? Anyone else your age wouldn't have even been able to escape in the first place. Especially with only one arm."

Fullmetal seemed surprised at his knowledge of the incident, before he seemed to realize that, of course, Roy would have gotten ahold of that information somehow or another.

"Thanks Mustang."

Roy breathed a short laugh and smiled as he reached out a hand and ruffled his subordinate's hair quickly, then stepped away before he could be snapped at. He shut the first-aid kit and put it back into its storage place, ignoring the bewildered look that Fullmetal was giving him.

It was then that Alphonse arrived back in the room, immediately rushing to his brother's side to sit down next to him and hand him the water he had gone to retrieve. "Looks like the Lieutenant Colonel did a good job bandaging up your arm! How are you feeling brother?"

"Fine Al, I'm fine. Thanks for your help" he spoke, holding the water in his lap and gently leaning on his younger brother's side. Roy raised his eyebrow slightly, but just went back to his desk to sit down with his paperwork.

"You boys are welcome to stay with one of my subordinates tonight if it'd make you feel better," Roy suggested after small a hesitation, unsure if they'd appreciate the offer or not.

"Really? Th-"

Fullmetal cut off his brother, "We can take care of ourselves."

Shame. It seemed that the nice moment they had been sharing earlier didn't mean anything to the young boy now. Or did it? He looked doubtful, as if he wasn't sure if he could accept the offer or not.

"It wouldn't be a problem, if it'd make you feel better you could come over to my house instead. I know how much safer you feel in my presence," Roy tried again, feeling a hint of satisfaction as he watched Fullmetal's shoulders slouch a bit in relief before he straightened again with a ready remark.

"Yeah right, like I said we can take care of ourselves, but I suppose we shouldn't waste the opportunity to come over and leech off of you," he tossed in an arrogant smirk at the end, though Roy could tell it was lacking some of the usual spirit.

Feigning a sigh of annoyance Roy shrugged, "Fine, fine, it's not like you'll take up much space anyways," and in response, Fullmetal just grumbled quietly about not being short, instead of blowing up. Roy decided to take it as his thanks for letting them come over.

After finishing up the last of his paperwork he grabbed his things and shooed the two brothers out the door. Roy said goodbye to Hawkeye, Falman and Fuery, the only three left in the office, then followed them out.

"Thanks again!" Alphonse told him cheerfully as he caught up with them outside, "Go ahead Brother! You should say it too."

"I don't have anything to be grateful to that bastard for," he blew him off, to which Al shook his head and Roy chuckled.

"Not a problem Alphonse," he opened the car door for them to get in, but as he started for the driver's side door he caught a glimpse of Fullmetal giving him a grateful smile, before it was gone and he ducked into the car sheepishly.

Roy stifled a smile of his own as he got in, he didn't need to say it. He heard the thanks in the gesture loud and clear.

Now how to keep Edward from eating him out of house and home? He had heard of The Fullmetal Alchemist's legendary eating habits in all of the reports.

AN: Blah. Bad ending is bad. Sorry about that. In fact, this entire chapter is pretty clunky and awkward and I don't think I can write Edward at all, but I felt that I'd kept from posting for long enough.

That's another thing I have to apologize for. A really not good thing happened to me recently, but I'm finally trying to get over it, so I started working on this again. The result is not the best thing ever, but it's something.

Thanks for the favs, follows and reviews, they mean a lot to me. I'm not actually planning on writing anything for Edward, Al and Roy's slumber party though, so this is the end.

Thanks to those of you who read the whole thing and stuck around, I hope you enjoyed it to a certain extent.

MBK