Before the Man
Series: Blood Brothers
Fandom: Full Metal Alchemist
Rating: PG
Pairing: None, so stop asking because there. Is. No. Pairing.
Timeline: Roy, in his search for the Hohenheim of Light, has come to Rizenbul tracing the letter sent to him from one Edward Elric who claims to be Hohenheim's son.
Summary: The hardened and tried military man is humbled by a child.


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When Roy Mustang had come following the return address on the letter, he had been expecting to find a young man who, however obscure, might hold the key to finding Hohenheim of Light's secrets.

He had been right… and wrong.

He had arrived just in time to witness an alchemic burst of multi-coloured light which had frozen him where he stood. He had recognised those colours, that rhythm it danced to –and the charge in the air. He had watched in fearful shock as the light turned foul. Stood frozen, cowardly, so long until the danger had passed and what looked to be a suit of armour come running from the house he sought to another near by.

Coming out from his daze he had found the pace of the gargantuan so purposeful and desperate that it had taken Roy, despite his military fitness, some time to catch up. He could only marvel at the unerring and solid step of the armour... for that was all it was.

He would know the echo of empty armour wherever he heard it, hear the strange hollow sound the rain made on the metal. He had known because he understood, there was no way anyone could perform a human transmutation and not pay some kind of cost. He had known because he had studied everything he could get his hands on in that forbidden field, had half heartedly attempted the transmutation once or twice but always pulled back.

He had heard of the ratio to success in human transmutation; zero percent. And there had been a body in the armour's arms. A form so small Roy knew it had been a child.

A child.

The atrocity weighed him down, made him slower, the dire implications and Roy's imagination already churning, his heart breaking. It took longer than he expected to get to the other house where the armour had run to. And by the time he got there, the child he had seen had already been attended to.

But the child was alive! How could that be possible? There was no known documentation of success and yet… this was Hohenheim's son. The pieces clicked into place in his head, and in his heart. His mind screamed at him, the child had inherited the secret of human transmutation and could possibly provide more insight into Roy's research. This child would be more than valuable…

And yet his heart told him the child had been born into powerful blood and had inherited more; a heavy burden.

He absently dealt with the old lady, not quite catching her surname, who called herself Pani.. Pika… Pinako. Stern lady, disapproving of his presence, but he had no reason to linger anyway.

After having his say, he stared down at the small sleeping form, studied it. Even from where he stood, the harsh lines on the child's face stood starkly. Roy sympathised. Because, watching the kid sleep, he knew that the next time this boy opened his eyes, he would be a child no more.

Some really did not have that luxury.

Roy understood this. And yet, he felt sorry for him, this Edward Elric, even as he admired this boy for attempting what he himself, a man of the military and cold blooded killer, could not. This boy had truly attempted to raise the dead.

And lived.

This was what shook him the most. The resolve in this boy must have been great, to get Edward through the horrors of the attempt and even through the supposed soul-transmutation, a spontaneous by-product of the original intention and a grand performance of the child's undoubted desperation –all of it and through it all to survive.

It was then Roy knew this child would not stay here any longer. He knew it like he knew his own name.

The boy had become like him: his heart in such great turmoil it demanded of him as a human being to do something, anything. Because he had become unable to remain where he was, here at a crossroads where circumstance had forced his hand to make a mad decision that would live in him, haunt him, for the rest of his life. And that haunting would determine a new course in his life, though the specifics of where it would take him remained to be seen.

He wondered what Edward would decide when he woke. But whatever it would be, it would be amazing. He knew that too. And so Roy left his name and title, instructions and a promise. It was all he had to give at that point in time, but it would have to be enough. He knew then that there would come a time their paths would cross again.

One way or another, he would see what kind of man Edward Elric would become.

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