Eight
The day Hughes finally shows up in Mebdo, a fight breaks out. Turns out the Xingese aren't all together—there's two factions, apparently, and neither one likes the other very much. Not that they seem particularly fond of the Amestrians either.
"That's Ling," Edward says, pointing with his fork. "The old man is Fu, and the girl is Lan Fan. They're his servants or something, and they're sort of—sort of stalking us."
"We picked them up in Rush Valley a few weeks ago," Alphonse adds from the bottom of the ladder. The barracks roof isn't wide enough for him to fit, but Riza leans over her knees, nodding down at him.
"I thought you boys've been in the north since October."
"Yeah, we weren't," Edward sighs. "Sorry."
Riza shrugs away the apology, holding out a bottle for him to open. He twists off the cap and passes it back, eyeing the sling that keeps her right hand immobile across her chest.
"Doesn't it hurt still?"
"Not worth the fog," Riza replies, squinting at the fight. "What about the other? The little girl?"
"That's all the colonel," Edward says, following her gaze. Most of the Amestrian contingent is hanging back from the main event, but Breda's got a hand on the gun strapped to his hip, ready to calm any escalation. The Ishvalans who inhabit Mebdo keep their heads down and eyes averted, shuffling along their daily routine. The ones who need the well side-step the patch of iced mud where Ling and Scar stand, inches apart.
"Her name is May Chang," Alphonse says, and Edward rolls his eyes.
"Her name is May Chang," he repeats, sing-song mocking. He ducks Riza's sidelong glance sheepishly. "Package deal with Scar. No idea how or why, but the colonel got him. Doctor Marcoh and that asshole Yoki, too."
"Quite the traveling band," Riza says. There's raised voices now, to match the glares, and Breda's just stepping forward when a truck pulls in and Hughes jumps out.
Edward holds out a bag of jerky, and Riza takes a piece.
"So what's their problem with each other?" she asks between bites, as Hughes puts himself between the factions. He looks angry, but they can't quite hear what he's saying.
"Ling and May are both the children of the Emperor of Xing," Alphonse says. "They're here looking for a philosopher's stone to give to their father and secure their clans' future. Whoever gets the stone first becomes the heir."
"Why's he want a stone?"
"To be immortal."
"What's the point of being heir to someone who's immortal?"
"Don't interfere with the affairs of their country," the Elrics intone flatly, and Riza has to laugh.
The crowd starts to break up, slowly. May Chang tugs at Scar's arm, and Ling's servants shuffle him aside. Hughes sweeps a glance around the settlement—it's hard to read his expression from this distance, but Riza stands, to be sure he'll see her.
"You're not gonna kill him, are you?" Alphonse asks quietly.
"Of course not," Riza says. "We're just going to talk."
She's had plenty of practice climbing down ladders one-handed, but the boys like to help. Edward holds her upper arm while Alphonse waits below, ready to catch if she slips. They walk on either side of her, a mismatched pair of bodyguards. Ed carries the discards of their lunch.
Hughes disappears by the time they reach the well—the crowd has re-shuffled, and Riza sees Jean just as he sees her, reaching out in hesitation.
"Come on," Riza says, turning left. "Let's take the walking tour."
The Ishvalans give them a wide berth on every side, understandably—even for Amestrians, they stand out. Alphonse gives a cheery hello to everyone, and Edward grunts, and Riza tries to smile but pain flares through her arm and hand and everything comes out as a grimace.
They leave behind the barracks, a collection of empty barns the Amestrians have taken for themselves. The Ishvalans here have no need of them—no cattle to house, no crops to gather in and shield from the elements. The slum must have started as a farming commune, with shacks growing in haphazard rows from the courtyard out, as more and more Ishvalans fled the extermination of their people.
Perhaps they felt safe here, or deluded themselves into a certainty of isolation. But there's apparently no escaping Amestrian invasion, even now.
"So where's the rest of the conspiracy?" Riza asks, as they round the last row of shacks. The slum is bordered on two sides by a wide creek and on the third by a stand of lifeless trees. The fourth side slopes to join the road—they stand at the top of the muddy decline and stare out.
"Dunno," Edward mutters. "We might be it."
"Was that the plan?"
"Not exactly."
Edward kicks a loose rock into a waiting rut—it rolls only inches before giving up.
"One of them can—he can look like anyone. Sound like them. We had to be sure that what we saw was—was what we saw."
"Where?" Riza asks. "When?"
"About a month ago, in Central. It wasn't us though—Scar saw him."
"Can't wait for that explanation," Riza mutters. "So what was the plan?"
"Draw them out. See if he really was one of them. They want to keep us alive, for some reason—me and Al, so we staged a fight with Scar. Timing was off, though."
"Who's they?"
But Edward doesn't answer—he's staring back at the slum and points. Sunset already, and Breda's approaching with a frown, extra coat slung over his shoulder.
"What'd I tell you about breaking perimeter?" he says, addressing the boys. "Get back down—it's chow time. Here, Riza."
He holds the coat out for her, and she takes it after a moment, half-glaring.
"He's not hiding from you," Breda sighs. "Just getting the report. There'll be a briefing."
"So I'm invited this time?" she asks bitterly. Alphonse helps slip the coat over her shoulders.
"Guest of goddamn honor," Breda confirms.
He walks them back down to the barracks, all the while huffing out updates between stomps.
"Pendleton's gonna be a goddamn bloodbath," he says. "Just like the brass wants. Drachma's pushing in at every angle, and Fuery said the south looks no better, but they're holding everything back. Artillery, vehicle support—makes no goddamn sense to me. Way I see it, if we're gonna fight, we should goddamn fight."
"Throw more lives away on someone else's cause?" Riza snaps. "Because that's proven so well in the past."
"Look, Riza, I know you're mad, but don't try take it out on me—"
"Because it wasn't your call?"
She spins back to face him at the barn's doorway, feeling the anger tighten around her eyes.
"Something you'll learn when you have your own war, Breda—the moment you choose to obey an order, the call becomes yours and yours alone. You can't run from that."
But he is not so easily shamed—he grabs a bowl and bread for her and sits on Edward's other side. May Chang and Marcoh eat separate, at the far end of the table, while Knox chain-smokes near a cracked window. Ling Yao and his faction are missing—or lurking somewhere in the shadows. Rebecca sits across from Alphonse, bringing Jean and his stony silence. She and Breda and the boys carry a conversation while Riza eats, clumsily, navigating the spoon with her unsteady left.
Jean looks just as bad as Riza feels—wincing at each swallow, picking at everything except the soup. His neck is still swollen with black-and-yellow bruises, and he looks like he hasn't been sleeping.
Good, Riza thinks a little viciously. I shouldn't be the only one.
Hughes doesn't show—they have to go to him, to the house they've been using as a clinic, where he's deep in conversation with Scar. They stop talking immediately and stand apart, waiting for the others to file in. Ling's team slips in last, maintaining an icy silence.
"Grab a seat," Hughes says, gesturing to the chairs gathered loosely around a long, low table. Riza takes the end of the table and stares him down. He doesn't meet her eyes.
She gathers little from the briefing: they speak in code, to her ears. Envy and Lust and Gluttony and Xerxes and philosopher stones and—and she stops paying attention halfway through, drops her gaze, rests her throbbing hand on the tabletop and thinks of nothing. The watch, forgotten until now in her coat pocket, ticks in rhythm against the cadence of conversation. Ling speaks, and Breda interrupts, Alphonse offers and Edward mutters, Hughes answers and deflects and booms with orders.
She pulls the pocket-watch out and sets in on the table. Edward's glance flickers over, and so does Jean's, but they both quickly snap back to Hughes.
The tabletop is filthy with dust and ash—everyone else keeps their hands in their laps, with only the lamp to occupy the vast surface. Riza lifts her left hand and, without really considering what she's doing, begins to trace transmutation circles around the watch.
Hughes carries the entire conspiracy on his shoulders. The highest-ranking officer here—and the sharpest mind, by far. There was a reason he'd been Roy's designated tactician during the war, and he has a way of spinning even the harshest defeat into a sliver of advancement.
"The timing's not perfect," Hughes sighs, "but it's fair to speculate that it wasn't Envy masquerading, like we thought. This is something else."
"A new target for the list?" Fu asks.
"That's for the lieutenants to report."
Attention shifts—one by one each pair of eyes settles on her and Jean, except for Hughes. Riza wills him to look up, to meet her eyes, but he stares only at his own hands.
She lets Jean talk until his voice gives out, hiding her clenched fist in her lap. The lamplight dances around the watch's surface, a compliment to Jean's halting speech. He's just describing how Roy crushed her hand, and she stretches the fingers wrapped tight with gauze, savoring the burn.
"He said he—"
Jean falters, coughing. He's set his hands on the tabletop, clenched to fists, inches from the pocket-watch.
"He was going to kill us," Riza finishes, addressing the broken skin over Jean's knuckles. "He said he was tired of sharing, and that he was there to kill me. But then something changed. He was arguing with himself—like two people in the same body. Then he killed the creatures holding us and collapsed. He called himself a homunculus—"
Jean's knuckles blanch under pressure.
"—but he didn't identify which one."
"He claimed to be one of those unholy creatures?" Scar interjects, disgusted.
"He was both," Riza says, and beneath the table, Edward slips his hand into hers. "He was Roy, and he was something else."
"Are you sure?" Hughes asks, and suddenly he can meet her eyes. She stares him down, anger festering.
"Yes," she says. She feels sick—can smell sulfur, feel the ash dusting her skin, the fresh throbbing pain of her crushed hand. The tendrils of steam rising from his lips, the wild look of emptiness in his eye.
"He tried to warn us. Said everyone is involved, all the way up to Bradley. That they're trying to get to Armstrong, and they didn't suspect resistance. That he would go back to Central and report to someone he referred to as Father."
"Father? What does that mean?"
"I wouldn't know that," she says, very quietly. Such open hatred would more than qualify as insubordination—she feels all of it and lets it pour out her eyes at him. She wants to see him flinch. Waits for it.
"So it couldn't have been Envy," Alphonse cuts in nervously. "Because we were fighting him in Central."
"We were fighting him," Lan Fan says sharply. "Along with that other—grotesque monstrosity."
"Called himself Gluttony," Ling adds with a shudder. "I can see why."
"Means we're up to five," Breda says. "Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Bradley—and whatever the colonel is."
"Well, if we're sticking to the pattern, that leaves Wrath, Greed, Sloth, and Pride."
"Father," Hughes repeats, frowning, and he turns easily out of Riza's glare. "In Central. Did he say anything else?"
"No," Riza says. "Nothing you obviously don't already know."
She shakes off Edward's hand.
"Don't thank me just yet," she near-snarls. "Because you knew this was still to come, right?"
Now he flinches—but that's not enough anymore. She stands, and the rest of the table shrinks away.
"He was there to kill me. I was his target, and you knew that, because you had Havoc and Breda and Rebecca on guard detail. You sent me to East City to get me out of the way of whatever the hell you were doing in Central—so Grumman's involved, too. Is there anyone who's been telling me the truth in the last six months?"
Both hands on the tabletop now, fury stiffening her shoulders. The fingers of her left hand brush the edge of one of her traced circles—she feels briefly the spark of transmutation, and the lamp explodes in a bouquet of flame and glass shards. Riza just manages to shield her face from debris with her right hand as fire engulfs the pocket-watch.
"What the hell—?"
They're all looking to her, but she has nothing.
"Too much kerosene," Jean says quickly, and when Riza lowers her hand, he's staring into her eyes. He looks afraid.
The meeting ends after that—shaken, everyone scatters save for a few: the Elrics won't leave her, and Jean hovers, while Marcoh changes the dirtied bandages around Riza's hand.
"Fuck," Jean whispers, as the skin is exposed. Riza feels briefly nauseous and looks away.
"This would be nothing," Marcoh laments, gently prodding her blackened fingers, "if I only had the stone."
"No use crying over it," Riza says, more brusque than she feels.
"Hey, Hawk," Jean begins. "That lamp—"
But Hughes comes back, just opening the door and standing there, protected by silhouette.
"Is everything alright?" he asks.
The Elrics wait for Riza to move—she's slower now, weighed down by the growing throb in her exposed hand. Marcoh snips the last stretch of gauze away.
"Give us the room," Riza says. "Colonel knows field dressing well enough."
Marcoh bows out easily, and then the Elrics follow with reluctance. Jean exits last, frowning, brow knitted.
"Look, Riza," Hughes says, when they're alone.
"No," she says firmly. "I'm tired of living in the dark. You owe me answers."
Hughes sighs and pulls off his glasses, rubbing hard at the bridge of his nose.
"Where do you want me to start?"
"Where do you think?" she snaps.
With fresh water from the basin, Hughes scrubs his hands, working dirt from beneath each fingernail.
"I was one of the officers to first debrief Ed in the hospital. I thought I was going to be the only one, but another officer showed up. Henry Douglas. A colonel, said from the office of the provost marshal, but I'd never seen him before in my life."
He studies each separate supply before laying it out, in the exact order he'll use them, beside a bowl of clear water. Two rolls of wrapping, a stack of gauze squares, a bottle of sulfa powder, scissors, and a rag. She holds her right hand flat, and his fingers circle her wrist gently.
"He did most of the talking, and it was quickly clear to me that he was trying to steer Ed's account. He already had a script for what happened, and he wasn't interested in deviation. The official report is a heavily-censored version of what Ed actually told us, and there were some things Ed left out deliberately, which he told me about later."
"How much later?"
"I was already suspicious that first night, but there was nothing I could do. They were still searching, still compiling their next steps. So I waited, until after the funeral, before I approached Ed."
"Who else was involved from the beginning?"
He dips the rag into the water and wrings it out, then dips again and wrings again.
"Just the boys," he says. "I had to know what they knew before moving forward, but I knew I was working against the clock. They were going to dissolve the squad and reassign all of you as soon as possible. It was all I could do to keep you with me without having you declared unfit."
She flinches—mostly from the sting of the rag and water on her broken skin, but a little from the implication of incompetency. Humiliating, but understandable. Those first few weeks after Roy's death were nothing but a dull blur in most places.
"What Ed didn't tell him, is what he heard Bradley say. Before the explosion, when he first showed up the laboratory, he put on a show of being there to help, but—Bradley was allied with the homunculi. He went down there to help them."
"I've kind of figured that out," Riza says, trying to keep the pain from her voice. "I want to know how we got here."
Her palm, each finger, her knuckles, the tangled mess of skin stretched over the back of her hand—he works loose dried blood and rearranges the fragments of skin. She can't tell if it's healed at all—if May Chang's efforts were any use, or if it was all an exercise in delaying the inevitable.
"I couldn't go forward with that. Bradley still being mourned as a national hero, and Gardner in without changing a damn thing. All I had were suspicions, Riza."
"Enough for an alliance."
"That came later. In pieces. It's not as much of a conspiracy as you think."
He sets a fresh square of gauze in the center of her palm and holds it there until she looks up.
"I'm sorry it happened like this," he says. "But I won't apologize for the past. I did what I thought was best. For you, for the boys. For Roy."
He sighs again.
"You're not the only one who lost him, you know."
She holds his stare.
"No," she says steadily. "But I'm the only one who got left behind."
She needs to find the Elrics, and Hughes still has fires to extinguish—they say good night at the door and turn away from each other, hunched against the wind. She listens to the crunch of his retreat before turning herself towards the barracks—she and the boys have marked out a corner for themselves, and they will be waiting for her.
Robbed of catharsis, she twists in the wind. She wanted to scream, to shout, to tear Hughes apart for the betrayal, but he's never been a man easily ruined by emotion. Logical, detached, forthright—she wants to press her thumbs into his eyes and watch him bleed the way she has.
"No wonder he kept me out," she mutters, shrugging her coat close and starting out.
Jean is waiting for her outside, beneath the single spotlight, breathing into his cupped hands.
"You forgot this."
And he sets the pocket-watch in her left hand and closes her fingers over it.
"Riza—"
"Not tonight," she sighs. "Okay? Please. I just want to sleep."
"Yeah," he says. "I wish I could, too."
They share silence, but she hasn't the energy to examine whether she's still as angry with him as she had wanted to be.
"I know it's not worth much of anything, but I am sorry I hurt you."
They both look down at the watch.
"Transmutation, huh?" he says, and she steps back from him.
"I don't know. It just—it just happened."
"Guess you pick some things up. You were with him forever."
"I didn't even know what I was doing."
"Hell of a talent to have, though," he says, and he grimaces a half-smile, just for her. "Since you can't aim for shit with your left."
He kisses her—on the temple, off-center and brief, before pushing open the barracks door and disappearing inside.
Alone, Riza looks down at the watch. The front is dull, the clock-face inside dusty, and the back-plate—
She steps deeper into the light with a sudden spike of illness, but it's there, no question: a hairline crack around the edge. Just enough space to wedge in a fingernail.
She pries and pulls until it bleeds—until the plate pops free, and she reaches in with two shaking fingers.
A piece of parchment, folded into eighths, and a fragment of a photo: her own smiling face, ten years old, holding a buttercup blossom beneath her chin.