Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist/Hagane no Renkinjutsushi doesn't belong to me. I just borrow Arakawa-san's toys and try not to break them (too much).
CHAPTER THREE
The officer's barracks loomed before him as he guided his personal vehicle to the rain-soaked curb and set the brake. Once a proud building so popular that soldiers entered waitlists for the chance to call it home, it now crouched against the background of one of Central's industrial sectors, rarely seeing peace from the constant hum of machinery or growl of heavy trucks. He took one glance at the cracked façade, its pale granite almost grey in the bleak light, and squared his shoulders.
Two soldiers were in the lobby when he entered, laughing as they smoked and played cards. He had to clear his throat loudly before they noticed him, but both jumped to attention when they finally did. "Good afternoon, General! Is there anything we can help you with, sir?"
"Colonel Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist." He didn't bother hiding the scowl that etched itself across his face, nor did he try to soften the growl that emerged from between them. "Have you seen him come or go today?"
The two soldiers exchanged a nervous glance. Mustang gathered his irritation even more tightly around himself. It dropped into his gut and tightened his stomach. "Answer the question. Have you seen him or not?"
"N-no, sir," one of the soldiers stammered. "We haven't seen him since he returned yesterday afternoon."
Without another word to the two cowards shaking beneath their blue lapels, he spun on his heel and made for the creaking stairs. Up he travelled, fisting his hands so that they wouldn't shake. This was the last time, he promised himself; the very last time he would allow that insubordinate little hellion to walk all over military protocol like it was a mild suggestion.
His heavy, military-issued boots played a quick tempo along the third floor hallway and he found himself standing before a cheap wooden door adorned with a small plaque. C-12. He brought his fist up to the door and the sharp raps echoed down the dim hall.
Heart pounding loudly in his ears, he waited. There was no reply, no shuffling of an uneven tread, no muttered curses at being interrupted. Nothing at all.
Something was wrong here. There was something seriously amiss with Fullmetal, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that the New Optain riot would have only made it worse—whatever "it" was.
Worry reared its ugly head and refused to leave, no matter how he tried to squash it down.
He raised his fist again, pounded loudly. "I know you're in there," he told the door loudly, hoping it wouldn't reveal his bluff. "Open the door!"
Nothing. Absolutely no indication that there was any life in the little apartment—wait. He drew a breath, held it. Yes, there it was; a muted thud and an almost-singing sound of something dropping and rolling across worn carpeted floors. Glass maybe? Perhaps the young man had knocked a coffee mug of some sort to the ground…
He didn't bother knocking again. His voice was no doubt loud enough to carry through the door. "Open up or I'll blow the lock off, Fullmetal!"
Still nothing.
With a growl, he reached into his pockets and felt the rough fabric of his gloves. It took only a moment to decide he'd been completely serious.
It was a tricky bit of alchemy to superheat the air around the cheap iron tumblers within the lock. But then a sharp noise, not unlike a ring of keys being dropped, rang through the hallway. Before the tumblers could fall back into place, he pushed the door open—and stared, heart hammering, into the gloomy apartment.
The hallway was dark, with only a grimy little window at the opposite end of the apartment to offer light. Muddy boots met his right toe, strewn carelessly over the tile floors. A torn jacket with a semi-automatic pistol peaking from a pocket rested beside them. A battered suitcase squatted nearby, but didn't hide the countless other pieces of detritus—holed gloves, yellowing newspapers, paper bags with half-eaten lunches—resting along worn floorboards.
And the smell. It was all Mustang could do not to hold his sleeve to his nose in an attempt to shield it against the hair-curling scent of molding foods, unwashed clothes, uncontrolled refuse, and something familiar and cloying that he couldn't quite identify.
Oh yes, something was very, very wrong here.
"The least you could do, Fullmetal," he said to the stale kitchen air, and somehow his voice sounded as calm and collected as ever, "is have the decency to tell me where you are."
Only oppressive silence met his ears, so he shuffled through the kitchen, past stacks of Xingese take-out containers and around a rickety dining table burdened by a mountain of dirty laundry. Another military-issued weapon—this one a backup revolver—peaked out from underneath a worn-out sock.
His boots kicked up dust bunnies as he stepped under the archway that led to the living room. Gauzy curtains were drawn shut, allowing only a grim, grey light to filter over the packed bookshelves, the messy desk, the worn furniture. Heavy rains pounded against the windows.
His toe nudged something as he moved forward, causing the same almost-singing noise he'd heard back in the hallway, and his eyes moved down to investigate on their own accord. A sizeable bottle of vodka—its scratched and worn label reading "Drachma's Finest" in bold, black type—winked back up at him.
And there, stretched out on a fading, lumpy couch, was Edward, head bandaged, bruises stark against his naked torso, skin pale and gaunt in the feeble light. Mustang took in a sharp breath at the sight of the young man; he looked so broken, and his mind brought him back to Ishval for just a moment.
He felt sick, but at least his voice was still steady.
"Get up, Fullmetal. It doesn't matter how hung over you are"—but, no, it really fucking did, because Edward hated alcohol and never hesitated to tell him the effects it had on the body and how did a sixteen-year-old get hard liquor anyway?—"you were expected to be at my office nearly half an hour ago to be debriefed. Get your ass off of that couch, make yourself presentable, and get ready to go. There's coffee in my office if you need it, but you're not leaving until I know every damned thing you've been hiding from me for these past six months."
After a few failed attempts, Edward managed to push himself up onto his elbows, head lolling as though too heavy to hold up properly; he eventually settled with pressing a cheek against a back cushion. There was a mark against the young man's exposed cheek—had he been pistol-whipped at some point? Neither Havoc nor the hospital report had mentioned anything of the sort.
Edward wasn't hungover, he realized with a start. No, the young man was still drunk.
Those two golden eyes, once fiery and fierce, now dampened and glazed and blood-shot, struggled to focus on him. "Fuck off, Mustang," he croaked after a moment, then his head fell back down onto the dark jacket he'd been using as a pillow.
"You're hardly in a position to make demands, and I refuse to stay in this miserable hovel you've been living in for any longer than I have to. You have fifteen minutes to clean up or I'm dragging you back to HQ the way you are right now."
"I'm not goin'." Edward slurred in response and, to emphasize his point, he shifted, pressing himself further against the couch. "Can't make me."
Of course, even drunk off his ass and unable to see straight, the brat would still fight him.
Mustang's fingers went cold, and he crossed his arms firmly over his chest. When he spoke, his voice was icy, and he held onto that cold with every ounce of strength he had. "That's an order. Don't make me tell you again."
"Fuck off." But those two words were dead, hollow; more proof of how far the young man had slipped while Mustang was busy convincing himself that Edward could take care of himself.
The cold worked its way into his chest, tightening around his lungs and squeezing his heart. The cloying scent—alcohol, he thought numbly, the entire apartment stank of alcohol—still hung in his nose.
Enough was enough.
It took only three long strides to cross the space between himself and the prone blond. His numb fingers clamped down around the young man's elbow in a bruising grip, half lifting Edward off the couch before the young man finally protested with a string of slurred curses and a jerk of his captured limb.
"Dammit, Fullmetal!" He snapped out. "What the hell is going on?"
"Nothing." There was a flicker of emotion in Edward's own voice now, but why did it have to make him sound so old? "Just… leave me alone."
"Not until you give me an explanation for all of this."
Silence met Mustang's ears, and a growl bubbled up from between his lips.
Maes could always get people to talk, his mind whispered. The man was famous for being able to get people to spill all their secrets to his beguiling grin and sharp mind. Dammit, why couldn't he be here instead, to say all the right things to comfort the obviously suffering young man—?
Mustang gripped that thought.
He crouched down so that he was almost face-to-face with the young man, ignoring the way his knees popped and cracked, and fumbled with the words in his mind for a moment. When he spoke, the worry was still there, but that was fine. Maybe it would even break through the drunken haze. "This didn't start with New Optain, did it?"
Two bleary eyes cracked open, glared at him suspiciously.
"Was it the plant-chimaeras in Kineton?"He pressed. If he looked closely, he could see the fine cracks etching themselves in the young man's normally fearless façade. Edward was crumbling, there was no doubt about it.
"Nothing happened in Kineton." But the mumbled reply was weak, and it nearly broke under the weight of words that couldn't be true.
"Did something else happen that I'm not aware of?"
The bandaged head shifted against its jacket-pillow. Bare arms circled the bruised, bandaged chest until Edward was half-hugging himself. "I did what you wanted. S'all over now, and I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Sit up and tell me just this once, off the record." Maes had always been so unwaveringly patient with the people he dealt with. Mustang reached forward to grab the blond by the elbow again, but his grip was gentle this time.
The change happened so quickly that he couldn't help but stare. His hand was pushed away. Every muscle in that lithe body tensed. The cracks disappeared. The voice, once wavering, was suddenly firm, with no room for negotiation. "No."
"Let me guess." He threw the guess out wildly. Anything, anything, to keep the young man talking. "The world's spinning and you don't want to fall off the couch."
Edward pressed his cheek against the jacket-pillow and didn't even bother telling him to fuck off.
That was it, right? The young man was embarrassed and didn't want to admit it? "It happens to most people at least once. You might as well fall off the couch and get it over with. At least you can be assured that the floor doesn't actually spin."
Nothing.
"Come on, Fullmetal." This time, he reached for a tense upper arm. "You'll feel better once you're sitting on the floor. Trust me."
"I said 'no'!" Edward snapped without warning, batting his hand away again. A fist hit home just a fraction of a second later, and pain blossomed across Mustang's jaw. "Jus' leave me the hell alone, bastard!"
The force of the blow sent him crashing into a scratched and scarred coffee table, disturbing a stack of handwritten notes and sending it fluttering to the ground. With effort, he pushed the pain aside—even reeking of alcohol and swaying from its effects, there was no denying that Edward had a mean right hook—and met that tarnished brass gaze.
The young man settled himself again, hunkering down on the couch as though guarding a treasure and gripping at the pillow-jacket like it was some sort of security blanket. The gentle clatter of metal against metal rang throughout the room as the plates making up his remaining automail limb trembled—with anger? Cold? Something else?
Then a terrible, horrible thought hit Mustang square in the gut, wrenching his stomach in half and stealing his breath, and his gaze turned to the thumb-sized mark decorating Edward's jaw. He opened his mouth, and his voice immerged as little more than a croak. "What are you hiding, Fullmetal?"
"Nothing."
But those scarred shoulders twitched, and Mustang knew he was lying.
He pushed himself away from the coffee table, one hand slipping on a fallen page, and lunged forward. His right hand gripped tightly at the dark jacket, jerking it out from under the drunken teenager's head, while the left pushed against Edward's shoulder, forcing the blond back and giving Mustang the precious second he needed to free the garment.
A heavy clunk echoed off the walls and dusty bookshelves and the dark jacket fell from Mustang's fingers.
The world froze. Mustang's mind buzzed. Dull metal, a military-issued Browning, gleamed up at him from its place at the base of the couch; the barrel was a thumb-width wide and the grip was worn down from use.
There was a voice at the back of his mind, screaming, shouting, crying, slamming pale fists against the inside of his skull. Was it really what it looked like? Had the young man—no, the kid, because he was really just a scared and lonely and upset kid—pressed the pistol so hard against his own jaw that it had left a mark?
Had Edward lain there for long, shivering in the grey light, cold barrel bruising bone, hands shaking, eyes blurring, heart fluttering, trying to convince himself to pull the trigger?
Mustang ignored the voice and, breathing heavily, wrapped numb fingers around the weapon. Without a word, he flicked the safety catch on, pulled the slide. The round caged there fell to the ground noiselessly.
The magazine—already half-empty, he noted—was also released, and he slipped it into one of the pockets of his royal blue military trousers. Hands shaking ever so slightly, he placed the now-empty weapon on the coffee table and turned to the shaking blond.
"Edward," he said very, very calmly, though his heart was beating in his throat and his lungs couldn't pull in air and he still couldn't feel his fingers, "you need to explain to me why you were hiding that gun under your jacket."
For a moment, only silence met his ears. Then, just as a plethora of curses were forming in Mustang's mind, Edward opened his mouth. There was no mistaking the barely contained shame and frustration and hurt when he spoke. "What do you think, bastard?"
Be patient, he reminded himself, ignoring the slow return of feeling in his fingers. Be patient. "I think you were about to do something stupid. What I want to know is why."
"You wanna know why… "Edward repeated and, to his shock, a harsh, unhappy sound that might have been laughter burst from the young man's mouth. "You're making a mistake, bastard."
"Then you can laugh at me after I've finished making it," Mustang countered, a little too quickly, and he tried desperately to keep his heart beat under control even as the screaming in his mind grew louder.
Too-old eyes watched him, glazed and red-rimmed and glassy, and oh shit were there tears there? There was no way the kid was crying; Edward was too brave, too strong, to cry. "S'all so easy with alchemy. Just clap your hands or draw a circle, and you can change whatever you want. It's… it's the worst fucking feeling to see people in trouble and to know how to help them, and then not be able to because you just can' make it happen anymore."
The rain. Mustang hated the rain with a passion because, yes, he knew how earth-shatteringly worthless it felt; to see people in danger and to know that he could help them if only the situation were only slightly different…
The thought made his stomach rebel. "Is that what happened in New Optain?"
But blond hair flew as Edward shook his head. "They were kids," he gasped out. A hand reached up to cover his face, but there was no hiding the wet trails that traced the contours of his cheeks. "Those assholes were using their own kids to lure out some Aer'gonian traders hiding in some of the empty mineshafts. They were gonna risk their own kids being turned int' slaves so that they could find out who was stealing their ore…"
A bland, by-the-books report of mining operations in Hohenburg—the first field mission Mustang had sent the young man on since convincing him to stay in the military, over six months ago—came to mind. Vaguely, he recalled Havoc mentioning something about some children getting trapped in the mine, exuberant parents, and a resulting celebration.
"They'd taken a little girl from a town nearby and they… Those fuckers were laughing while they played with her body. The other kids—the ones they'd found from Hohenburg—were all locked up. I had to do something before they were hauled off and it would've been so fucking easy if I could've just transmuted the lock off the cages and gotten 'em away, but…"
A pathetic sniffle. With a hand still over his eyes, Edward somehow managed to wipe at his nose.
"I didn't know what to do, so I… I told them who I was and that there were soldiers outside. Thought maybe they'd freak and just give up or something. Instead, they came at me and I—shit!—next thing I know I'd pulled my gun and one of 'em was bleeding from the chest and the kids were screaming and the bastards were running and…
"The miners must've known something was up. Once I'd got the kids out and we were at the entrance, they were already there. They had their picks and stuff with them, too. The miners… they…"
With another wild shake of his head, Edward cut himself short; Mustang was glad that he did. He didn't need to know exactly had the miners had done to the Aerugonians—his imagination was already filling in the bloody details a little too well.
For a moment, neither spoke, and the only sounds came from the steady drum of rain on the windows and Edward's own stuttering breaths. Then, finally, Mustang climbed to his feet. Two dull eyes peeked up at him from between two fingers; they followed his movements as he strode into the filthy little kitchen and rummaged around in the cupboards. After a moment, Mustang found what he was searching for—a chipped mug which, after he'd paused by the sink to fill it, he took with him as he returned to the living room.
He pretended that he couldn't see the ripples in the water his trembling caused when he presented the mug to Edward. "You're going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow if you don't drink something."
The hand covering the kid's eyes slipped away, and after a slight struggle, Edward managed to right himself. He sipped at the water hesitantly, eyes flickering between the mug in his hands and Mustang himself.
He looked so sad and lost and, well, childlike that Mustang couldn't help but wonder how he had ever forgot that the sixteen-year-old was just that—a teenager, a kid. He pinched the bridge of his nose, gathered his courage, and pushed forward again. "And what about the plant-chimaeras in Kineton? What really happened there?"
The question brought a violent flinch.
"I… There's nothing to say 'bout Kineton—" Edward began. Mustang could almost see him try to rebuild the cracked and crumbling walls around himself.
No way. Not now. With a sigh, he eased himself down onto the couch, sitting so close to the kid that the silver trim of his waist-cape brushed against Edward's own loose trousers. A half-forgotten question bubbled up from the back of his mind. "The alchemist you spoke to… he was using people for his experiments, wasn't he?"
"…Yeah. Drifters an' vagrants, an' anyone else he could catch who wouldn't make people wonder."
"It must have been painful for them," he offered, "to be in that kind of state."
"It was written on their faces," Edward whispered, gaze fixed on the half-full mug. "The look in their eyes—they never 'spected to stop hurting. And some of them… they were just hollow inside.
"The maniac who made them kept going on about how they were finally contr'buting something to Amestris. He heard about me from the farmer I was helping, so I guess he thought I'd be easy to use for his next 'speriments. I mean"—he placed a hand on his prosthetic leg—"a cripple can't be that hard to catch, right?
"But when he realized who I was, he panicked and some of his—his creations after me. One of 'em, a woman, kept screaming and crying and telling me how sorry she was; she di'n't want to fight me, but he'd transmuted some obedience fail-safe or something int' her, and she couldn't stop. And it hurt her to even move, let alone try to catch me—her arms were a mess of bones and vines and she cried whenever she lashed out. Her legs were so stiff she could barely move them, and when I shot her in the knee, she didn't even feel it…"
He shuddered, and the hand holding the mug trembled violently. "She was begging me to kill her; it took almost a whole clip 'til she stopped moving. And when she couldn't move anymore, she actually thanked me. She was fucking bleeding to death and she couldn't breathe, but she thanked me for killing her.
"Then I managed to stop the other two, but I ran out of rounds and the crazy bastard'd let more of them out. I couldn't cage them 'cause I couldn't transmute anything, and I couldn't let them get to the village or else everything'd go to shit…"
"So you burned the entire place down." Mustang recalled the report from all those months ago, just as he recalled the bruised knuckles and poorly hidden limp, the limp hair and the hollow eyes.
"I sat there and watched it burn to—to make sure that none of 'em made it out." A hand dashed across the kid's face, catching tears and brushing them aside. "They screamed for hours. Was almost dawn when they finally stopped."
He lapsed into silence again. His shoulders shook under the weight of the revelation.
Mustang watched the blond out of the corner of his eye, face carefully blank as he berated himself wildly. He really was a bastard; he must be, to not have taken the energy to piece together everything he hadn't been told, and to be too blind to notice exactly how badly these missions were tearing the kid apart.
He was supposed to be keeping an eye on the blond. And instead he'd been fucking useless.
He grabbed the mug out of Edward's hand, perhaps with more force than necessary, and made his way back into the kitchen. The tap whined as water dribbled but, before long, the mug was full again and pressed back into trembling fingers. "If New Optain hadn't been such a fiasco, you wouldn't have told me about that either."
It wasn't a question, Edward still shook his head nonetheless. "Nothing more than what I would've had to say."
"Why not?"
"'Cause the military only cares about results. The mission failed, so what else is there to say?"
He had to admit it—the kid wasn't wrong. The Amestrian military never had cared about the details. Mustang, however… "Well, telling me about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of those two civilians might be a good place to start."
"It was a mess." The kid brought the mug to his lips, muffling his voice and hiding his face. "By the time me and Havoc got there, it was too late… An' when I started talking to people to try to get them to calm the fuck down, they freaked out more. Someone must've said the wrong thing at the wrong time, because it all jus'… blew up after that.
"We were at a café for lunch, and next thing I know people were screaming and there were gunshots everywhere. We ran out t' find out what was happening, but we got sep'rated in all the chaos, then I saw these two bastards… tormenting some woman with a kid in her arms."
"I did everything I could, but I couldn't get 'em to leave her alone, and there were so many people shoving and pushing and running around that I couldn't've gotten a good punch on them if I wanted to. But I couldn't let those bastards hurt her like that, so I pulled out my gun and told them to fuck off. They didn't, so I—I fired."
"…People around saw me shoot, and they panicked an' jumped me." Edward muttered. The fingers around the mug tightened until they were green, and a mirthless smirk curled across his lips. "Can you believe it? The 'Hero of the People' taken down by a few random people in the streets."
Mustang was silent, brows furrowed in thought and eyes focused on the precise crease of his deep blue trousers. What was there to say, really? Edward wouldn't appreciate being told that he did the right thing, he thought darkly; if it hadn't been the right thing to do, the kid wouldn't have done it.
At least, if the meek pattering on the window was anything to go by, the rain was starting to let up.
"Why didn't you say something? Why didn't you talk to someone—anyone—about what was going on?" He finally asked, turning to fix his gaze on the bright blond head bowed beside him. Dammit, the kid still looked so scared, so lost… His gaze sharpened as he made up his mind, and his hand rose to rest on Edward's bare shoulder.
It twitched, but didn't shy away, as a derisive snort answered him. "I already told you. The military doesn't care about that kinda shit…"
But there was more to it than that. As sure as he was of his own name, Mustang was sure there was something that the kid wasn't telling him.
Just as he was mentally preparing his plan of attack, though, Edward surrendered for the first time in his life. His voice was little more than a whisper. "'Sides, who the hell would listen to me?"
"Anyone you wanted to." A memory of his blond Second Lieutenant, terse and serious, came to mind. "Havoc would have your back, and he knows how to keep his mouth shut when he has to. And Al would—"
"Al doesn't need to know 'bout any of this." The words were snapped out suddenly, and Edward rounded on the man. Then, energy gone just as quickly, he sagged again. "And Havoc… jus' wouldn't get it."
"I would listen."
The words left Mustang's mouth before he could remember thinking them. They were true, he realized as they hung in the air, and he didn't take them back.
"This is all your fault." But there was no real heat in the words, as though Edward was trying to decide whether or not the accusation was true. Those golden eyes stared at him, scrutinizing him, and he could start to feel them burn even as he met the gaze squarely.
It was far more true than the kid knew, he thought bitterly, remembering the meetings with Grumman and his only half-hearted attempts to convince the man to let Edward leave military service. "I know."
"I… I hate you for it."
"You have every right to."
The kid sighed, nodded, and placed the empty mug on the coffee table with a soft clunk. Silence stretched out between the two of them, brittle and tenuous and ready to snap.
"I feel like crap," Edward muttered after a moment, groaning to emphasize his point, and that was it.
The pressure that he been building behind Mustang's lungs all this time popped, and the screaming voice in the back of his mind quieted to a mere whisper. "It's just the alcohol. You would probably do best to sleep it off."
"R-right." But the kid made no attempt to stand. Instead, two flickering eyes turned to him, asking a question that he wouldn't ever say out loud.
"Just to go sleep, kid," Mustang said. The smile that ghosted across his lips was completely unintentional. "I'll still be around when you wake up."
With a nod, Edward rose to his feet and, swaying lightly, made for the hallway. At the threshold, though, he turned, golden eyes meeting Mustang's own dark ones once more. "Hey, General?"
"Yeah?"
"…Thanks."
With that, uneven footsteps rung through the little apartment and Edward stumbled through a half open door. From where he sat, Mustang heard the distinct sound of a body hitting plush blankets. Then, after a few moments, Edward's breathing evened out, and he knew that the kid was sleeping.
The reek of sweat and alcohol still assaulted his nose as he sat there. His eyes roamed the dark room, taking in the dusty old bookshelves and battered desks, before falling to the still-closed curtains.
Heavy footfalls brought him to the windows, and steady hands threw them open. Beyond the grimy, warped glass, slate-grey clouds twisted and tumbled, but the streets were drying and a few brave souls were venturing out onto Central's washed streets. It had finally stopped raining.
The smile on his lips widened. Edward, he knew, would be all right.
END
Author's Note: Whew… Well, there you have it, everyone. Thanks a bunch for coming along for the ride with me! Thanks as well to my two lovely betas, who tore each chapter apart looking for typos and inconsistencies.
This entire story is rather different than how I normally write (what with it being a story from Mustang's POV but about Edward), so if you have any thoughts, comments, critiques, praises, suggestions, or otherwise, I'd absolutely love to hear from you in a review! (Please?)
Also, please note, method writing—you know, sort of like method acting—is a terrible idea when it comes to trying to determined how a depressed and drunk character would act. Just… don't do it.
Anyway, now that Edward's mad at me for tormenting him, I'm off to write some piece of fluffy crap to make him feel better… Then I'm going to send him to war. You'll find these in No Place Like It and Loyal Dogs, respectively.
Until next time!
xCxBxBx