The Game of Three Generals
by Lady Norbert
A/N: Of all the lines of dialogue I've ever written that I've really liked (and there have been quite a few), Roy gets one in this chapter that might possibly be my very favorite.
Chapter Eleven: Battle of Titans
Battle of Titans: A three-player game in which one player controls a standard set of chess pieces, one player controls a set of Shogi pieces, and one player controls a set of Xiang-qi (Chinese chess) pieces.
Edward is no fan of the judicial process, he has decided.
He was there for the arrest. Mustang went surprisingly quietly, evidently feeling that cooperating with this General Piper character was the wiser course of action. He merely issued a few last orders to his men - continue your efforts on the standing project (the search for Acheron, of course), don't do anything drastic, and above all else, take care of Riza. Emphasis Mustang's. They were willing enough to obey, but circumstances that Ed finds entirely too coincidental for comfort have decreed otherwise. They are gone, against their wishes, and he alone is left to carry out that last instruction.
After a visit of several days, Winry is back in Resembool, rather against her own inclination but knowing that it's necessary for Lucas. She agrees with Ed, however, that he has to remain in Central City for as long as he's needed. He's managed to get a message to Al, who has not yet left Xing with his new bride, and his brother's reaction is naturally as horrified as everyone else's. They will make their way to Amestris as fast as they can, to offer whatever support they can, but the desert is vast and with such a contingent as could well be accompanying them, it could take upwards of a month.
Hawkeye wants desperately to go to the trial, when it begins. She wants to see more of her husband than his picture in the paper. She wants to tell him that she believes in him, that she trusts him just as much as she ever has. But she's not allowed. They're still keeping her under house arrest - they're calling it "protective custody" but Edward's not stupid - and she can't leave. Ed therefore has to go in her place, sit in the seats directly behind Mustang where his loyal supporters should be. He's the only one there. The rest have been scattered, sent to defend the eastern and northern regions from whatever the hell's shaking them.
Ed's not fooled by that, either. He can see what they're doing. They think the General will fall apart without his faithful subordinates to back him up. Probably the only reason no one's giving Ed himself any grief is because of the well-documented history he and Mustang have of snarking at each other at every opportunity.
No snarking now. In a very real sense, he's all the poor guy has. And Ed may gripe about Mustang, quite a bit in fact, but he knows what sort of things he will and won't do. He would never in a million years have done this. He's ambitious, but he's not murderous - he goes to extremes to avoid killing his enemies, so he's sure as hell not going to kill the closest thing to a father he's ever had.
Mustang's trial finally gets started a full two weeks after his arrest.
Every night of the travesty, Ed has to return to Hawkeye's home and find a way to tell her what he's seen without making her cry. It's not easy. Her hormones are fluctuating, her life is in disarray, and she's almost constantly either eating or lying down because she's nauseated. She's utterly frayed. He wouldn't blame her for crying, of course, but he has a hard time hearing it.
The first day is not too bad. Opening arguments by the prosecutor and the defense attorney. It's surprisingly painful to see Mustang in shackles, but they seem to believe it's the only way to keep him from using his alchemy to burn them all alive. Of course, as has already been established, they're idiots.
As the circus draws to its conclusion, and everyone stands so the judge can leave, Mustang turns around and gets to speak to Ed for a minute before he's taken away. "How is she?"
"About as well as can be expected."
"Just tell her...I'm sorry."
"She won't take that from you."
"What?" The guards are starting to shuffle the prisoner away, but his face makes it clear that he's uncertain of Ed's meaning. So he has to shout.
"She won't accept your apology because she believes you're innocent!"
Mustang is so immediately flooded with evident relief that his body goes almost limp in the guards' grip.
From the second day onward, however, it starts to get ugly, and Ed has to almost compose a mental script every night when he goes to have dinner with his pregnant friend. He hopes she doesn't read the newspapers. He's afraid, deathly afraid, that her anxiety will cause a miscarriage - and the loss of that child could be the end of one or both of them.
The official investigation report helps nothing. General Piper reports, in a pained voice that suggests he regrets his involvement, how the inspection uncovered no evidence of a normal explosion. No powder, no dynamite, no external stimulus of any kind. This led them to conclude that the carnage had alchemical origins, because no other explanation seemed plausible, and this naturally led them to the one and only Flame Alchemist.
The prosecution pulls no punches. They assault Mustang's character. His Ishvalan record comes up. The sheer number of people he killed with his alchemy. His drive to rise to the top, his continuous pursuit of promotions. His old reputation for womanizing (a reputation that once sickened Ed himself, before he understood the reality of it). His remarkably convenient marriage. Ed has to forcibly keep himself from shouting when that one comes up.
Character witnesses are called, none of them good and none of them fully appreciating the truth of the person they're tearing down. These range from jealous fellow officers who resent his career to jealous ex-girlfriends who resent his wife. The defense attorney isn't half bad at his job, and he tries to object to every misleading statement, every irrelevant fact. But Ed can't tell how much this is helping anything, or if it helps at all. He's not even sure that anything would help, because there's something about the judge that he really doesn't like very much.
"Tell your lawyer," he tells Mustang at the close of the day, "that he can call me as a character witness." He cracks a half-smile. "I guess it wouldn't kill me to tell them that you're a decent person."
After three days, the defense begins.
Mustang takes the witness stand to plead his own case. He patiently answers his lawyer's questions, detailing his activities on the terrible day. He and his wife arrived at Central Command and lunched with the Fuhrer, then took a walk. She was sick; she's expecting, it's been happening a lot. The Fuhrer's own orders were that she never be left alone, so he had to take her to the ladies' room himself. He was late for the meeting because of it.
"So you're asserting that you were never anywhere near the Fuhrer's office on the day of the explosion?"
"That's correct."
"Can anybody verify your whereabouts?"
"My wife, if she were permitted, could tell you. We did encounter a number of personnel while walking the grounds." He says a few names Ed doesn't recognize. "We were still in the restroom when the explosion occurred; Lieutenant Colonel Alex Louis Armstrong found us perhaps ten minutes afterward."
The prosecutor isn't convinced, obviously, but he strikes Ed as being so clearly biased that it's not even funny. "So the reality is, Major General, that no one can account for your location for at least twenty minutes except for your own wife."
"That is regrettably true." Mustang's expression is annoyed, but somewhat resigned; he's well aware that he's fighting a losing battle. He's determined to fight it nonetheless.
"Isn't it just a little strange that Fuhrer Grumman's unfortunate demise came only after he openly declared you as his chosen successor?"
"I really can't comment on that." Because, truthfully, what could he say?
"What about the nature of the explosion? You're the Flame Alchemist - are you suggesting that someone else in this country has access to the same abilities that you possess?"
"I am not."
"Is that possible?"
Mustang grits his teeth. "It's highly unlikely, but it's not impossible." Ed can tell this is somehow a sensitive point, although exactly why, he doesn't know.
"It's also well known that you're able to perform your alchemy at a considerable distance. So even if what you're telling us about being in the restroom with your ill wife is true, is it not possible that you could have done this from where you were?"
"Do you really think I would do that? He was my wife's grandfather!"
"Let's be honest with ourselves, Major General. You had the means - your alchemy. You had the motive - he was the only person standing in your way of becoming Fuhrer. And you had opportunity. Those things frequently add up to guilt."
"Look," says Mustang, and Ed knows he's getting exasperated because he's on the verge of yelling, "I'm not saying I didn't have means. I'll even allow that I had opportunity. But I did not have motive! Fuhrer Grumman was family to me, literally and figuratively! He was my mentor. He was my friend. And he was, as I have already pointed out, my wife's grandfather - even if I did want to be Fuhrer so badly that I'd consider murder, which I don't, why in the world would I do that to her?"
"Well," says the prosecutor, "maybe you love your ambition more than you love your wife."
If Ed were blind, he would still be able to see that this is the Wrongest Thing anyone has ever said to Mustang. He fully expects him to light the prosecutor on fire, although this wouldn't exactly help his case. At the very least, he expects Mustang to explode.
He doesn't. His black eyes are burning a hole through the prosecutor's head, but he remains seated, clutching the arms of the chair in a furious grip. And when he speaks, his voice is dangerously low and hissing, and fully informing the prosecutor that he has crossed the uncrossable line.
"I don't love anything more than my wife."
Ed's halfway surprised when the defense attorney decides to put him on the stand. Either the guy thinks he's Mustang's last chance, or he figures it's worth trying to delay the inevitable. Either way, it's kind of brutal to be in that little box. The week is over; closing arguments won't take place until Monday, and he honestly pities Mustang, who spends his non-courtroom time in solitary confinement. Some stupid garbage about him possibly taking other prisoners hostage, or whatever - it's all obviously a lie.
If it were trial by jury, he thinks, maybe things would go better. Surely one person out of twelve would be either intelligent enough to see through all the smokescreen, or sympathetic enough not to go along with the railroading. But this is one of those rare cases where a judge alone will decide the verdict, using the excuse that the jury pool is completely contaminated because everyone in the country knows what happened and wants to see justice done, even if they don't realize what justice truly would be.
He does his best for Mustang, talking about his heroism on the Promised Day and, even before that, his devotion to Amestris. He explains the Maria Ross incident. He describes their joint efforts to defend Central City from the invading forces of Dong Bao, half-brother of their friend the Emperor. He bites his tongue so he won't take the prosecutor's bait when he's cross-examined, remaining firm in his recollection of details and refusing to acknowledge partiality.
"Look, I'm not the guy's biggest fan," he says finally, irritated. "But he's the closest thing I ever had to an older brother. I may not always agree with his methods, but I have never known him to do anything that wasn't for the good of this country. There's no way in hell he did what you're trying to pin on him."
He returns to the gallery, and Mustang turns to look at him over his shoulder. Thank you, Ed, he mouths.
Ed nods. You'd have done the same for me.
He doesn't hold back the details at dinner that night. Hawkeye has the right to know. If nothing else, she has the right to know how vehemently Mustang defended his love of her.
She cries.