The Coldest Years
Roy's been missing for three years now. The military has pronounced him dead, splitting up Mustang's team. Hawkeye is less than willing to think so. That's not to say that she'll be expecting what she finds, or exactly pleased to find it. Chimera!Roy
Disclaimer: Trust me, if I owned Fullmetal Alchemist, there would be so much more Parental!RoyEdness, you don't even know. SO much more. :D
Note: Fudge schedules! Sorry, my life has had a busy this past while. I tried to get the next 2 week period, but I had robotics from 6:15-ish a.m. to 9:00-ish p.m., and I had to repeat that for the next two days as well. Oh well. *shrugs*
Chapter 3
Edward stretched his arms and legs like a cat, curling against the wall of the train. Across the seat, Alphonse raised his eyebrows, apparently amused. The elder watched him. "What?"
"Nice nap, brother?" Al asked innocently, crossing his legs on the seat.
"Shut up, Al. The trip is days long. I'm sorry for wanting to sleep!" Ed scowled.
Al only grinned. "That's alright. We're almost to Central, brother. Then we just hitch on the next train to Dublith, and it's only a day's trip," he assured.
Ed sat up, looking out of the window to watch Central approach. "It'll be nice to see Teacher again," he said.
"Mhmm. I wonder how she's been?" Al agreed. He looked out of the window as well. He glanced his brother's way, watching as the man looked in Central Headquarters' general direction. He sighed heavily, frowning. "Brother?"
Ed shook his head, looking away from it. "What? I'm just wondering how everyone else is doing, too," he said, though he knew that Al knew that that wasn't the case—not entirely, at least.
"We could stop in and visit, if you're so wondering." Al offered.
Ed shook his head again. "Maybe on the way back. We promised Teacher we'd be there tomorrow, and we don't want to make her wait for us. Don't want her mad."
Al laughed a little. "Right, brother."
After a day's trip south and a hearty meal (courtesy of Izumi) Ed and Al had a long talk with their teacher. Izumi asked about their research in alkahestry, and the boys (who were hardly boys anymore) asked about her injury. They must have spoken for a good three hours before they completely ran out of things to say. Izumi went to bed and Sig went to clean the kitchen.
Though it was late, Alphonse chose to follow his brother out of the house and around the town. They used to do such when they were training under Izumi all of the time: the fresh, crisp night air cleared their minds every time.
"Not much has changed around here, brother." Al commented, shoving his hands into his pockets.
Ed shook his head. "Not really. It's nice," he said.
Al nodded. "We gonna go out of town?" he asked.
"North, south, east, or west?"
Al only chuckled, steering his brother west. Ed trotted along, soon coming to his side again.
After all, it wasn't as if this wasn't common. In the latter half of their training, they'd strayed out of town every time they went on walks. The longer they did it, the further they went.
The moon was bright that night—it was nearly a full moon and there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. Ed sucked in a deep breath, enjoying the delicious crispness of the night air. "Smells good. Clean." He said.
Al took a deep breath as well, snorting. "Smells like a zoo." He laughed.
Ed shrugged. "Whatever. Must be one in town or something. Remember the one that came by East City when we were in town? Mustang tried to skip out on paperwork so we all went. 'Member that?"
Al nodded, a smile tracing his thin lips. "Yeah, I remember that one. Hawkeye made him do all of it and the next day's paperwork on the same day." He agreed.
Ed smiled, watching the ground. "But I didn't think that there were any zoos in town. We would have seen some posters or something." He frowned.
Al copied his brother's shrug. "Maybe they're just coming in." he glanced to the side. "Look, maybe that's it. Wanna go check it out?"
Ed glanced toward his brother's pointing finger. He spotted a big gray building surrounded by a tall chain link fence. Behind the building was a big expanse of nothing.
And inside that chain link fence, there sat an animal. "Hey, look at that. There's a little one sitting out." Ed said, stepping forward.
Al followed his brother as he approached the strange little thing.
It was a cat. Small and black, it had white front paws and earthy brown eyes. It watched them, its claws sheathing and unsheathing.
"That's either a really big housecat or a baby wildcat." Al decided, crouching when they were only ten feet away from it.
Both jumped—Al got knocked backwards in astonishment—when a cry tore from the building and the cat sitting out was approached by a giant black cat with four white paws.
"L-looks like a baby, then." Ed stuttered, helping Al to his feet.
"That must be its parent, if it's the baby."
The larger animal dipped its head, opening its mouth to grab the scruff of its kitten. Al noticed that it teetered a little bit, keeping its weight off of its left hind leg. It flicked its ears for a moment, and then lifted its head, peering at them.
Ed shuddered when he looked into its eyes. They were a deep, chilling black, peering hard into his soul.
The animal didn't look away from him for a bit. Finally, its ears flicked back and it looked behind it, at the building. Its narrow eyes widened a bit, some emotion like fear mixing into the depths. It stooped and grabbed the scruff of its kitten hurriedly, digging its sharp teeth into the loose skin.
The animal looked up at them again, and a new thing flickered into its eyes. Neither Edward nor Alphonse knew exactly what this was, but they had a feeling that it was asking them to do something… After five more seconds of holding their gaze, it twisted back and dashed inside through a door barely open, hobbling on its broken hind leg.
Al watched after it for another thirty seconds, his eyes wide. He looked up at his brother, who had looked away, glaring instead at the building. "Brother?" Al pressed, touching his arm.
Edward turned away from the building, looking instead at his hands. Suddenly, he imagined white gloves on his hands, with a little transmutation circle on the back of each. Suddenly, he thought of Mustang. "Let's go. I've got a bad feeling about this place," he growled darkly.
Al nodded and trotted after his departing brother, who hadn't even bothered to wait for Al to agree. The younger looked back at the building, back at the door. That place was wrong; so very wrong. He didn't know why, he just got that feeling. He'd gotten the same one when he and his brother walked into the Tucker household the day that they'd found little Nina suddenly changed into a chimera.
The brothers were too shaken up to continue their walk. Instead, they headed back to the butcher shop, waltzing in through the back door as if they owned the place.
Edward went to wake Izumi, choosing to take the brunt of the attack. They had to question her; that place was too wrong to be left ignored.
Izumi plopped onto the couch in the living room, grumbling. She rubbed her left hand slowly around her right.
Ed sat across from her, nursing a red mark on his cheek. Alphonse winced sympathetically at the sight of the mark, holding a hand to his cheek imploringly.
"So, what did you want to talk to me about?" Izumi asked, crossing her arms and legs comfortably.
Ed looked at Al, and Al at Ed, and then they both looked up at her. "A zoo."
Izumi paused. She waited for the boys to laugh and tell her what they really wanted to talk to her about. But they didn't. They didn't laugh, they didn't stop, they only watched for her reaction. "A zoo."
Two feeble nods rose from the boys.
Izumi clenched her teeth. "You woke me up from such a pleasant sleep for this?! A zoo?!" she demanded.
Both boys winced, but nodded again. "Y-yes, teacher!"
Izumi swallowed, took a deep breath, and glared at them. "Fine. What about a zoo?"
Edward watched her, and then relief flooded him when he saw that she was actually listening. "Do you know if there's one in town? A traveling one, or even a traveling circus?" he asked.
Izumi waited, stopped, and thought. "No, not that I know of. There was one about three months ago, but it didn't do well here and left not five days after it set up. Why?"
Edward swallowed deeply. Alphonse looked sick, stood, and went to the kitchen.
Izumi cocked her head to the side. "…Why, Edward?" she asked.
Ed peered at her anxiously, rubbing his right hand roughly around his left, the opposite of what she'd been doing. "…Ah..." He looked for a second as if he didn't know how to start, and she wondered to herself what a boy so well-versed in the 'way with words' could find hard to grasp, especially after all that they'd all fought through… together. "…Al and I went on a walk just now, and we came across this big building, with two animals sitting on the opposite side of the surrounding fence. It was wrong. It was just… I don't know. It was wrong. There was something so bad about it, and I know that Al felt it, too." He explained.
Sig looked out of the window, towards the west. "Out west? I know that building. It's been abandoned for three years. It was condemned. No one has set foot in it since then that I know of." He said.
Edward looked down at his hands and clenched them together, finding strength in the warmth that each hand delivered. He knew what happened when buildings were condemned. The Fifth Laboratory was enough proof of what happened.
Alphonse pressed the phone to his ear, listening to his brother and teacher converse. Just like Ed, he knew that illegal things happened in condemned buildings. And the eyes of that thing… they'd unnerved him so much. There was something almost human behind those thin, black depths.
"Good evening, Central Command."
Alphonse dug into his pocket to produce a small journal. He flipped open to the back inside cover, tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder. "Hello, this is Alphonse Elric. I need to speak with Major General Montgomery. His code is Uncle, Tin, Coach, Zero, Eight, Six."
The operator took a pregnant pause, as though trying to figure out whether this was real or not. Then she sighed. "Alright, Mr. Elric. I'd say no, but I've heard too much about you and your brother around the base. Please hold while I get him on the line." She said.
"Thank you." Al chirped with none of the usual cheerfulness.
Thirty seconds passed in which he listened to Ed and Izumi and Sig chat about things. With a tiny blip, the line came back to life, and he heard, "Major General Louis Montgomery speaking."
Hawkeye peeked up at the doors to the inner office. Nearly everyone had gone home who might have called Montgomery. There should be no one to call.
"Wait, who did you say you were?"
She almost—almost—considered picking up her own phone and listening in on the Major General's conversation as Fuery had showed her all of those years ago, long before the Promised Day. But not only was that an invasion of personal space, that was rude. She wouldn't have done it even if she wasn't the soldier's perfect mold.
"You know she has her own, direct line, don't you?"
No matter how badly she wanted to, she wouldn't.
"Yes, yes, fine. I'll let you speak with her."
A clunk, followed by several footsteps, sounded from the office. The door creaked open, and Montgomery peeked out at Hawkeye. "Lieutenant Colonel Hawkeye? There is a Mr. Alphonse Elric on the phone for you. He says that it might be important." He said.
Hawkeye nodded and stood. Might be? How hard was it to tell whether it was important or not? She followed her superior into his office and went to his desk, picking up the phone that precariously balanced near the edge of it. Montgomery nodded at her respectfully and ducked out. "Hello?"
"Lieutenant Hawkeye?"
"Hello, Alphonse." Hawkeye shifted a little. "How are you?"
"Oh, um, alright, thank you. I'm okay. And yourself?"
"I'm perfectly fine, thank you. Now then, why did you call?"
Alphonse huffed into the line, and then muttered, "Brother and I saw something… weird."
"Something weird?" He was interrupting her work day for something weird? It wasn't as if she wasn't glad to hear from him; she was ecstatic. But honestly?
"Mhmm."
"Like what? And why did you need to call me?"
"See… that's the thing. I don't really know what we saw." Al explained, as if that could help her at all.
"What do you mean?"
Alphonse paused for a second, and then turned back to her. "Brother and I saw an animal here in Dublith, and its kitten. Its eyes were just… so human. It was so wrong." He attempted to explain.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. It looked right at us; it looked as if it were asking for help. I wouldn't be surprised if that was what happened. It didn't look terribly healthy, and it looked as if its leg were broken."
Oh, fantastic. "Where is this?"
"Just west of Dublith."
"And what are we supposed to do about it?" she pressed.
"I don't… know! I just thought that someone should know, because if they get a report filed against them, they won't just have one, they'll have two, and I just… I know that Brother felt it too, that unexplainable feeling of despair. Lieutenant, Brother and I have only felt that one other time. With Nina."
Hawkeye tensed and shifted. Nina. The little girl who had been transmuted into a human chimera with her dog, by her own father. Nina, who had been adored by those boys and had adored those boys. Nina, dead, by Scar's merciful hand.
She shuddered and forced herself to stop thinking of the girl. "You don't think that…"
"They looked like they were in pain; even the baby. Chimeras are wrong. They're joint combinations of some animals with others. Human chimeras are worse, because some of them still have their mind about them… and that one did. At least a little bit, I think. There was humanity behind those eyes. We saw it."
Hawkeye didn't overlook that anxiety and terror in his voice, and she certainly couldn't ignore it. There was a sort of wrongness about him. She passed a hand through her hair. "I… I can see if anyone in Investigations can do anything about it. Sheska, maybe. I'll talk to her to see if she can send a team down there, on a bad case of neglect. Okay?"
She heard Alphonse swallow. "That'd be great, Lieutenant! I'm sorry for bothering you, but… but this was bothering Brother, and when something bothers him, you know something's up."
"I hear you. It's alright. I'll talk to you later, Alphonse. I've got work to do."
"Yes, Hawkeye. Thank you very much for this. Goodbye. Brother and I will probably stop in on our way from Dublith. We'll see you then."
"Yes… see you then."
Hawkeye slowly forced herself to hang up, dropping the phone to its cradle. She looked toward the door, holding a hand over her suddenly aching stomach. All of a sudden, her work didn't seem all that important. She looked at the Major General's seat, and a gentle smile graced her cheeks when she imagined the chair pushed back a little, Mustang lazily leaning back with one ankle resting on the opposite knee. "So, it looks like they're really coming. Do you think he can pass it?" "With the talent that it takes to perform human transmutation and successfully pull off a soul bind, there's no way he can't make it."
She shook her head of the memory, closing her eyes with a heavy sigh. She picked up the phone again and dialed the number to Western Command.
It was, after all, time to pull the team back together.
When she was finally laying down again, her paws out in front of her, her injured leg relaxing, he allowed himself a moment—and little more than that—to relax. He'd shown those damn humans. They'd tried to do it again, tried to take away his babies, but when she had been knocked down, he'd shown them who was alpha. He'd done it. And he'd do it again.
He drew his tongue up the bridge of her thin nose, settling his forehead on hers. He sat down and peered at his kittens, who were tucked away in their basket. A couple of pairs of black eyes met his own, tiny noses twitching.
Wait. Wait a second. A couple of pairs. Only a couple? No, where was the third?
Panicking a little, (had one of those humans come in and snatched her away when he wasn't looking?) he hobbled over to the basket and looked in, begging to find that his daughter was snoozing in there.
Such was not the case. No, of course such wasn't the case. Why would something go his way?
Feeling a little ridiculous since he hadn't used this ability so strongly in so long, he pressed his nose to the basket, searched for her scent, and started following it.
It went straight to the door. The door, which he just realized, was partially open, just enough that a kitten-sized thing could slip through and explore.
He cursed to himself, darting forward and using his small, weakened paws (with scars right in the middle of the bottom pad, what was with that?) to pry open the door.
He and his daughter were different. Very different. He may have stood a chance against those things less human than they, but she wouldn't be able to do anything about them. They would surely pluck her up and take her to a place, the same place that the two other litters had been taken to.
The very thought increased his hobbling speed. He had to pause when he heard voices or footsteps, because he really didn't want to deal with those humans.
The hall smelt of death and despair, he noticed, and he couldn't help but wonder if that was solely because of he and she and their kittens or if there were others here. It was like a maze, with rooms thrown in random places in the hallway and, just for a little added excitement, numerous stairs going up and down that he was forced to follow.
Goodness, where hadn't his daughter gone? He knew that she must have been taken by now; scooped up, put in a carrier, and sold to some rich person like a pet. There was no way that she hadn't run into a human or two, or ten.
Finally, a door creaked halfway open was before him, with his daughter's scent trailing inward and disappearing after that. He put his ears back and sucked in the scent that he just realized was so fresh… why? Why was there fresh air, here of all places?
He lumbered outside and then saw her, just sitting on the inside of a chain link fence. That is to say, on his side of a chain link fence. With a wordless cry of joy, he pelted forward.
Words could not express the relief and fury that surged through him. He stuttered to a stop, nearly tilting over on top of her, and started to lean over.
He was picking up a scent. A distinctly human scent, but not evil. Strange, weren't all humans evil? He closed his eyes momentarily, his ears falling back as he sucked in that sense of warmth and let the cool breeze waft over him.
It was about then that he realized where they were. Outside. His daughter had found a way outside.
He lifted his head, and his eyes widened when they spotted two abominations… two boys stood there, watching him. He didn't know who they were, but something about them… when he looked into their eyes—one gold, the other a little less than—he found that he could not draw away.
He wanted to turn away. He wanted to start growling, to dare them closer, to snap his jaws around their puny necks and not let them ever hurt his family ever. But he couldn't. Where he felt tangible evilness slide off of those other humans, he felt fear and worry on these two.
Were they afraid of him? Well, that was good. Surely that meant that he'd done something right, though what, he didn't really know.
"I think I saw it go this way!"
He paused and stiffened. No, were they being found? Would someone find them? Take away his daughter, and kill him? That couldn't happen, it couldn't! He looked back at the buildings, hearing the scampering of footsteps as they tried to find either he or his daughter. Had his joy from finding his daughter and being outside for the first time in forever completely obstructed his ability to scent out those humans, to feel for danger?
He quickly leaned over and grabbed her scruff, lifting her, ignoring her surprised squeak.
His gaze locked with the two boys', his eyes spelling out what he wanted to say and he could only beg that they would understand him. He could trust them; he had to trust them, that they would help.
His daughter squirmed a little, looking up at him, her narrow brown eyes peering up into his black ones. He turned toward the door, swished his tail in the boys' direction, and dashed inside.
Once he made it back to their room, he saw that his sons were cuddling in their mother's exposed belly. He set his daughter down, and she scrambled over to them, nuzzling beside them. Finally, he dropped on their opposite side, laying his paws carefully to touch her own.
She shifted a little, listing closer to the new warmth. A gentle purr rose from his throat, pleased that she still did that, before he laid his head down and fell asleep.