Before October

Sorry if chapter 2 was quite confusing! Poor lil' Ed had no idea what was going on either, but these two strangers had to meet. Don't worry – Roy will help restore order in this chapter, like what exactly Roy was randomly doing sitting outside the military HQ on a bench.

I'll have an update for Blue Hour and Again up in a couple of days, so if you're interested, go and check them out.

Otherwise, enjoy!

Chapter 3: Military Seal

Roy couldn't explain what had overcome him that afternoon. Perhaps it was being free of the decision he would have to make when he arrived back home for a few precious hours.

As he stumbled away from the wreckage he had caused alongside the remarkably short Edward, Hohenheim's son, he shook his head in amazement. Hohenheim's son. One of the last occasions he had caught sight of the alchemist had been nearly four years ago when his wife Trisha had been pregnant with their younger child, Alphonse. Edward had just started learning how to walk properly.

Four years ago when he had wandered half-asleep through the door, summoned to a random coffee shop in East City by the sweet aroma of caffeine, where the father had been sipping at his beverage while flicking his way through a newspaper. Ordinary and conformed. But he was sitting adjacent to a wall, wedged into a corner all of the other guests, families with young children, avoided. Hohenheim had three stalls free to his left, the only seats free in the coffee shop. Roy had considered moving to the parlour across the street but the enigmatic trance of Hohenheim reading through the newspaper was like a pendulum, and he felt himself surrendering to a hypnotic daydream. A daydream in which he had seated himself promptly next to the golden-haired individual. That was when Roy noticed the alchemic scrawl beneath the newspaper which Hohenheim was actually working on; he had a pen carefully hidden up his sleeve. He had been thirteen at the time, but he had stormed out of the house after another feud with his parents, and Hohenheim was willing to talk to him, unlike the stranger Roy had known him to be up until that day.

He had known Hohenheim his whole life. Roy had a short history with him, meaning they had not seen each other too many times, only on the occasion or two at a conference his parents had liked to attend, dragging him along when he had been Ed's age. The past hurt, and he rubbed his literally bruised temple to ease the memories away of his parents.

There were other matters to think about, like how Hohenheim now had two healthy, young sons.

Despite Roy only being seventeen, his entrance into adulthood months away and his apprenticeship gruelling on for what could still be years, he felt wizened, as though he was older than time itself. His shoes scraped through the remaining snow back to the Hawkeye estate, awaiting the cold onslaught of his master for disobeying his tutelage. Roy should have been taking the outing to develop his studies further. Instead, Roy had taken part in a snowball fight.

As soon as Ed had hurried off to find his mother, Roy's own responsibilities had pressed against his shoulders. He had left the military headquarters without turning back. As he trudged through the snow, a great enough distance away to see the trains rattle by over the landscape without hearing their whining whistles, he left East City's heart behind. In front of him, and above, was the Hawkeye estate, segregated from every surrounding building.

Roy squeezed his hands in self-assurance and felt the inky traces of the letter along his fingers. The address was written cursively, an anomaly to the indecipherable scrawl of a scientist which was his usual handwriting. However, this letter was vital to his future. It would change the course of his future deciding whether to send it or not.

And then there was Ed.

Why did he feel that meeting a five-year old boy was shaping history too? As Roy approached the house, his mind fluttered to Hohenheim and Ed again. They were crucial to the survival of Amestris, but he damned did not understand why. And he hated not understanding something. This feeling of uneasiness was identical to the planar dreams he awoke from almost every night, surpassing the grotesque monsters his other friends had had nightmares of, but these had drifted away with age. Roy dreamed of the same white, blank void, the mirthless laugh and a decrepit, looming Gateway every night. Every bloody night. Whenever he tried to speak the tumult upon his mind, he could only ever utter two words. "Before October."

What the fuck did that even mean? Eighteen harmless Octobers had passed through his lifetime, uneventful at most. He didn't have nightmares; he was trapped in an endless lullaby of Fate, and even Fate was most likely too exhausted to expend pity upon him. So Roy kept feeling that feeling…of nostalgia.

The feeling was distant, but during that snowball fight with Ed, on one of the few occasions when he could behave how he wished, since he wasn't technically an adult until late spring, he had eerily noticed how his dreams were cropping up in reality. A stark white landscape of snow, which represented the white, blank void. Iron gates swallowing their victims into the fires of Hell, which represented the decrepit, looming Gateway. Seventeen years of his life had been riddled with mysteries and lies, and somehow they were intertwined with a family living the opposite life to him. Hohenheim and his children. He had puzzled over those dreams for years, but today was the first day they had haunted his fully conscious self, when he had first met Ed. He also despised the concept of destiny, but as he trudged up the hill, a drift of breath clouds billowing behind him, he knew he would meet Ed again. And he still didn't understand why.

But Hohenheim's family would have to wait. There was more demanding decisions to be made tonight.

He heard his feet press against the cobbles. He had arrived back at the house and he instantly dreaded the disappointment his master would express. Berthold Hawkeye never became mad; he possessed too much caution and he never praised his students; he possessed too much sturdiness in his heart to begin relenting now. But his master was a genius. Roy sighed. Perhaps now was time to tell his master about the doubts he possessed about Hohenheim. Perhaps now was the time to share his intentions with his master, the very purpose he had ventured into the heart of the city alone that morning. To join the-

"You're back." The door widened open, creaking with age. Her arms were dragging him into the house before he could reply, and a warm black coffee was pressed into his hands. He shrugged the coat from his shoulders and allowed it to drop to the floor as he picked it up, placing the limp item onto one of the hooks lining the entrance to the house. He entered the kitchen. Dinnertime had definitely passed, but he saw the freshly prepared dinner, steaming with vegetables, plated and waiting on the table. He blew at the coffee broth and allowed the flavours to course throughout his body. Caffeine was truly a beautiful blend and he had missed it throughout the day. They would be apart no longer.

But Riza and her father were more important to him than caffeine. After his…depressing experience with parents, she had convinced his master to take on an apprentice. Providing that Roy worked for his studies, which with caffeine was a possible feat, and contributed to the upkeep of the house, he would be a residence of the Hawkeye estate. Even so, there were only four residents. Riza, his master, Roy himself and Dapple, the lousiest name for the minuscule pony who had wandered from their neighbour's garden a year before. Riza had started to feed him. Dapple liked the food. So Dapple stayed. It would be a mistake in stating that Dapple was a dappled pony. He most certainly was not. Calling him "the beast" was a compliment Roy offered to him. The creature was a real menace.

If he peered out of the window, the beast would be summoned in his ever-perilous quest for his next meal across the icy lawn. He would have been fed at least three times already. Riza was quite besotted with the creature. Roy glanced around at her, "How many times?"

She knew what he was referring too. "That pony gives me more company than you do in a year. He'll get extra hay when he wants."

"Are you implying that I am a horse?" He taunted, his earnest tone wreathed with sarcasm. Her response always made arriving home a welcoming experience.

She glared at him with those amber-brown eyes and after she had turned longingly out of the darkening window, her gaze softened. Surprisingly, she smiled, a rare and pleasant gift, and moved out of his line of sight, exiting from the kitchen for a moment before she reappeared climbing the stairs to her bedroom. Her father liked to attend to alchemic matters personally or with the addition of his apprentice. And she was not an alchemist. "Father is in the study. You shouldn't keep him waiting."

He nodded brusquely but she had vanished into the hidden unknown of upstairs. And he swiftly drank the remaining contents of his coffee, including the bitter granules submerged within which made him wince every time. Even though he looked more of an urchin than Edward, semi-dried hair sticking up in all directions, odd shades of purple and black lining his face from where ruthless snowballs had collided with his skin. His master would notice the bruises. Only Roy Mustang was battered to pieces in a snowball fight. Roy deposited the cup next to the untouched meal and left the kitchen.

The remainder of the house was a library. Books, tattered and torn, lay strewn across the shelves hosting heftier volumes, and some were woven with gold or silver embroidery. As Roy strode towards the study at the end of the hallway, he wished that he could immerse himself in those books to keep away from his master. Yet he arrived at the study's door too soon. His fingers grappled at the door knob and his other hand tapped once on the wooden frame. Berthold Hawkeye murmured his salutation.

Roy eased the door open, welcoming the familiar aroma of lofty volumes and the gentle burning of candle wax on top of the desk. The study was packed with more books than the entire contents of the house, and the only place to have comfortable leg space was sitting at the desk. And his master was in that astute position, head bent, knees tucked, hand writing composedly, the same as when Roy had stumbled into the study begging for Hawkeye's tutelage. Even now, Hawkeye was unchanged despite the turmoil of time, as though he had not left the study in the two years that Roy had been living with the old alchemist and his daughter.

Roy always started talking first. Otherwise the night would have lapsed by in silence, and Roy honestly felt that the majority of his time in the study was spent talking to himself. He rarely held anything back from his master, but what he had done today…He had decided to join the military, and become a State Alchemist.

He paused by the door, waging his two choices like a game of poker which refused to end. He had collected the subscription letter from the military headquarters and filled in the appropriate details that morning. Nobody needed to know he wasn't eighteen yet. He had the attitude of a seventy-year old man as well as a seven-year old boy at the same time according to Riza. He had not sent the letter through the post though; it remained in his pocket. He could change his mind. Did he really want to chain his life to the State forever? He knew, especially with the unrest in the East Area, that once a solider donned his insignia, all he could do was ascend, descend or remain level through the restless ranks. The insignia wasn't emblazoned upon his uniform, but rather a death warrant revealing the inevitable. He would likely die wearing the ultramarine uniform of the military. Was this what he wanted?

Yet he was stubborn, and unwilling to relent. In truth, he hardly knew anyone. He was locked away studying. But out of those he did…he would protect them until his dying breath. And the way to protect was to fight, even joining the military for a country which laughed at the concept of a democracy. Laughed? No, mocked was more appropriate. Once he had finished his studies, he would have the power to protect and help revert the country back to its rightful status with equality for all. Of course he was young and naïve, a foolish dream many had envisioned before him, but damn was he stubborn.

The only way to gain power was through the military. That was all the Fuhrer currently cared about upon his throne in Central. But…how could he dishonour his master in such a way after all he had been given?

The candle wax was still melting; the only indicator that time had not frozen. At that moment Roy was the most mercurial human being in the country infested by war. His choice: loyalty to One, his own honour by sticking righteously to his master's principles (Hawkeye despised the military), or loyalty to All, the World and protecting its future. Join the military or not.

"I have to ask you," Roy closed the door behind him, never turning away from Hawkeye's dreary eyes until he stood with his back against the shelves beside the desk. He wished he could wake up tomorrow morning despite the consequences. The anticipation was dreadful and like usual, he was unprepared. He would have to improvise. "Why do alchemists seek perfection?"

"Quintessence. And you know it," Hawkeye was stooped over his research presuming to write, obviously disappointed with his student. "The perfect balance of the four elements allows the alchemist to harness his own catalyst, his soul. His alchemic power is amplified."

"Power used for their own avarice. A tool which can be used to destroy and reshape the course of history." this was it. "But that power can be used for good."

Hawkeye sat up, like a deadened husk reanimated and turned to face Roy. Roy reciprocated his master's silent interrogation, staring back at his master, his own ash-tinted eyes reluctantly portraying his joy for a debate. Hawkeye continued, "If an alchemist reaches quintessence, Roy, they know the truth to form the correct decisions."

"Could I ever reach this perfect state in the world that we live in?" Roy sucked in the smoky air deeply. He wanted to sleep. He knew of all the basic principles of alchemy and exactly what quintessence theoretically required in order to be achieved. But in practice? He thought of Riza feeding that oversized menace in the back garden, the Sun's rays dancing amid the grasses around her. He thought of Hohenheim intently pondering over his notes in the coffee shop, determined to solve the riddle for a forgotten ideal. And he thought of Edward, so alike and unlike his father, smiling in triumphant glee at winning a snowball fight. They would save the World, but he had to be the one to protect it.

He made his choice, clutching the paper tightly to remind him that this moment was not an illusion. Roy would choose the World; he was willing to choose to save the World. Or perhaps he had made his choice too many lifetimes ago.

"I'm going to join the military."