Amestris, 1923
His platform had two key points: globalization and reconstruction. They were popular ideas in a changing East Region and were gaining traction across the country, and he was uniquely qualified to discuss both. After he had won the election—and he would win—he would be the youngest Führer in history and the first to be elected into office, unlike his predecessor, who had been appointed by an emergency maritime council and then, during his fifth year in office, had inadvertently laid the groundwork for a federal election.
Of course, there were plenty of citizens who took issue with Mustang. They disagreed with his efforts to rebuild Ishval, his campaigning for demilitarization on the Aerugan border, his push for more open trade networks. Hawkeye would tell him he could not sway those minds. His new campaign team would agree. Besides, he had no use for garnering the support of nationalists.
His manager would take it further. "It's not about getting everyone to agree with you," Charlie would say. "It's about getting all the people who already agree with you to show up and vote. You're never going to change a mind, you're just going to excite the ones already made up."
Others remembered his past involvement in Ishval, and they resented him. They were right to do so. Most of those were people whose families he had slaughtered. Many Ishvalan people were willing to work with him, take his sincerity for what it was and turn it into a rebuilt homeland. A large portion of the population, though, saw him walk streets paved over mass graves of charred bodies, and they hated. Hawkeye never said much about that. She did not need to.
Yet his campaign advisors were hopeful. On a hot day in late summer, they sat around the polished oak table in his new dining room and relayed him numbers and reports from focus groups and proposed strategies for each region.
Hawkeye had made him move once he had started gathering resources for the campaign. "Führer's don't live in studio apartments," she had insisted. "And they certainly own more than a sofa and a wardrobe." So he had let her scour the city for him, and then he had fought her, wondering why any East City townhouse would need two fireplaces and a radiator in each room. She had won. Then he had let her furnish the place, and he had feigned disinterest while they had selected bedsheets and compared china and tested mattresses, and he had insisted that if Führers lived in damn big townhouses with two fireplaces and a radiator in each room, then they definitely slept in damn big beds. Hawkeye had conceded.
He smiled at the dark knot in the wood grain just left of his thumb. He had not told her that he liked everything she had picked. Likewise, she had not told him that she knew why he insisted on a mattress big enough for two adults and a few small children that might crawl in during the night, or why he had left so many empty spaces between framed photographs of friends in and out of uniform and of Elysia Hughes at her ballet recitals. Perhaps, if a tribunal did not see fit to convict them for their many war crimes, they could use the house as a vacation home away from Central, and their children would crawl between them in the night, and they would attend recitals together and put their own photographs in the empty spaces.
If a tribunal did see fit, he could always will everything to the Elrics.
One of his advisors, a solid, brown-haired wall of a man named Brandt, cleared his throat. "So that's that," he said, smacking a stack of papers in front of him on the table, and Mustang's mind returned to the meeting and the dining room and the men seated there.
He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. His lunch hour was almost over, and while Hawkeye would not reprimand him for being tardy after one of these meetings, there was a revised draft of a trade agreement on his desk. His adjutant had told him she would not let him leave that day until he had read it and filed feedback.
He pushed himself up. "Well, if that's all, I'll be heading back."
Another advisor, Kuhn, coughed. "It's…" He darted his eyes down when Mustang looked at him. The man was small, pale, and always seemed ready to jump out of his skin. Sometimes Mustang wondered how the Eastern summer rainstorms didn't blow or wash him away. "It's not all, General."
Mustang sat back down and leaned forward on his elbows and folded his hands against his chin. His stomach twisted. He had time to turn around whatever bad news they were about to deliver, but based on how only Brandt and Neumann and Charlie Gruber looked him in the eye while the other two men in his cabinet found the ceiling and the floor of sudden interest, it was very bad news indeed.
Charlie held up a hand. "Your key message is strong, Sir. And you have the experience and the ties to back it up." Mustang had known Charlie Gruber in Ishval, and they had stood together on the Promised Day. Charlie, with experience in elections under hopeful parliament members and the nerve to deliver an honest answer, had been an obvious choice for his campaign manager. "Based on our research, public opinion leans in your favour."
The fifth member of the team, a half-Ishvalan man named Roth, whom Mustang had met while planning a federal water treatment plant, leaned across the table. "But we're about to start polling in a few weeks, and…" He bit his lip and rubbed at one red eye.
Neumann ran a hand through his hair. "Frankly, Sir, we're concerned."
"Why?" Mustang asked. Charlie held out a hand to the other men, as if offering them the honour of speaking first. When no one did, Mustang repeated, "Why?"
Kuhn coughed again. "The initial polls are hugely important, Sir. It will tell us what those paying attention want, and it tells those who don't pay attention what they should want."
Mustang waved a hand in a circle. "Yes, we've been through this." A long document and a very stern adjutant were waiting for him.
Brandt's gruff voice broke the silence. "The fact is," he said, "most people will not vote for you based on policy. Most people don't care or understand enough to think that way." He and Charlie nodded at each other. "We've seen it with parliament members and with Führer Grumman's tenure. When we polled his approval rating and asked supporters what they liked about him, eighty-seven percent said—eighty-seven, Sir," he punctuated his words by jabbing two fingers into the table, "—that he seemed like someone you could grab a drink with."
"Or something similar," Charlie added.
Mustang leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. "I get drinks all the time. With plenty of people." In fact, he and Grumman were known to get drinks at the same Central establishment, one owned by a Madam Christmas.
Charlie shook his head. "It's about being likeable."
Mustang scoffed at the absurdity, at the implication that he needed to learn to be likeable. He had women falling at his feet. He had friends, a select few of whom were sitting with him at that moment. "What does that even mean? You like me."
Neumann leaned forward and smiled in his gentle way. "Of course, Sir. But we know you."
"You spent years building a reputation and making yourself seem nonthreatening and shallow." Charlie rapped his knuckles on the wood table. "Unfortunately, you did a very good job."
Brandt crossed his arms. "In our focus groups, we talked to people who said they'd vote against you. Do you know what the general opinion was?"
Mustang noted the grim set to Charlie's mouth. Were people remembering his genocidal involvement in Ishval two decades before? Were they calling him hypocritical? Was it something far worse? His stomach turned and his heart pounded louder in his chest, but he swallowed and tried to break the tension. "I get too many drinks?"
Brandt's gaze hardened. "Out of two hundred people, one hundred forty-two—that's seventy-one percent—said that you don't seem like a 'family man.'"
The words pressed against his ears. His campaign team looked at him, waiting for him to say something. He opened his mouth, and a bark of laughter came out, then another, as he struggled to speak. "What?"
Roth swallowed. "It's sort of a matter of your parentage. Or, rather, your not having one."
"You're very tight-lipped about your history," Neumann said. "People don't even know where you grew up. You appeared in the military ostensibly out of thin air."
Mustang brushed a hand over his mouth to massage the sudden stiffness in his jaw and wiped away sweat that was not only the result of the heat. His foster mother and sisters were one subject he would not speak about, approval ratings be damned. They were no one's business, and their security would be compromised if their contributions to his life and to the country's longevity were public knowledge.
Charlie cleared his throat and looked around at the other men. "We're not asking you to share with the public, though," he said, because he knew a little. One of Mustang's sisters had contacted Charlie before the Promised Day. "Your private life should remain…well, private." When Mustang relaxed he added, "But, Sir, there is an image issue. And the fact that you don't appear to have a private life or a family makes you seems impersonal."
Mustang scoffed. No private life? He had spent years creating a visible private life. "I'm not impersonal. I go out with plenty of—"
"That's actually—" Khun began before clamping his mouth shut as if he could not believe he had just interrupted the awesome Flame Alchemist, who could level villages with a snap of his fingers. When no one else spoke, he said, "That's sort of what we're getting at."
"Most of those who talked about this are married," said Brandt. "And, as you know, married couples make up a majority of the voter base. And even among your supporters in focus groups, over sixty percent said it was an area that could use improvement."
Roth waved his hand. "Obviously, you can't change your past."
Mustang nodded. It was that same understanding that had made Roth one of the first Ishvalans to align with him when he had first begun his reconstruction efforts. One of the first to offer him trust and understanding, if not forgiveness.
"But perhaps," Neumann said, taking time with each word, "if you had a nuclear family of your own, we'd see a shift in opinion."
The whole room slowed and rotated on that sentence. The men started talking to him all at once, and above the voices he could hear Charlie say, "No platform changes. The same Roy Mustang, just newly packaged for family consumption."
Mustang raised both hands. "Hold on," he said, and the noise quieted. "Are you telling me to get married?" Over Brandt's head, an old academy photograph of himself with Maes Hughes stared at him. Hughes had one arm over Mustang's shoulder and smiled wide at the camera. Mustang's own smile was smaller, his posture more straight. A boy trying to be a man and believing that people were better than they were. "Get married!" he could hear the photographed Maes shouting. Laughter ballooned in his chest but did not rise, blocked by a hard lump in his throat. It would never end, would it? He looked back at his advisors and let his hands drop. "This is unbelievable."
Kuhn flinched and looked down. Charlie looked at Brandt and raised his eyebrows as if he had just won some unfortunate bet.
Mustang ground his teeth. Married. A nuclear family. "You know, I basically raised two children."
Brandt snorted and shook his head. "The Elrics don't count, Sir. One was your employee and the other was a suit of armour. And they were practically grown by the time you found them."
Without looking up, Kuhn said, "Sir, the country loves a first family. It gives them a sort of moral compass with a touch of relatability and humanity."
Mustang gave a jerky nod. Memories of Bradley and Selim flooded his mind. "Because our last first family was so morally upright and human." While the majority of the population knew a different story, these privileged few at least knew the true causes and results of the coup from so long ago.
"It doesn't matter what is," Charlie said, his favourite lesson serving to annoy further, "only what they see."
Neumann nodded. "Führer Grummann had it easy, being a widower. His seeming devotion to his late wife gave him a…romantic credibility."
"But you, Sir, are different," Charlie said, and Mustang braced himself for the honesty that only an old friend could supply. "You've never been seen in a long-term, monogamous relationship. And it makes you look—permission to speak freely, Sir—Callow," he said.
Mustang rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen the tightness that gripped him there. His shirt was glued to his back, and it settled uncomfortably on his sweaty skin. Charlie was right, annoyingly so, but Mustang would not concede. Not yet. "There are worse things."
"Not when you're looking at an election. The democracy is still in its infancy, and the people want stability, maturity…" Charlie took a deep breath and seemed to find the word he wanted. "Trustworthiness."
"And many people find that in a marriage," Brandt added.
Neumann held out his hands. "All we ask is that you think about it. Everyone enjoys a love-story, and even a rumoured engagement could boost your popularity."
He took a deep breath through his nose as he pondered how vexing a rumoured engagement to anyone but one woman would be to him. Still, maybe they knew what they were talking about in terms of polling. "I will," he said. Then, because Kuhn looked a little too relaxed for Mustang's current temper, he snapped, "Think about it. I'll think about it."
Brandt declared the meeting adjourned, and he left while the rest of the men stood and gathered their documents into leather cases. Roth patted Khun on the back and steered him toward the door while teasing that he had almost held it together that time. Neumann gave a cheerful wave as he walked out of the narrow house.
Mustang wiped sweat from his brow and tugged at the collar sticking to his neck. It was a hot day, so hot that he thought he should tell Hawkeye again that she may have won the battle over the radiators, but he had been right about their being superfluous.
Charlie leaned back in his chair and the wood creaked. "For the record, I was not the one who came up with the marriage plan."
Mustang snorted. "You call that a plan?"
"It's an image issue. You need a palatable one, and you need it soon. Before we roll out the first advertisements."
"It's 1923," Mustang said. "People have the right to not get married."
Charlie smiled. "You're a good governor. You're a good soldier. But you're going to learn that governing and campaigning are not the same thing."
Mustang drummed his fingers on the table and hummed. As far as he could see, governing and campaigning were not so different. Everything came down to strategizing, knowing the opponent, and knowing what to risk to take them down. "You said there was no point in getting parliamentary endorsements. You said Kaufman has the majority of parliament on his side."
Charlie nodded. "He's the leader of the plurality, and he will take others with him." The Parliament Member had announced his candidacy one week earlier, and Charlie had made no secret of his thought that Kaufman would be Mustang's strongest competitor.
"Why don't we try to undercut that support? You also said that one of the minority parties aligns with my policies. Why can't we get them?"
Charlie tapped his fingers against his lips. "What do you know about the Sitko-Novak Act?"
Mustang frowned. "Is this a quiz?"
Charlie smiled. "Only a little bit."
Mustang sighed and rattled off the school-boy definition. "It's an act that allows private companies to establish and run transportation on government roads and railways."
"And?" Charlie prompted.
Mustang looked up at the ceiling. Was Charlie trying to make a point about his knowledge of economics? "And it allows those companies to impose prices on transportation at their discretion."
"And?"
Mustang looked back at Charlie. "What do you mean? That's it."
Charlie held up a finger. "Good, but not quite. There's a provision tucking into Sitko-Novak that allows the federal government to come in and set a ceiling on prices if the transportation is not accessible to enough people." He folded his hands on the table. "You don't know about it because you can't know every detail about every act that was ever passed. That's why you'd have a cabinet of ministers, people who would know things for you and make you look good." He grabbed the cold coffee press in the middle of the table and refilled his mug. "By the way, you should start coming up with your list of potentials."
"What does any of this have to do with the election?"
Charlie took a sip. "There's another reason you don't know about that clause. There have been strikes and protests about prices over the years, but the government has never acted on it. Why do you think that is?"
Mustang did not have to think hard. He had seen for himself the efforts of the government to sacrifice citizen lives for selfish gain. Why would transportation costs be on the docket when the powers that governed them were busy plotting the destruction of a nation? Perhaps in some places, those same strikes and protests had been inflamed to add fuel to the planned conflict. Years had passed and the amount he still did not know disconcerted him. "The government didn't care."
"Exactly," Charlie said. "That's why we can't get Parliament endorsements. For years these men lobbied and worked in the hope that their government would recognize the people's voice. For centuries, they held no power, but they kept trying." He tapped his fingers on the side of his mug. "Now, they have a chance to accomplish real change, through an electoral system they have always believed in. And you?" He pointed at Mustang. "You represent a backslide."
Mustang opened his mouth and Charlie raised a hand. "I know," he continued. "Your long-term plans are more radical and progressive than most of theirs are, but you're still old guard. You're a contradiction, and they're not going to trust you." He set his mug on the table, leaned forward, lowered his voice. "Remember how you've spun the story. Roy Mustang didn't stage a coup to tear down the old government. He staged a coup to save it."
Mustang clenched his teeth. How could he have predicted that the most politically safe and sensible action almost a decade before would hurt him later? "I'll keep that in mind."
"Do." Charlie picked up his mug again. "While I've got you here…"
Mustang snorted. "In my own house?"
Charlie grinned. "Yes, well…" He took a drink of coffee. "This is very good. Where do you buy it?"
Mustang shrugged and sighed. "I don't know. I'll have to ask Mrs. Bauer."
Charlie nodded. "How is it? Having a housekeeper."
He frowned. Mrs. Bauer, with her tight bun and perpetual frown and constant insistence that he needed to eat more, was not an unwelcome addition to his life. "It's fine, I suppose." It was nice coming home from work and being able to sit and work on campaign messaging without worrying about laundry or darning socks. Of course, he was a bachelor in 1923, and he had stitched the transmutation circles on his gloves before those circles had become redundant. He could darn his own socks. He threw his hands up. "I told Hawkeye that I've cooked and cleaned for myself for the past twenty years, and I didn't need help. She said that running a campaign would be like having a second full-time job and that I'd need the extra help if I wanted to sleep." Hawkeye had been more specific, insisting that he not only sleep but that he also do it outside of work hours and in his own home rather than in a closet or at his desk.
Charlie smiled. "She's not wrong."
Mustang scowled. "Don't take her side." He also found himself taking Hawkeye's side more often than not. The woman had an uncanny ability to always be practical and logical. Most days he appreciated her advice, even if he did not appreciate being wrong.
When Charlie's face fell, Mustang asked, "What is it?"
Charlie pressed his lips together. "Consider distancing yourself from Grumman."
Mustang opened his mouth to protest, but Charlie continued. "I know, and it's a difficult situation. On one hand, his approval ratings are high. At the same time, we can't have people think you've been groomed for the role. Which, incidentally, you have been."
Politics had been easier when seizing power had meant executing a hostile takeover or being a well-liked and decorated general. Of course, Mustang had been fighting to dismantle the stratocracy and establish a democracy for years. He was not going to stop when democracy began happening without him.
"He gave parliament certain powers, and they've used them to establish a national election," Charlie said, following Mustang's thoughts. "I doubt anyone anticipated that, especially him, but…" He shrugged. "What's done is done. If he tries to walk it back and put you in charge, he's a despot. And even if he lets things stand but you two are seen as too close, it looks like you're trying to fix the vote."
Mustang frowned. "I'm not trying to fix the vote." He was in favour of the vote. Did it make his ascent to power more difficult? Certainly. At the same time, the vote for Führer was a sign that Amestris was changing. There were still problems at regional and local levels of government, the military still had too much involvement in civilian and judicial affairs, and there were still former officials who were evading trial. When he was chosen by the people, he would address everything, but he needed a fair and just victory. Anything less would be in violation of everything he wanted for the future.
Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm going to buy a jar, and I'm going to make you put fifty cenz in it every time I have to remind you that appearances matter much more than the truth does right now. That jar alone could probably fund our radio spots." He drained the last of his coffee. "This is going to be a bloody, risky election. And…Roy."
Mustang looked at Charlie, and he could still see traces of the young man who had laughed in Ishval when he had found out his commanding officer had not even known his name.
"As a friend," he continued, his voice softer and warmer than it had been, "I just want to say…" He shifted his weight in his chair. "I know you've been planning this for a long time. But over the next sixteen months, your whole life, everything you do or have done will be fair game for the press. They will drag you and others around you into the spotlight. They will be looking for any scandal, and if they find one, they will rip you to pieces. Are you ready for that?"
Mustang smiled. "I've been working for this for fifteen years."
"We need to be able to prepare for any eventuality." Charlie folded his hands on the table and leaned forward. "Is there anything you haven't told me? Anything your opponents might use against you?"
He thought of his foster mother and her girls, his sisters, and the information they bought between the sheets and sold over cocktails. He thought of boxes full of documents and notes on elite personnel. He thought of codenames and covert operations and secret kills. He thought of symbols and coded lines and burn scars on Hawkeye's back, he thought of a grandfather that only he and Hawkeye knew about, and he thought of Hawkeye herself, pushing him and waiting for him to forge the path to their mutual absolution. He thought of how she had felt in his arms eight years before, of how her hair had smelled, of how her blood had looked on his hands. He thought of a personal barrier, one that had protected them from fraternization investigations, that they had both let fall within minutes. He thought of her hand on his chest when he had not been able to see, of her gentle voice in his ear, of how he would move heaven and earth to be half the man she thought he was. He thought of her, the only constant in his life, and he said, "No. Nothing at all."
The walk back to Eastern Headquarters felt longer than usual, and the office was quiet. He sat at his desk and picked up his pen, but every time he looked at the draft in front of him, the words ran together and he had to look up and pinch the bridge of his nose. His eyes had been growing sore after prolonged reading, and the pinching took some of the edge off. After complaining of it once to Hawkeye and assuring her that it was not another procrastination attempt, she had sent him to an optometrist. The glasses, unused and sitting in his desk drawer, and the grey hairs that had been appearing with increasing frequency and the slight tremor in his fingers following his injuries on the Promised Day were clock hands. Of course, when he had said as much to Hawkeye, she had sighed. "You're nearing forty, Sir, not senility."
The air in his private office was dense and wet, and the ceiling fans did little to combat the heat. For a moment he battled with the window, but the wood frame had swollen shut in the humidity. Mustang brushed at the hair plastered to his forehead and decided to move his work for the day into the main office with the rest of his officers. There was better air circulation outside, and those windows had been open.
He took up residence at one empty desk far from the door. His men gave a quiet acknowledgement of his presence before returning to their tasks and filling the room with the sounds of flipping pages, dinging typewriter carriages, and groaning chairs. Of course, she sat right in his line of sight, her desk pressed against Captain Havoc's, and she dragged the end of her pen along lines of text and mouthed sentences to herself while she circled and underlined passages that Mustang would need to rework.
After an hour of pretending to read and staring at her instead, Mustang dropped his charade and his pen, and he sighed.
"Are you going to tell me what's wrong, Sir?" Major Hawkeye asked without looking at him, because she never needed to look at him. "Or are you going to glare at me all day?"
Havoc's mouth curled into a smile, and he stopped filling out forms to lean back in his chair and look between the two of them.
Mustang frowned and picked up the draft of the trade agreement and held it up in front of his face. He would not give the Captain the satisfaction of a show. "The second one, probably." Perhaps if he continued to pretend, Hawkeye would drop the issue and Havoc would stop grinning. Perhaps the fuzzy words might make sense and the pain behind his eyes would dissipate.
The office door burst open and Mustang knew his headache would be staying.
Edward Elric clumped across the floor, his gait even but one leg still hitting the wood louder than the other did. He dropped into a wooden chair in front of Mustang's desk. He pushed his fringe back, let it fall into his face again, and flashed his stupid smile before saying, "General."
"Why are you here?" Mustang asked, because he had suffered enough for one day without adding Edward's inevitable storm to his tribulations.
Edward waved a hand and pulled a stack of white papers from his brown case. "I have some hypotheses you might like."
Mustang took the papers, because they would be far more interesting than anything else on his desk. He might even pull out his glasses.
No, Edward would poke fun at his age until he really was bent over a cane if he did that. "Did you test them?" Mustang asked as he flipped through the first few pages, already recognizing a few phrases Edward had been obsessing over the past few months.
He could feel Edward staring at him and met the sardonic glare.
"Well, golly, General!" Edward said, his voice high and nasal. "I didn't even think to do that myself!"
Mustang pressed his lips together and returned the glare before looking at the paper. Edward's loss of alchemy was not something either of them ever forgot, and the previous years had seen Edward's interests shift from the applied to the theoretical and into a field Edward had named "Physical Alchemy," an area of science where alchemy blurred so heavily with physics that separation was impossible. "I meant did you have Alphonse or someone take a look."
Edward waved a hand. "Al's in Xing again and Izumi is…somewhere traveling, I don't know." He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "I'm out of options."
Edward's hypotheses were not testable by means Mustang could imagine. They were complex and far outside his own expertise, but fascinating. "Glad to know you think so highly of me." The very idea of gravitational interactions at a sub-atomic level…He looked up. "You took a six-hour train to give me this. Were you so excited to show me this you woke up before the sun?"
Edward sputtered some vague, indignant response and Mustang grinned. As much as he appreciated that Edward had given up his ability to perform alchemy but not to theorize its applications, and as much as he enjoyed being part of his once-protégé's musings, he still relished in making him squirm.
But the conversation from his lunch hour played over in his head, and even Edward's proposed "gravitons" and satisfying, annoyed expression could not keep Mustang from glancing at Hawkeye. After a few minutes of silence, Hawkeye coughed, a light sound that told him he was going to tell her what was wrong.
"Nonversations," Havoc had dubbed those particular interactions.
So, over the scratching of pens and the click of typewriters and the ticking from Fuery's radio and the shifting of Edward's linen pants against poorly-varnished wood, Mustang surrendered. "The campaign advisors have suggested I get married."
He had paraphrased, but it was enough to silence the room. Mustang dropped Edward's papers on his desk. An interrogation was coming, and he could not be distracted. Edward leaned forward. Havoc's toothpick dangled from his open grin, as if the announcement were better than any he could have hoped for. Fuery pulled his headphones down around his neck. Falman, on loan from Briggs after the most recent joint training maneuvers, straightened. Breda put down his own files of intel. Hawkeye let the end of her pen rest against her lips. Mustang waited for someone, anyone, to respond, to start the line of questioning.
Breda made the first move. "Did they have a woman in mind?"
Mustang shook his head. He supposed he was fortunate in that respect. "They said having the appearance of a family would boost my polling numbers and virtue or something."
Havoc cackled.
Falman nodded. "That makes sense. Most people vote for those they can relate to. They do for the Parliament, at least."
"It could do something for your popularity among men," Havoc said without bitterness. He was married to a nurse he had met during his physical therapy, and the friendly rivalry over dates was a thing of the past. "And in general," he added.
Mustang shrugged. "Then I suppose I'll just be an unpopular Führer."
Havoc took his toothpick and pointed it at Mustang. "Or an unelected one."
Hawkeye had turned her attention back to her work, the entire conversation one she would rather have later. There was something about her demeanor, though, the fist under her chin and the slight frown on her face, that made him ask, only half-joking, "Would you do me the honour, Hawkeye?"
"No, Sir," she said, and he grinned. She was quick. He almost forgot to feel disappointed.
Havoc sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Oh, Major!"
"Campaign over, I guess," Edward said at the same time. "Turned down by the only woman who can put up with you."
Fuery sat up straighter in his chair and said, "What about Führer Grumman's granddaughter? I thought he was always trying to get you to…" He shrugged. "I don't know."
Hawkeye choked on her coffee and coughed hard, and Mustang leaned his hands on his desk. "Would you believe I already tried that avenue?"
Havoc barked a laugh. "Oof."
Hawkeye coughed into a handkerchief and tapped the edge of Havoc's desk with her pen. "You're enjoying this too much."
"Besides," Havoc amended, "That might make people think of a dynasty. And that's the last thing we want right now."
"Just a family, right?" Breda asked, and when Mustang nodded, he said, "Then maybe it's time to come clean, about the bar and the girls."
Mustang raised an eyebrow. "You mean my personally-funded spy ring run by my madam foster mother and her ladies of the night?"
Havoc crossed his arms and nodded. "Very family-friendly."
"Sorry, Fullmetal," Mustang said with his perfected cheery grin, the one that never failed to annoy Edward, "for all the adult content."
Edward rolled his eyes. "I've been married for five years and I have one-and-a-half kids."
"When is Winry due?" Hawkeye asked, looking up and offering a rare smile.
Edward turned in his chair again and said, "Ten weeks! She's so sure this one's a girl–"
"I've slowed that down, anyway," Mustang said, and Edward scowled at him. He was not going to let Edward dominate the conversation with boasting about his wife and children, even if the talk did make him fondly remember Hughes. "I've been seeing the girls at a much more…" Two or three dates each month was normal and respectable for a bachelor, right? "Seemly pace."
Breda shook his head. "Reputations outlive the truth, Sir."
"Why are we debating this?" Fuery asked. He brought his legs up to squat in his chair and moved one headphone speaker over his ear. "The election isn't for another year."
"That's sixteen months to successfully fabricate and sell perfect domestic bliss," Breda said.
"That's not a lot of time," Falman said with a nod.
The men began debating again, how to get their general a bride, which bride to get. Edward suggested they send for a mail-order bride in Aerugo, a woman who had never met him would be unlikely to turn him down. Mustang said that he never had issues with women turning him down. Havoc said that Hawkeye had done just that, and Edward said that it was because she was the smartest person in the room.
Mustang watched her, waiting for her to say something, anything, to in some way denounce the idea that he had to marry, and to marry someone who was not herself. But Hawkeye was still, her pen hovered over her paperwork and her brown eyes staring at the crack between her and Havoc's desks.
The argument continued. A marriage to someone from Amestris would look more patriotic. Perhaps he could simply adopt a baby. Havoc would not trust the general to take care of a dog, much less an infant. Reading to orphans would make him look charitable, but it would not solve the issue of the lacking nuclear family. It was only when Breda said that there had to be dozens of women who could be paid under the table to pretend an engagement that Mustang finally said, "Alright. I'm finished with this." He scooped up his paperwork because leaving the oppressive heat of his private office had been a mistake. "Hawkeye, my office. And bring those Mauer files. I want to review them."
Hawkeye only hesitated for a second before saying, "Yes, Sir," and grabbing several yellow folders. She ran after him, and he closed the door behind them.
She waited while he went back to the window, struggled with it again, and gave up. He undid another button on his shirt and pushed his rolled sleeves higher up his arms.
"Well, Sir?"
He fell into his chair and looked at her, still in her jacket and standing straight in defiance of the late summer heat. She was the most stubborn woman he had ever met. "Well."
She took a step toward him. "How are you feeling?"
He pushed his hair back. "Who says I'm feeling anything other than productive?"
She smiled at him, a small smile that somehow reached her eyes. "Sir, I submitted the Mauer dossier yesterday. You signed off on it."
"Ah." He had wanted to speak with his oldest and closest friend. He had wanted to speak with her. He could only hope the rest of the office had not noticed the inconsistency in his excuse.
She placed her folders on a corner of his desk and leaned in. "How are you feeling?"
He groaned and stood up again. "About what? Are you talking about the campaign? Or the hill my campaign team chose to die on?" He looked out the window. If she had been at the meeting, would he have felt so annoyed? She would have said something to support his side. He gazed at the bright green trees and wished, not for the first time, that Hawkeye's position as his employee did not legally bar her from working on the campaign. He wished many things about their relationship were different, but they had made their choices. "Or are you talking about your very callous rejection of my suit? Because to tell you the truth, I'm still reeling from that."
"You know Hughes would be howling right now."
He turned to look at her, glad they had entertained the same thought. Somewhere, his friend's soul was singing the same song he had sung in life. "Find yourself a wife, Roy. Find yourself a wife." When he saw her standing like that, though, with her hands cupping her elbows and her hip leaning against the edge of his desk and her head tilted to the side and that smile on her lips, he did not want to find himself a wife. How could he? "How?" he whispered as he moved to her. "How do you always know exactly what I'm thinking?"
"How are you still surprised?" she whispered back.
They were close enough that he could see the individual hues in her brown eyes, and he thought that maybe the new heat was not so terrible. She had been growing her hair out again, and it fell just above her shoulders. It looked nice. "Tell me you think it's a stupid idea."
Her breath hitched and she glanced to the side, though she did not pull away from him. They had these moments, cracks in the wall that had crumbled during the Promised Day and had never been fully rebuilt.
He could see her considering, every facial tick giving credence to one argument or another. "You can't," he said. Then he stepped back, because any suspected fraternization would always be his fault. As the superior, he had to maintain the line, though he often failed. "Well, now you have to marry me."
"Do I, Sir?"
He waved toward the office doors. "I hate to admit it, but Fullmetal is right. You're the only person—male, female, or otherwise—who can put up with me."
She nodded. "It's a learned skill, Sir."
"You're funny." He fell back into his chair and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Mail order it is." He flipped open one of the folders, curious about what non-Mauer documents it held, and found plain typing paper. He smiled. Clever Major Hawkeye, grabbing something innocuous to supplant his thin cover story.
She walked around him and pushed on the window behind his desk.
"It's stuck," he said.
Major Riza Hawkeye, too stubborn to take him at his word, threw her shoulder against the window before running her hand up the frame. "It's stuck," she agreed. "I'll call maintenance to get up here and pry it open. Sand it down. You can hardly breathe in here."
He watched her think, one hand behind her back and the other pressed against her chin and lips. Grumman had told him once that he had recognized her immediately. She looked just like her mother had. Mustang was simply glad she had not taken after her father. "If the Führer can be a tragic romantic, I don't see why I have a different measuring stick."
She turned her head toward him. "The family thing?"
"Grumman," he said, because the solution was so obvious.
She pressed her lips together. "You're going to have to explain, Sir."
"He's a romantic because he never got over his late wife, right?" When she shrugged as if to say she supposed so, he continued, "Why can't I be the same?"
She furrowed her brow and said, slowly, as if he had forgotten, "You don't have a late wife, Sir."
He snorted and waved a hand. "No, but I can be a romantic." He tried to ignore how the crease between her brows deepened. "We don't have to change my marital status. We change the narrative." He pulled open a desk drawer and rifled through pages and journals. "Who's that new gossip columnist for the Easter Review?"
Hawkeye walked around to his side of the desk, pulled open a lower drawer, and pulled out a copy of the newspaper with that day's date stamped across the top. She turned to page twelve and stepped back.
"Geneva Menke," he read aloud. "Call her and see if we can schedule an interview."
"No, Sir."
He clicked his tongue and turned to chastise her before remembering—"Right." Even if it were not an interview for the campaign, she would not want to run the risk of involving herself illegally. They had long since established that there were some things that drew too much attention. No matter how much they wanted something, if it had the potential to open their work to further investigation, it was not worth the risk. If that were the case, perhaps he should get his campaign team involved. "Call Neumann and have him do it," he said, referring her to the scheduler.
A frown tugged at her mouth and she let out an exasperated sigh that told him his assessment had been incorrect. "With all due respect, Sir," she began, and he knew she was about to speak her mind whether he liked it or not. "Putting the solution in the hands of a newspaper gossip columnist is not wise."
He leaned forward on his desk. "I'm putting it in my hands." Then, because she did not look happy, he added, "This will work."
She pressed her lips together and looked up, searching for an argument. He knew, though, that there was no immediate threat to his person, that there was little bad press he could not surmount, that in the end she would follow.
He was right.
She nodded once, picked up the folders of typing paper, and walked out of his office. As the door crept closed, he heard her pick up her desk phone and spin the rotor. "Good afternoon, Mr. Neumann. This is Major Hawkeye at—I'm fine, Sir. How are you?"
Charlie would be happy. He had been telling Mustang to push his name and face into more papers before he officially announced his candidacy. With this, he could do all of that and get rid of the pesky "marriage" business.
He smiled. Governing and campaigning were not so different.
