Nightmare

Review Replies: Kuragari, yes, she really was a bitch, though I actually enjoy writing Anton. Especially this chapter below. Thanks for reading.irishd1988, sorry I couldn't get it faster, but this one's about 7 pages long single spaced, if that helps for waiting, especially considering I write chapters that are about 4-5 pages. Thanks for reading. MustangsHavoc, thank you. I love Olivier too. And you'll see more of her here. Lilith, thanks so much. Amethyst-eyed Koneko, yup, Roy was talking about himself, and the clothes he threw away were his own that she complimented him on. And yes, I figured if I wanted a fun fuhrer candidate, I might as well pull her in from the manga. Also, glad you enjoyed the little kiss between Al and Riza.

Chapter 11

Jean Havoc was only half-awake as he sat up in bed, a strange bed in a hotel that he guessed was still somewhere in Central. His head throbbed and his body felt as though it had been hit by a truck. The last thing he remembered was heading to the train station with Major Armstrong. Then, they met the general, and…

Jean remembered her dragging him off. There were some flashes of memory of them at a bar together, and her forcing him into a drinking contest. He looked under the covers of the bed, finding himself in only his boxers and let out a yell. Not only did that woman terrify him, but he didn’t even want to think of the reaction from the major.

“Oh, good,” the strong voice of the older woman came from the doorway. “You’re awake.”

He saw she was holding something strange in her hand. She was wearing just a thin nightgown, and the lieutenant’s mind suddenly kicked into overdrive. He needed to recall any point in the early morning hours when he had done anything with this woman that could compromise his job and his life.

The tall woman, with her broad but feminine shoulders, curvy figure silhouetted by the light coming from the other room of the suite, came walking over to his bedside, a glass in her hand.

“Here, for your head, lightweight.” She held out the glass to him. It was odd to look at her hands, knowing they were strong, seeing they were as well.

He took the glass and looked at its contents. “Why does this drink seem to be looking at me?” he asked, staring at the floating yellow orb in the inch of red liquid.

“It is called a prairie oyster. Best cure out there for a hangover.”

“It’s an egg yolk in there, isn’t it?”

She chuckled. “You must really be a lightweight if you didn’t figure that out immediately.” Oddly enough, even as she terrified him, she had a nice laugh.

“You expect me to drink this?”

She simply raised a thin blond eyebrow, then shot him with a glare that just dared him to do anything but drink what he was certain was egg yolk, tomato juice and brandy.

Closing his eyes and tilting his head back, Jean swallowed the small amount of liquid, trying to disregard the feeling of the yolk as it continued, nearly whole, down his throat. With a shudder, he offered the drink back to the woman.

“General,” he managed once he regained the ability to speak.

“Call me Olivier,” she said as she took the glass to the other room. “After all, we have shared a bed.”

Jean glanced to his left, seeing that, in fact, that side of the bed appeared slept on. “You said we slept together. Did we… you know…”

“Become familiar with one another in a religious sense?” the blond woman asked him. “Not at all. You were unconscious when I carried you up here, and I don’t take advantage of an unconscious man. Moral dilemmas aside, it just isn’t all that pleasurable when the partner’s unresponsive.” She tossed him his uniform. “You were rather entertaining up until that point of no return when I knew I’d be saddled with you, passed out.”

Jean rubbed the back of his neck, as he chuckled quietly and awkwardly. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“I have no idea why my sister was not interested in you,” the general said as she went to her suitcase and retrieved her own uniform. “Then again, she was always a bit addle-brained.”

Jean had been in the process of putting on his pants as the woman spoke, stopping when they were mid-thigh as he looked over his shoulder at her. It sounded as though the woman might have been interested in him, but that seemed impossible. Then, to add to his confusion, the nightgown dropped to her ankles and she stood before him in absolutely nothing.

For the first time in his life, Jean Havoc wanted to actually worship the same ground that the Armstrong family had walked on, to prattle on about their perfection just as the major did. Olivier Armstrong had a perfect body and Jean wanted now to pay homage to the ancestors of the line that had led to her creation.

Then, as his eyes met hers, her head turned over her shoulder much like his own, he looked away, trying to resume dressing.

She laughed. “If I had intended modesty, lieutenant, don’t you think I might have used the bathroom?”

Jean’s eyes widened as he looked at his knees.

“Besides, after meeting with you, I’ve decided we’re going to be working in fairly close quarters as it is. I’ve decided that if I become fuhrer, I want you as my secretary.”

“General,” Jean said, pulling on his pants and trying to look at the woman as she stood in her bra and underwear, completely unashamed because she had nothing to be ashamed about, “I work for the brigadier general.”

“Who may be executed in a month’s time,” she said, simply. She was so blunt it made Jean wince. “Of course, if you worked for me, you would have access to all the files available at that level of the military. For a man like King Bradley—who the hell names a kid King?—you know his files must have something interesting, maybe even helpful.”

“Are you trying to coerce me?” Jean asked, proud he had come up with a word like coerce.

“Is it working? Because if it is, then I am.”

********

The next day, Roy couldn’t help but notice the odd silence between Riza and Al as they prepared breakfast. They moved like a well-oiled machine, but in the same breath, it was stiff and stilted. Mechanical.

Roy raised an eyebrow at them, figuring he would find out sooner or later what had happened to make them behave that way. At the moment, it was too early and he had slept far too little to really try to ponder what might have gone on between the teenager and his most trusted subordinate.

He made his way down the hall to check on Ed. He tried not to dwell on what he’d told the teen last night. He just hoped that the teen wasn’t awake, wishing to avoid any further discussion of the subject.

He slowly shuffled down the hall to Ed’s room, wishing his body didn’t hurt so damned much at the moment. He could see the door to the library was closed, so he took that to mean that the teen must be asleep. Still, despite knowing that, Roy was tempted to make sure that Ed was at least okay.

He opened the door to the room as quietly as he could and stuck his head inside slowly.

“I’m not asleep, so you might want to stop what you are doing or just come inside,” Ed said from his bed. Roy groaned as he realized he had been caught. “Like I thought. You hoped I’d be asleep.”

Roy walked into the room, not liking the tone he heard in Ed’s voice. “It was just a long night,” he said, coming into the room.

“And you were afraid I would ask more?” Roy didn’t answer that. “I was actually going to suggest that what happened last night wasn’t equivalent exchange.” Ed looked down at his legs. “Or were you afraid of that too?”

Roy was too shocked to really answer as the realization struck that Ed was offering to tell him about his encounter with Pride. His first instinct was to tell the teen that he didn’t have to tell him because he knew how hard it would be and because he was frightened of what was done to the young man. However, his common sense was kicking in and telling him that he needed to let Ed tell him. If Ed was willing to talk about all of this, it was a step in the right direction. Roy just didn’t know if he was quite ready to hear it.

“It’s okay,” Ed said, apparently taking Roy’s silence as a negative sign. “If you don’t want to—”

“I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything,” Roy said. “I was surprised. That’s all.” He shut the door and headed to the young man’s bedside. “If you want to…” He didn’t dare suggest Ed was ready to admit he wanted to do this. “make things equivalent, then we can do that.”

When Roy saw two gold eyes looking up at him, in a move that would have once been obscured by the long bangs, he was unsure whether he had said the right thing or not. There were so many things there in those eyes—Ed had always been easy to read, otherwise, he would never have been so effortless to bait to get him angry. Roy could now see anger, fear, relief, shame all wrapped into that single look.

Roy sat down on the chair at Ed’s bedside.

They sat and just looked at one another for some time. Roy knew he was studying Ed’s face without any doubt, and he could guess by Ed’s flickering eyes, he was scanning Roy’s face as well. A few times, Ed tried to start, tried to tell Roy just one thing about what happened, and his mouth would shut as soon as it opened, and his cheeks would turn a burning red. Even as Roy offered his hand and Ed again took it, he just couldn’t seem to get the words out.

They sat there for nearly ten minutes in silence before being interrupted with Al and Ed’s breakfast tray.

“Um… am I interrupting something?” Al asked, sounding less like he was sorry and more like he was accusing. Though Roy knew it was just the younger sibling’s natural protectiveness coming out, he couldn’t help but glare at the hidden insinuation in the teen’s words. Roy met the young man’s gaze, but he did not release Ed’s hand as he did.

And much to the brigadier general’s surprise, Ed’s hand didn’t move either.

********

Hohenheim Elric realized the second chance he’d been given at life. It was a second chance he hadn’t wanted or asked to happen. The man looked at the heavily-guarded brick house, knowing he had permission to visit his youngest—could he really call Alphonse that now? Physically he was three years older than Ed, and mentally he was nearly his older brother’s equal in some ways.

Hohenheim shook his head, trying not to think about it. He was far to afraid that if he visited Al, then Ed would see him and once again react violently to his presence. Hohenheim had done a despicable thing leaving his family, no matter what the reasons, but he didn’t want to inflict further pain on his son just by his mere presence. He would do all he could to ensure Ed was recovering and that both his sons were going to stay out of jail, but Hohenheim would not visit in person as long as it hurt Ed that much to see him. So instead, the older man would do what he could to help from outside.

He nodded to the soldiers guarding the house. All of them knew he was Ed’s father, and nearly every one of them gave him a strange look when he didn’t go inside the home. Obviously, they expected him to do something, but they could not begin to grasp the history between him and his sons, especially Ed.

As Hohenheim left the front of this house and headed to Central Headquarters he ignored the shaking heads of the soldiers manning the front gate. Hohenheim knew better. Even if they didn’t. He slowly headed down the street, walking away from the place where his sons were being held and to the only place he felt he could be of any use.

He smiled at a few women as he walked along the streets of the city, unable to stop the very familiar habit. He had sworn there would not be another until he could be with Trisha again, but he found it so hard to just turn of his natural ability to flirt with the opposite sex. But just because he acted more open than he actually was to a relationship did not mean he would betray the promise he’d made to himself to stay loyal to his late wife.

That thought in itself choked him up. He couldn’t help but think about how he’d very nearly died seeing that homunculi Sloth. If it hadn’t been for Al yelling out his name and eventually defeating the water-based monster, Hohenheim was certain he would be dead.

The streets were warm this time of year, but the man shuddered, remembering how Al had cried, really and truly cried despite the armor. Hohenheim had never wanted to hurt himself so badly as he had at that moment. All of this, every single bit of it had started with him, but he wasn’t the one doing the bulk of the suffering. Everyone else was, most of all, his sons.

He walked up the front steps of the headquarters, not failing to notice how in disarray everything seemed now with the fuhrer dead. There were fliers throughout the place trying to ensure that this or that general gained favor. Many of them were for a man named Hakuro. Really, Hohenheim thought the man who had finally defeated the fuhrer deserved the title, but since he was currently facing court martial, he seriously doubted that would be happening.

The ancient alchemist saw the brigadier general’s office was already thoroughly ransacked. He wondered if the man came back to work if half of his belongings would be returned to him. It was as though what was of use for the investigation had been taken, and then everything else had been stolen. Hohenheim shook his head. He hoped that the young man hadn’t lost everything after all he’d done.

Finally, he found the room he was looking for, where the somewhat rotund redhead was pouring over law books and records.

He knocked on the open door to signal that he was there.

The man inside looked up. “Oh,” he said. “Hello Mr. Elric. Was there something I could help you with?”

Hohenheim stepped into the room. “I was hoping to be of some use to you.”

“You wouldn’t understand how military law works, so I’m not sure—”

“You do not understand how alchemy works either. That is where I hope to be of some service to you. I believe I can find people to help your case.”

“So you’re offering me you as a resource?”

Hohenheim nodded to the man. “And I will do my best to contact other alchemists should you need them for your case. It is the very least that I can do after all that you have done for my son, and are trying to do for the other.”

“I appreciate it, Mr. Elric.”

“Hohenheim,” the older man said. “And I hope you will not mind if I try doing some researching into the background of the opposing attorney. Something doesn’t sit right with me about that man.”

“Anton?” the redhead said. “You can investigate him all you want. He’s going through this to save his hide anyway. A little persuasion wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

“Thank you lieutenant,” Hohenheim said.

“Heymans,” the redhead said, extending a hand, which the older man shook.

********

“Sit still!” Winry said loudly, her voice echoing through the hospital.

“Just get it over with,” her client ordered back at her. She turned another screw a bit too hard, making the boy cry out in pain. “You did that on purpose!”

She glared at the dark-haired child. “And who are you going to get to attach automail to you?”

“Plenty of people,” the boy responded back. “The rest of the world thinks I’m just a boy and wouldn’t be as sadistic as you are.” He glared at her. “Why are you even helping me?”

“Because Al asked me to, and Rose worked hard to bring you and her baby from the city,” Winry said. She looked at him in his violet eyes. “There was a point that I pitied you, Wrath, but you—”

“Were corrupted by Envy,” the sin said. “I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.”

Winry doubted that seriously, and her face definitely showed it. “Have you even checked on your mom?”

“I don’t have one. I just have a creator that I have no desire to ever see again.” His face turned dark. “She abandoned me to the Gate. She just turned me over, and you expect me to just forgive that.” He laughed bitterly as she finished the final adjustments.

She watched him flex his hand. “What will you do now?” she asked.

“Be free of all of this,” he said. “All of you.” He tested out the automail a few times before heading to the open window. “I guess I should thank you, if I did that kind of thing.” And with that, he was gone.

Winry looked on after him as he ran down the street and disappeared. She wondered if she would see him again. Part of her hoped that she wouldn’t, fearing the trauma it might cause to her already damaged friend—she supposed it was best to still call him a friend, though she hoped one day it could be more. There was another part of her that had the slightest foreboding feeling that they would need Wrath in the near future.

There was a knock at the door to her make-shift operating room in the Central Civilian Hospital. “Come in,” she said.

A nurse came in. “The patient…” She was obviously confused.

“He ran out,” Winry said. “I feared he might once he was completely mobile. I couldn’t stop him.”

The nurse folded her arms and nodded. “I had suspected the same thing, to be honest, though this will mean another report for me and a statement from you.”

Winry guessed that the woman had encountered Wrath’s inhuman strength to be so accepting of the fact that he ran off. She looked up at the woman, the understanding passing between them both.[17:17] sora_keybearer99: Riza sat in the dining room with the baby, cooing to him on occasion.

“Well,” the nurse said, letting her arms relax again at her sides, “you have someone here. An attorney. A bit greasy for my liking.”

“No one asked you your oh-so-humble opinion of me, ma’am,” the man said as he stepped into the room. He was probably around the nurse’s age, maybe a little younger, so the “ma’am” had obviously been an insult. He was pale in every sense of the word, white-blond hair, light blue eyes, skin that resembled porcelain more than human flesh. It made the blue uniform he wore stand out all the more against the white of his body and the white of the hospital room.

He walked further into the room and looked at the nurse as though he expected her to leave.

“Oooo,” Winry said, hardly able to restrain herself as she saw the very familiar walk. “Who made your automail? It’s hardly noticeable.” The man stared at her blankly as though he’d been slapped across the face. “What? It’s incredible. The movements are so smooth and silent, I didn’t know that was possible. Of course, my best client tends to do too much running and jumping to have an automail leg that is that… elegant. For the movement to be that precise it must go at least up to your hip.”

The man raised an eyebrow, as the muscles in his jaw clenched. Even as he spoke, they remained tense. “Miss,” he said. “Do you realize that to announce that a person has automail is an insult to many?”

“I don’t know why,” Winry said, quite confused. “Especially when it is of this kind of quality. Did Dominic Ricardo make it for you? He’s the only one whose automail could be so fluid. I hope to be as good as him one day. I’m training under one of his friends in Rush Valley… Can I see it?”

The man’s eyes narrowed as he handed out a paper. “This is a summons,” he said. “You will testify for the prosecution in the court martial of both Alphonse Elric and Roy Mustang.”

She looked up at him, taking the paper. “If you think I will say anything against Al or even against Brigadier General Mustang, you are mistaken.”

“If you think you won’t,” the man said with a smug smile, “then it is you who is mistaken.” He turned on his heel and left.

********

Al was sitting in the living room with Riza. She had insisted that he give Roy and Ed some privacy. Begrudgingly, he had. He loved his brother, wanted to be there for him. However, it seemed that the brigadier general had a better idea of what Ed was going through that Al ever could.

The woman currently sitting on the chair, trying awkwardly to avoid looking at him as she listened to the radio, had all but hinted at that.

“Riza… About that kiss,” he said. “Just forget it. I guess my brain’s a little over-sensitized. I feel like I want to touch, smell, taste nearly everything.”

“And which exactly was the desire that drove you to kiss me?” the lieutenant asked.

“I’m not sure,” Al said as his brain simultaneously said that it was all of the above, particularly taste. His brain would also like to taste her again, but Al knew that under such close confines, he couldn’t risk making himself an outsider to everyone. “I mean, I passed out from sensory overload underground. My father had to help me out of that old city. And when I finally got to eat, it was enough to make me cry. Not only because I could really taste it, but I felt full and realized that my stomach had been hungry just before that. I hadn’t felt either, full or empty, in so long.”

Riza’s eyes looked up at him, and there was so much there that he knew the woman would have otherwise carefully guarded. He saw the pity, which he understood but hated all the same. But there was something else there. He didn’t dare hope it was any of the number of things he was feeling for her at the moment.

“We need to talk about that kiss, Alphonse,” she said.

He cringed at the use of his full name. In the last few days, she had gotten familiar enough with him to just call him Al, and to be downgraded back to the oh-so-formal “Alphonse” was a blow the teen didn’t want to take. “I told you—”

“I know what came out of your mouth, Alphonse,” she said, again using that name. “But that wasn’t what you told me. If you are developing some sort of crush, then we really need to put a stop to it. You are a very kind young man, but I am eleven years older than you.”

“Seven physically,” Al said. “And mentally, you can’t tell me that I am only a fifteen-year-old. I haven’t been my age mentally since we lost Mom.”

Riza looked as though she was prepared to argue, but inevitably closed her mouth. “Al,” she said, and the teen nearly jumped for joy at the sound of the familiar name from her lips. “You are still too young. I am not 26 in here…” She pointed to her head. “Any more than you are fifteen in yours.”

“I like you,” Al said. “I think I always did, but now, there are all of these hormones and synapses making me react to what were just thoughts before…” He looked at her intently. “If you think you might feel even slightly that way, would you at least promise me that you won't try to convince me not to feel the way I do? Please?”

She sighed. “And I thought you were convincing in the armor.”

Al smiled at her. “Is that a yes?”

She nodded.

********

“I told you I would tell you about my experience,” Ed said. “I meant it.” He looked up at the man’s singular black eye. Roy was waiting, again holding his automail hand. In the back of Ed’s mind was the thought that he wouldn’t mind it if he could hold the man’s hand with his left once the cast came off. He found himself wanting to feel the pale hand now in his, and he didn’t understand why.

“There is no rush, no pressure,” Roy said.

“I know,” the teen said. “But it’s equivalent exchange. I spent all of today since Al interrupted us trying to think of what I could say, and what I didn’t want to think about.”

Roy smiled sympathetically. Ed couldn’t begin to express how grateful he was to have someone who understood, at least somewhat.

“Forty-seven,” Ed said. He didn’t dare look at the older man. He’d said it, but didn’t know if he could actually meet his eyes, or even explain what the number meant. The tally, he knew, was correct, he just didn’t know if he could say aloud what it meant to anyone outside of his own mind.

“Ed?” Out of the corner of his eye, Ed could see the man’s other hand rubbing over the automail as though he could really feel it. “Forty-seven what?”

The teen could feel tears falling down his cheeks at that point. “Times,” he choked out.

There was a pause, and much to Ed’s relief, his former C.O. figured it out without further explanation. To his surprise, the man had lowered the bar and was leaning over the bed, hugging him.

Even more of a surprise, Ed was letting him. He was grateful for the human contact of someone his mind told him he could trust even when it told him that his own brother was not worthy of such an honor.

As though he was once again being rescued from his prison, Ed clung to the man now holding him and cried. He cried until it hurt, cried until the tears had long since stopped, cried even as he noticed the other man was crying, too. For him.

********

Anton walked up to his apartment looking as calm and cool as ever, but his mind was swimming. That girl was more of an automail expert than he’d anticipated. She had pinpointed not only that he had the metal appendage, but that it went up as high as she anticipated.

He nearly laughed at the idea of her “seeing” the automail, even as he opened the door to his modest home. He wondered if she would have been satisfied just following the lines of metal as they disappeared beneath his underwear, or if she would have insisted on him showing off the ports.

Now inside the solitary confines of his apartment, he laughed. She spoke of automail as though it was an amazing thing. Something to be revered.

Stripping out of the stiff uniform, Anton looked at his reflection in the mirror. He didn’t do that often. He stood there, looking at the lean metal limb that engulfed the whole of his right leg.

He then lifted his undershirt, tracing over the thick scars that would never fade. Wide and gruesome, they reached well above the waistline of his underwear and stretched up to his ribcage. Dominic had indeed done the work, done the very best work out there, but the damage the Gate had done… he only had so much to work with.
Anton then let the shirt drop and lowered the boxers that covered the rest of his body. He didn’t do this often, if ever. He hated to look at the automail in all of its so-called glory. He hated the way he looked in all of his “glory.” The automail was so close to his groin, it was little wonder that the scar tissue had spread there. Had made things useless.

It was fitting really. If he hadn’t been trying to get his first taste of the more carnal pleasures, he might not have ignored…

He shook his head, not wanting to think about it. He yanked the boxers back up and grabbed the small glass paperweight and tossed it at the mirror.

He had no use for a full-length mirror. There was nothing below his chest that he had any interest in seeing anymore.