Nightmare

Review Replies: Merkswinter, thanks so much. Yeah, Roy likes Ed, Ed's not sure about it the other way around. Lilith, thanks.

Chapter 13

Riza Hawkeye, in general, preferred quiet. She liked when things calmed and there was an easy, relaxed atmosphere. And on occasion, despite the reasons they were all there, even within the lock-down of Roy’s house, they managed that kind of silence. What had happened over the last few days, that was an oppressive lack of noise that simply had to end. Roy and Ed still talked, but there was very little between them, as though Roy was trying to distance himself from the teen, and Ed… it was painful to see as he looked so confused at having lost the only person he could talk to these last few weeks.

But in the same breath, Ed was perpetuating the quiet, as he all but refused to talk to Al. It was something that had been building, but as Al turned more bitter—Riza already knew that some of it was because of Roy—he snapped more easily at all of them. A few days ago, Ed would have been the exception to that, but Riza had already caught Al talking to his brother in the same way he was starting to talk to the rest of the world.

And even if he managed to keep his composure, Al exited the room looking so hurt and angry that it took all of Riza’s restraint not to go over and hug him.

She didn’t because she was worried she would encourage him. He was sweet and new to all of this, and ultimately, he was still a fifteen-year-old at heart. She didn’t care how much he’d seen or how much he swore he understood the world.

When he went into the living room and practically growled out his frustration, she merely went to the archway of the room. “Alphonse?” she asked tentatively.

“Brother asked me when Roy would be downstairs,” he said. Al’s honey and chocolate eyes looked up at her and she saw practically every emotion that must have been going through him at that moment. He could not guard himself like the rest in the house had learned to—because she could admit that even Ed had learned to hide his deeper emotions.

Despite everything that told her this was a very bad idea, Riza sat beside Al and held him.

If she were really truthful with herself, she would admit that she probably felt for Al what she already suspected Roy felt for Ed. It was unnerving knowing that someone was capable of making her walls crumble like that, without any real effort.

********

“But how do we test his ability?” Heymans asked Hohenheim.

“I am not sure, but I really believe that for him to have that kind of knowledge he must know something about alchemy,” he said. “Do you know anything about him?”

Heymans tapped a pencil against the table. “Not much. He was too busy trying to recruit a sort of inner circle at the academy. It was odd, though. He is known as such a fantastic lawyer, and I really cannot remember him trying many cases in those years.”

“And yet the fuhrer trusted him,” Hohenheim said, looking at him. “It only confirms to me that he must have been an alchemist himself. I do not dare to say that he might have committed human transmutation.”

The redheaded man looked at the elder one warily. “Human transmutation…” He was already aware that both the Elric brothers had tried to commit the ultimate crime. Their fatherh ad confessed to the same. If these three unlikely criminals of alchemy could commit the act, the more likely one could as well. The problem would be proving it.

“Your research has turned entirely from the court martial, hasn’t it?” Hohenheim said.

“The brigadier general does not want your son to take the stand,” Heymans said. “The only way to make sure that doesn’t have to happen is to convince de Havilland that it’s a bad idea to put him there.” He stood and went through some of Havoc’s notes on the whole thing. “The old administration is crumbling, and his record is clean as long as that administration is in power.”

“You are talking blackmail?” Hohenheim asked.

“Why not?” Breda said. “He did the same thing to the boss and chief.” He grinned. “And I am not quite as noble as some of the other ones in my office. I’m not above dirty tricks.”

“Well, you were nearly a lawyer,” Hohenheim joked.

Breda shook his head, not taking his eyes away from the scribbled legal pads. “You have spent too much time around me if now even you are making jokes.”

********

Anton slammed fellow captain and JAG member Gustav Messerschmitt, into the wall. “And just what the hell do you think you are doing going through my personal belongings?” he barked at the man, icy blue eyes glaring into the frightened ones of the older man. “Thinking you’ll find something? That if you try to report me on something they’ll reward you like a good little puppy?” He laughed and lowered his head until their noses were practically touching. “Need I remind you that your own record is not entirely pristine? As a matter of fact, it would take little work on my part to show you for the little ratfink you are.”

Messerschmitt in a rare show of backbone returned the glare. “I know that you’ve done something that could make me look better.”

Anton chuckled. “And what the hell do you think I managed to do that could make a living pile of shit like you look good?”

“For a lawyer, you never tried many cases,” Messerschmitt retorted. “You were always close to the fuhrer. You must have done something.”

Anton wanted to laugh at the man. He had no idea, really, and couldn’t. There were no records of Lab 5. They learned after the Elric brothers busted in and ruined the place. Juliet Douglas might have been given the name Sloth, but she was anything but. He’d never seen someone so creepily efficient, but she wasn’t human, after all.

“Tell me, Messerschmitt, do you think for one second that I’m going to get written up for anything I did while serving the fuhrer and the old administration?” Anton asked. “Particularly when you are the one who we have record of skimming from the top of the treasury accounts.” Messerschmitt continued to fight Anton’s hold on him, but had no luck. Anton smirked. “I spent my time helping the fuhrer with murderers and mass murderers. Do you really think you’re going to manage to get away from me so easily?”

It was obvious just by the expression on the older man’s face that he had gone from thinking he could defeat Anton to fearing him. “So listen to me you little slug. If you want to go after someone, try going after someone who wasn’t doing his duty to the military and the fuhrer to a tee. Because they have no proof that I can’t be just as loyal to another set of leaders, and they know I follow orders unwaveringly.”

“If you are so confident, why are you scouring through the fuhrer’s old files?”

Really, the older man has an agile mind, and he had gotten to the point. Anton didn’t dare admit that he was looking for his own pardon for the act of human transmutation, but if it was there for Fullmetal, surely it must have been there for him.

“Listen to me, Messerschmitt, I’m going to accept your resignation, which you are going to write for me right now on that typewriter there.” He pointed to one of the secretaries’ abandoned desks. “I am going to let you go now because I don’t want to deal with the mess of having someone like you in my department, but if I must, I will file a court martial against you for inspecting a senior officer’s personal files and property. That is the closest thing to generosity you will find from me.”

The other lawyer went to the desk and begrudgingly went to the typewriter.

********

When he saw Roy come downstairs, Al forced himself not to glare at the man. The doctor had already come and left, having removed Ed’s cast on his arm. The doctor had some ability in alchemy, which allowed him to inspect the arm without x-rays. Ed’s skin had looked raw, and Al was supposed to put another dose of the ointment on it.

“Edward was asking for you,” Al heard Riza telling the man. “I think he really wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh, well, I’ll go on in—”

“You can just eat,” Al snapped. “Brother will need the cream on his rash where the cast was. So you can wait and so can he. You’ve already slept until noon as it is while the rest of us have been awake.”

“Pardon me if the painkillers are making me a little groggy,” the man returned.

Al said nothing more, but went into the room where his brother lay. He saw Ed looking at the door expectantly and hadn’t failed to notice the faint expression of disappointment on his face when he saw it was Al.

In the last few days, he had managed to talk to his brother a little. He had a sense that an explosion was just beyond the horizon, and he wondered, honestly, which of them it would be that finally did it. That look was enough to make him want to be the one. He wanted to just tell his older brother to snap out of it, that he wanted him back the way he used to be. The problem was that Al knew better than that. If he ranted about anything, it would likely be about the close relationship between the brigadier general and his brother. Not because he had issues with the fact that the two had managed to find support in one another, but more because he felt Mustang was supporting Ed in place of Al, rather than with him. And Al realized that there must be a reason why Mustang was able to understand Ed so much better than he could. After all, Roy was one of the few who didn’t get some kind of doubtful expression when he used the words, “I understand.”

Then finally, after days of this, Al confronted Ed, or at least as much as Al dared to confront his brother considering the state he was in.

“Why don’t you talk to me?” Al asked Ed. “I could listen.”

“You don’t understand,” Ed said, and al could almost see and feel the wall he was putting up between them. “You couldn’t.”

“And Mustang can?”

“Yes,” Ed said, eyes glaring at Al defiantly. “He sure as hell can. Why do you care anyway?”

“I care because you’re my brother.”

Ed scoffed, and Al braced himself, knowing that this was finally it. This was where Ed would list off his transgressions. “Apparently it takes more than that for you,” Ed said. “Where was brotherly love for those two months? Where was it when after one, you began searching for the philosopher’s stone without me? Where was it when you used the stone for yourself, leaving me with these… things?” He gestured with his automail. “Do you know that the whole time, the whole damned time, Roy had people investigating and searching for me? That he actually went out and looked for me himself? If you had been in that house and heard that son of a bitch talking to his pet, would you have even considered that he might have me locked away in his basement? Would it have been obvious to you like it was to Roy, or would you have left me to die in the fire?” Not once had Ed’s voice raised above its normal tone, and that frightened the other brother.

Al took a deep breath, willing himself not to yell. “I did not give up on you. I spent the first month searching solely for you, and then I came across father, who was searching for Dante. She was the one pulling the strings of the homunculi, and was trying to find another philosopher stone. She used it, and so did our father, to stay alive much longer than was possible—”

“I’m so glad to see he was able to manage that again,” Ed said sarcastically.

“Brother, I’m not arguing about Dad.”

“No, because he managed to help you get your body back. He’s the hero, and I’m the one who fucked it all up in the first place.”

Al groaned and threw his hands up in the air. “You can’t honestly still think that. How many times do I have to tell you that I knew all the risks and did it anyway? I was just as foolish as you were, so please don’t blame yourself for that. You did everything you could to try to get your body back, and you want to know something? I’m still looking into ways to get your limbs back. I heard Dante say something about Gluttony, that he could be used to make a philosopher’s stone. We know he needs to be killed anyway, and he’s still out there, half out of his mind. If he could be used, I could bring back your arm and leg. I’ve been working on that every spare moment I’ve had here.”

He saw Ed looking at him in surprise, but Al was glad to have that off his chest. He hadn’t wanted to tell Ed and give him false hope, but he just couldn’t let his brother go on thinking he’d given up on him, when it seemed like everyone else in the world was working toward trying to help him.

********

Beneath Central, Wrath had already found Gluttony, not that he was letting the monstrous thing know he was there. He watched as it moved through the old city of Xerxes, eating everything it could find in sight. It was almost pathetic, as brainless as it was now, and still, there was great bitterness toward its creator. There were few words that the thing could form, but that name was one of them. That fury at the person who had given him life lingered on even after his mind was gone.

They all had that, Wrath mused. He certainly resented the hell out of Izumi Curtis, though he could tolerate Sig if given the chance. The thought that Sig might welcome him as a father would a son was a thought that made him feel almost happy, but to know that in being welcomed by Sig would mean being around Izumi held him back. She had done more than just create him with the knowledge of the crime against nature it was. She had created him, been disgusted and turned him over to the Gate. It left him terrified of a baby’s cries, of what amounted to his own unanswered cries as he grew up behind the Gate, and dreading darkness.

There was some satisfaction in knowing she would never have another child. She couldn’t possibly be a fit mother. She had deserted him to an unfeeling monster. Even with the Elric brothers she had left them to their own devices at such young ages. Ed had even been bitten by a fox that could well have been rabid. She and that man Mason had made huge errors in judgment there, not that Wrath cared about Ed, but their mistake had created a rather noticeable flaw on a rather good arm.

He flexed his automail, not wanting to admit to himself that this one wasn’t bad either. After all, he couldn’t really remember a time when he’d had an arm and leg of his own.

In the distance, Wrath could hear Gluttony screaming out about Dante, or in his dazed state, it was as close as he could manage. The older sin no longer seemed to know why he was so angry at the woman or of his former affection for Lust, but his anger did not seem to be fading.

“And they call me Wrath,” the young sin said as he climbed from the underground city.

********

When Roy looked into the room, he found Ed crying. These weren’t the terrorized, reliving-his-nightmares tears that Roy had comforted away. Ed never showed any desire to hide those, at least, not from him. But the moment Roy walked in the door, Ed had immediately attempted to wipe away the thin, wet trails from his cheeks and look up with a smile that his heart definitely wasn’t in.

On instinct, Roy went to the teen’s bedside and lowered the rail. Usually he waited for Ed to grow comfortable with his presence, but the older man didn’t feel it would be necessary at the moment. When he saw Ed shift over enough to leave Roy room to lie on his side, he knew he’d been right.

“Ed, what is it?” Roy asked the teen as he took his usual spot on the bed, near the teen’s automail arm.

“Al…” Ed managed, not looking Roy in the eyes. The raven-haired man could have guessed it would be the younger brother that was the problem. Over the last few days, Al had gone from sullen to flat-out rude to Roy. It was only a matter of time before that carried over to the older brother.

Roy shifted his weight a bit and put his right arm so that it could rest beneath Ed’s head. His still-sore left arm he moved so that his hand could comfortingly rub the teen’s own left arm. For the first time, he was actually touching Ed’s skin. It made the younger man finally look up at him in surprise, as though he never realized this was the same thing Roy had done every night for going on two weeks.

“Ed, I don’t know what Al said to make you upset.”

“I am not upset,” Ed said. Roy again rubbed his hand over Ed’s arm, noticing the flesh was cool now that it was no longer in a cast and still not covered by any fabric on his pajamas. Ed’s behavior at the moment was classic Fullmetal, and it seemed that whatever had been said hurt both of the conflicting personalities—the old, boisterous and defiant one and the new, timid and frightened one—that now made up Edward Elric.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Roy said. “But I’ll stay here anyway.”

********

Hours had passed before Ed finally broke down and told Roy what had been said between him and his brother. When he finally did, the man held him closer than he had before and had even kissed the top of Ed’s hair. Roy had tried to dismiss that it hadn’t been a kiss, and Ed let him, but he’d felt the man’s lips on the crown of his head.

He was still in Roy’s arms now, despite the fact that the older man had fallen asleep, clinging to him like a child with his favorite teddy bear, yet still careful somehow about how he held Ed.

Ed again thought to Roy kissing his head and his face burned. What the hell was the man thinking? It had been almost parental, and sometimes when the older alchemist looked at him, Ed could easily convince himself that was all it was.

It was the other times that frightened him. When the looks actually reminded Ed of the way Winry would smile at him or grow angry in his defense. Ed was well-aware of Winry’s feelings toward him, but surely the looks couldn’t mean the same thing in Roy, could they? Did he even want them to?