Like a Wounded Animal

“Riza, Calm down,” Maes whimpered from the cover of his leather backed chair, which had already been shot five times. After hearing that Mustang was no where to be found, she had almost literally flipped her lid, his office had the bullet holes to prove it.

And his poor chair…

“Calm down?” Riza growled. “How can you expect me to calm down!”

“P-Please… Lieutenant Hawkeye… the books…” Schiezka spoke up from next to Maes. The two of them had dived behind his desk and chair when she had opened fire as suddenly as she had.

“How can the two of you be so calm?!” Riza bellowed. “The Fuhrer is MISSING! Gone, vanished. How is Amestris supposed to function without him?”

Maes blinked. “We have that covered, Lieutenant.” He told her. “Roy said that, should a situation like this arise, I’m in charge.”

“You?”

“Uh-uhuh…” He stammered. “Please don’t shoot me, I have a little girl…” he said, peeking out from behind his chair.

“I’m not going to shoot you, Brigadier General.”

“Funny, because from here it looks like you’re going to.” He said, beginning to stand, his knees shaking from fear. He watched as Riza reached back and slipped her pistol back into it’s holster, letting out a relieved sigh. “I’m going to do whatever I can to find Roy, I promise.”

“You’d better.” Hawkeye warned, though, to Maes and Schiezka, it sounded like a threat.

“I will.” Maes shot back, just as, if not more, sternly. “I’m not about to leave my best friend out there all alone… wherever he is.”

Scheizka let out a little peep as she stood up next to him. “But sir…”

“What?”

“Uhmn… how do you plan to do that?”

“Send out search parties, of course.”

“But you don’t even know where he is! Besides, no one knows the Fuhrer is missing aside from us and his house staff. If people find out-“

“It would cause mass-panic.” Hawkeye finished for her.

The bookworm nodded. “Exactly. We can’t have the entire country loosing their heads, and you know, once people find out, word is going to spread, even to the outer territories pretty quickly.”

Hughes nodded, seeing her point. “Then we have to keep Roy’s disappearance hush-hush.”

“What do you propose we do about this, Deputy-Fuhrer sir?” Hawkeye asked, narrowing her eyes. She looked down, her soft brown eyes turning incredibly sad.

“Simple, we get the most loyal, well-trained pack of dogs the military has to offer…”

~Two Hours Later~

Hughes smiled as he had finally gotten his ‘dogs’ all in the office. Or rather, more appropriately, Mustang’s dogs.

Standing before him, in a rugged line of attention were none other than Kain Fuery, Vlato Falman, Jean Havoc, and Breda *dammit I forgot his first name*.

“What is this all about, Brigadier General? With all due respect, we have work we should be doing.” Vlato told him. The man was a bit brash with Hughes, having worked under him before transferring under Mustang’s command years before.

The Brigadier General turned Deputy-Fuhrer sighed, leaning forward in his ruined chair, threading his fingers together and leaning his chin onto them. “So Lieutenant Hawkeye didn’t tell you then.”

Collectively, the four of them shook their heads.

“Good. What I’m about to tell you, doesn’t leave this office, am I understood?”

All four men nodded.

“Fuhrer Mustang is missing. We have no idea where he is.”

“WHAT?!?!” All of them shouted at him.

“Calm down. This is exactly why I called the four of you in. If we told more than a select number of people, everyone would panic. We don’t want that. Not at all,” he told them. He took a moment, meeting each man’s eyes in turn. “You four, five if you include Lieutenant Hawkeye, know Roy the best. You worked under him for years, you’d give your lives for him.”

They all nodded again.

Havoc set his jaw, seeing where this was going, out of all of them, he knew the relationship between Hughes and Mustang. He knew what was about to be asked of them, and would go about his task tirelessly.

He was sure most of the rest of them would too.

“So, having said that, it falls to you four to go out and find him. Keep this quiet. This mission is of the top most secrecy, as is the Fuhrer’s disappearance. Do not speak of this to anyone, am I understood?”

A unanimous call of, “Yes sir!” Went up among the four men, and they saluted stiffly. By way of dismissal, Hughes repeated the gesture, and the four of them filed out of the room. They’d be joined by Hawkeye later, she had gone out earlier on her own to start looking.

Hughes sighed. Though he hated to admit it, he had a dark feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something was telling him, be it his intuition as a soldier or as a friend, that they weren’t going to find Roy.

“They have to… I can’t keep up a charade like this one forever…” he muttered, looking over and out of his window.

~Later that Day~

Like usual, on his way back home, Hughes stopped by at Elysia’s school to pick her up. Unlike usual, however, he wasn’t accompanied by their dinner guest. This change did not go unnoticed by the young girl.

“Papa?”

“Yes, Elysia darling?” He asked, his voice somewhat sad. This caused the young Hughes’ face to turn to worry. She had never really seen her father sad or upset before, and this was scaring her now.

“Why do you look so sad, Papa?” she asked. “Where’s Uncle Roy?”

“Uncle Roy isn’t coming to dinner tonight, Elysia.”

“But… Why not, Papa?” she sounded as if she were on the verge of tears as she walked beside her father.

Hughes stopped dead in his tracks, and gave off a heavy sigh. “Don’t cry Sweetheart.” He told her, picking up his little girl and holding her near his shoulder. “Uncle Roy… he’s just too busy tonight to come over, that’s all.” He told her.

She shook her head. “Don’t lie Papa.”

“What?” Hughes asked, looking at his daughter, who had buried her face into his shoulder. She moved her head a bit, displaying eyes red and puffy from silent tears.

“Don’t lie!” She repeated, with more conviction. “What happened to Uncle Roy?”

“How did you kno-“

“Because… Uncle Roy promised me he’d never get to busy to come to dinner with us! He promised Papa. And you said Uncle Roy never goes back on his promises.”

“I did say that, didn’t I?”

“And… you wouldn’t look so sad if he was just busy… so… what happened to Uncle Roy, Papa?”

“I… I don’t know, Elysia… I don’t know…” he told her sadly.

“Will he come tomorrow, Papa?”

“I don’t… know…”

“When will you know?”

Hughes sighed. “When I know, honey,” he told her. “Come on, Mommy’s probably waiting for us at home.”

As the days went by, and no word came from the search party, it began to get harder and harder for Maes to walk home, picking up Elysia from school and seeing her sad, tear-filled eyes and disappointed face when she saw that Uncle Roy wasn’t with her Papa.

Seeing her cry, which she did, as Maes was forced to carry her home because she couldn’t walk and cry at the same time, it made him want to cry as well.

‘I’m so sorry, Elysia… I wish I could find him, any word… any thing at all, would be better than all this waiting.’ He thought as he walked through his door, Elysia in his arms, sobbing violently.

Gracia heard them come in, and came running to the door to greet them, and take the crying girl from her father’s arms.

“No word?”

“No… Nothing,” Hughes murmured, watching as Gracia’s face too, turned sad. Roy had been the one to introduce them, she had been a former girlfriend of his, and had thought that the two of them would hit it off. They owed their marriage, their happiness, and their daughter to Roy, because if it hadn’t been for him, none of it would have happened.

And now, they couldn’t even find him.

As Gracia began cooking dinner, outside it began to downpour. As he watched the rain, while he sat listening to the radio with Elysia, some part of Hughes, the part the hoped – no, knew – that Roy was still alive hoped he wasn’t caught out in it. He was positively useless in the rain, everyone knew it.

Then, a knock came to the door. A smile lit Hughes’ face as he got up to go answer it. Maybe, whatever or whoever was up there listening, had finally brought his friend back to him. Maybe, it was Roy standing on the doorstep, completely drenched to the bone, with a goofy smile on his face, and a just as goofy story to explain where he had been.

But as he opened the door, it was not his life-long friend he found completely drenched, but Havoc.

Dark bags drooped from under the Lieutenant’s eyes, and he was wobbling on his feet with fatigue.

“Lieutenant!” Hughes exclaimed. Just as Havoc fell forward, right into him, completely out cold. It was then he noticed that the blond was shivering.

“Gracia!” he called into the other kitchen, just as his wife was coming out to see what was going on.

“Oh my! What happened?”

“I dunno… I guess he worked himself to the point of exhaustion. Go get some of my clothes and a couple of blankets so we can get him warm and out of this wet uniform.”

Gracia nodded, going to do just that. Elysia, by this time, was watching from a distance away, hiding behind the large teddy bear her Uncle Roy had bought for her months ago.

Once they had gotten Havoc changed and warmed up, Hughes got him over onto the couch and started a fire in the fireplace. The Lieutenant didn’t stir for a few hours, and when he did, he was slightly feverish, and looked like he wanted to get up and go back to trying to find Roy.

“Havoc… Lieutenant, what happened?” Maes asked when he walked in to see the young man awake, being tended to by Gracia.

“Sorry, Deputy-Fuhrer sir…” Havoc lulled out, eyes half closed, radiant blue dulled by fever. “I didn’t mean… to let you down.”

“Lieutenant, what are you talking about?”

“Maes, he probably doesn’t know, he has a bad fever… he’s burning up.” Gracia informed him, placing a cool compress on Havoc’s forehead. He looked as if he were drifting in and out of consciousness.

“I know… exactly what I’m talking about.” The Lieutenant on the couch protested. He looked over to Hughes, his eyes sad and compassionate. “We couldn’t find him… we’re all exhausted, none of us have slept… or eaten…” He pressed.

“Roy…”

Havoc nodded. “We… we couldn’t find him… we were all starting to slow down… so Hawkeye called it off. I kept looking for a while, though… and then… I could barely stand anymore… so I…”

He broke off into a fit of coughing before lying still for a while.

“…Decided to come tell me the bad news.”

Havoc nodded.

“Poor Havoc, you realize you made yourself sick.” Gracia told him, gaining another nod from the shivering Lieutenant.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have a reason to be, Havoc. Just get some rest.”

As Havoc drifted off to sleep, Gracia sighed. “Maes, we should bring him to the hospital… this could get really bad.”

“I know.” Hughes said, sitting down in an armchair.

“So then why are you sitting down?”

“It’s still raining, Gracia. I don’t want to run the risk of bringing him in now and him getting even sicker.” His wife nodded in understanding of this, seeing his point. “I’ll wait for it to die down a bit first.”

It wasn’t long before it did, and, dinner forgotten, Maes brought the water-logged Lieutenant into the hospital and waited around for the results. He had a moderate case of pneumonia, but they’d treat it in the hospital and he’d be better in a few weeks. Thanking the doctors for their hospitality, Hughes left, and got into his car to start the drive back, alone.

It was very late by now, and in making sure Havoc would be alright, he had missed saying goodnight to Elysia. By now, Gracia was no doubt in bed as well.

But, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. The poor Lieutenant. He had gotten sick because he had asked him to go out and look for Roy. He knew that those guys had been loyal to the Flame Alchemist, but, was there such a thing as too loyal? They had gone a week without eating or sleeping to look for their former CO. And Havoc had come back with pneumonia. If that wasn’t loyalty, he didn’t know what was.

He sighed, flipping on the radio and sitting on the couch. Despite the fact that he didn’t think he could sleep, he found himself drifting off, until a loud crash from outside roused him.