Nightmare

Review Replies: LadyRonin, thank you. I really didn't have any plans for Hohenheim. Roy/Ed will eventually happen. As for Al, we'll see. I'm always open to suggestions, so maybe you can change my mind of where things will go with him. Marylover, thanks. Yes. this is going to be a challenge, and different for me. Politics and angst aren't typical for me. And I figure lots of people are going to be involved in the death of the fuhrer. Lilith, thanks, but they did conspire to kill the fuhrer and keep an important item from the military. chelzi, basically, the country's JAG (attorneys) are after Roy and Ed. They got their jobs through the fuhrer and are mad.

Chapter 7

“State your name.”

Al looked at the man who would be questioning him. Alphonse Christopher Elric.” Then, as polite and cheerful as he could manage, he asked, “What’s yours?”

The man, probably about thirty, glared at him. It was odd, he thought, that he could so simply disarm and irritate people by behaving as oblivious and pleasant as possible. Still, it was something that came naturally to him—the pleasant part, at least—and he would use it.

“I will ask the questions here,” he said. “The first is why you claim to be sixteen years old when all doctors assure us that you must be near twenty.”

“I am sixteen years old,” Al said. “In an accident caused by my brother and me performing alchemy at far too young an age, I managed to find myself stuck to the armor that I was known for. Then, later, when a philosopher’s stone was created by the serial killer, Scar, the armor I was attached to was used. In trying to remove myself from the armor and the highly reactive stone, this was how I ended up coming out of the armor. I was intact, but as you can see, I have lost years from my life. The act, unfortunately, utilized the stone and used it up.”

Al had worked with his father to create this version of his story, and as Hohenheim had helped to create this story, he would back it up. Thankfully, Al’s father was not under investigation.

“Really?” the man asked, incredulously.

“Yes, but it was either lose those years or live a life in a can of armor,” Al answered back. “I think this is the better of the better of the two.”

The man nodded. “I suppose.”

Al smiled at him, taking a sip of water from the glass in front of him. His interrogator didn’t seem to entirely believe him. Like many, the man also seemed to think immortality without touch, without taste was better than the loss of four years for the four he spent inside of the armor. After nearly orgasming—which had been embarrassing as he’d done it in front of Lieutenant Hawkeye and his father—at a simple bacon cheeseburger, he knew he could never trade the ability to feel, smell, taste, touch. Not even if it had taken forty years from him.

“And this accident,” the officer asked after a pause, “it was the one where your brother lost his limbs?”

“It was.” Al again took another sip.

“Is that normal for two children to be able to perform that kind of alchemy?”

“No it isn’t,” Al said. The man looked smug, as though he had found some kind of flaw in the story, but Al was sure he didn’t suspect what exactly the flaw was. Al was confident in that. “I think that was why Brigadier General Mustang offered my brother a position as a state alchemist and allowed me to take the test as well. Considering my condition in the armor, however, I could never pass a physical, so I dropped out of the running and helped my brother.”

Al was calm, nothing in his face or eyes showing any sign that he was feeling nearly as smug as his interrogator had been a few minutes before. He couldn’t explain it really, knowing that only a few months ago, he would have been intimidated much more easily. Perhaps it was a difference of no longer feeling as though he was eleven and now felt all of the nineteen years his body told him he was. Perhaps it was the fact that for once, he got to do something for his brother. Regardless of what the reason was, he was not afraid. He was confident.

********

Heymans Breda was filing motions and signing paperwork, trying to find some solution to at least keep Riza and Al out of custody.

“You really should have joined JAG,” a smooth voice said to his right.

“Sorry,” Heymans answered, signing yet another document, “but I couldn’t pass the physical to make it in. I actually had a heart.”

The other man laughed, all too familiar from the Academy’s law school, where the redhead had been a student and Anton had been an assistant professor, grooming the next set of attorneys for JAG. “Still a joker, Breda.”

“Naturally,” he said. “Everyone loves a joker. It is also far more disarming than a snake. A joker can pull a punch. A snake is expected to be a snake.”

“Harsh words,” Anton said. “Now, what is it that you hope to achieve by filing all of these forms?”

“You have just captured the major and brigadier general’s sole caregivers,” Heymans said. “As neither is capable of maintaining proper care if they are imprisoned and will be released from the hospital soon, it is my request that they remain on house arrest, with both Alphonse and the lieutenant there to keep watch over them.”

Anton leaned over the table, where Heymans continued to work. “I assume you have put in the request for our two injured rebels to remain on house arrest at Mustang’s home?”

Heymans met the man in the eye. “What are you playing at, de Havilland?”

“A simple question,” Anton said. Breda’s murky brown eyes twitched as they scanned over the blond’s pale features to see any sign of deception, though he doubted he would manage to discern anything. He remembered the older man from school and knew he kept everything close to his chest.

“Well, you can fight it all you want, but I’ve covered every contingency,” Breda said, defensively. He felt certain something was up; it had to be with this man.

“I would expect you would, but you are wasting your efforts.” Anton smiled over at him. For the younger man, it brought back memories of when he was considered one of the top candidates for a JAG attorney.

“Judge Campbell will allow it, you know. He doesn’t think the way you do.”

“I’m sure he will,” Anton said. “My point is that you do not need to make these motions and contingency plans. I have no intention of opposing you. Your brigadier general and major along with their two sidekicks may stay in the comfort of Mustang’s home.”

Breda looked at him in surprise, but Anton was already moving away. “Never think a snake can’t pull a punch. We just tend to do things the other way around.”

********

“And you shot him?” the man interrogating Riza asked.

“Did I somehow misspeak? I believe I told you I did,” she said, calmly.

“Why did you shoot a superior officer?”

“He was nearly unrecognizable as the Colonel at that point, and he was firing at me, then at the brigadier general.”

“Did you know that the brigadier general was planning to kill the fuhrer, as he has admitted to doing?”

“Considering the things we learned about the fuhrer and how he had manipulated us, I would not have been surprised by anything any of us did to the man.”

“Us? Was there a group? A rebellion?”

“No, I am speaking of soldiers who served in Ishbal,” Riza answered, calmly. “I doubt if anyone heard what was done they would sympathize too much with our deceased leader.”

“So no remorse at all?”

“Afraid not.”

“And for the death of the colonel?”

“He opened fire on me before I fired a single shot,” Riza said. “He had no idea if I even had a gun. I was defending myself and my superior officer at that point. Even with reasonable certainty that I had a gun, he could not shoot without asking questions first or arresting us. He was half automail and behaving like someone possessed. You cannot tell me that he was not capable of that.”

“You shot a superior officer and your commanding officer admitted to assassinating the country’s leader. What either of them have done in their pasts or what they are capable of is not the issue here either. The fact is that you are being charged with a crime.”

“The fact is that I have just given you more than enough reasons to justify my actions,” she said. “But you are not listening.”

“I do not listen to killers. I interrogate them.”

“Well, pardon me if I do not feel that those things should be somehow related.”

The interrogator glared at her, but Riza did not flinch. Whether she had her guns on her or not, she was much too strong to let some petty little man bother her.

********

“They really are going to try to persecute me?” Ed asked Roy, sounding more helpless than he wanted to sound. He also felt it was a selfish question, considering where Al was at the moment, but for just once in his life, he felt selfish. Even a little bitter at his own brother—though he wouldn’t dare admit it aloud.

“The word is prosecute, Fullmetal,” Roy said, standing and going to Ed’s bedside. “And it looks that way.”

Ed wrapped his arm around himself. “I meant what I said the first time.” Gold eyes looked up at Roy’s dark one. “What do you think they’ll try to do? They’re charging me for being AWOL, right?”

“They are, but there is a lot of evidence to show you were held against your will,” Mustang told him. “I really think your charges will be dropped.” The older man lowered the metal bars that held Ed in at night and sat just on the edge of the teen’s bed, turned so that he could face him. His right hand tentatively rubbed over Ed’s automail arm in a comforting gesture.

“I can’t feel that, you know,” Ed said, though he knew that was exactly why he wasn’t running away at the innocent gesture. Had it been anywhere real on his body I would have caused a violent reaction. Roy just shrugged and continued to do it.

“I think more than likely, they will pin your capture off on someone else. Likely on me.”

“Like you said earlier, the JAG attorneys were all hired under the fuhrer. They want revenge. My only hope is for the judges who were appointed by parliament.”

Ed looked down at his cast, thinking back to how his therapist had told him he could trust Mustang. He didn’t want to trust anyone, and a few months ago, the idea that it might be his commanding officer was laughable, but after how much the man had done so far, it didn’t seem quite as ridiculous. “Do you think they could try to make it look like I wanted it?”

“I don’t see how. There is still a double standard when it comes to men and women involved in rape.”

Mustang paused, and the teen realized his commanding officer was waiting for him to calm. That single word had caused Ed’s entire body to tense up and forced him to shut his eyes tight. He didn’t even register he’d done it until that pause of the man’s deep steady voice.

“Take a few deep breaths, Ed,” Mustang said. He didn’t apologize for bringing it up like Al and Winry did, and he didn’t dance around the subject like some of the workers and Riza. He just helped Ed get over this moment so they could continue talking. It was reassuring, in a way, that the older man didn’t push a topic, but wouldn’t skip over it as though he was frightened of it.

Ed opened his amber eyes and looked up at the single raven-colored one. “Better?” Mustang asked. He nodded. “Can I go on?” Another nod. “The double standard is still there, but not so strongly as years before. Fifteen years ago, a young, teenaged boy pressured into sexual relations with an older woman would have been treated as something that the teen should be grateful for, a boy’s dream.”

Ed’s brows furrowed, creating just the slightest crease where they met. “But it’s rape.” He felt proud of himself for being able to say the word, if even for a situation so different from his own.

“So few see it that way,” Roy said, this time squeezing Ed’s hand and seeming to stare at the cream hospital wall.

This, of course, led to an interesting scene for Jean Havoc to unintentionally disrupt, looking at the two on the bed, and at their clasped hands.

*********

Anton found himself under the scrutiny of Judge Campbell, the older man’s blue eyes watching him carefully as Heymans Breda passed his motion.

“You really have no objections to my acceptance of these motions?” the judge asked.

“None at all,” Anton said. “It solves quite a few of our problems, actually, with housing the four. Considering the many problems we have in housing a civilian who is underage and yet not in a military prison, the fact that both Mustang and Elric need someone to help care for them and need more care than the prison can afford to give, and that we need a single location to keep them all, I have no opposition to Lieutenant Breda’s request.

The judge actually seemed doubtful of Anton’s honesty. The younger man just looked at him and smiled. “Innocent until proven guilty, your honor. And even if guilty, this does eliminate a number of problems until we can get them in jail or executed as they would deserve. If guilty, of course.”

And if seeming to show some consideration to the captives could help the attorney win some points with the judge, he certainly wasn’t going to complain with that. This truly did serve all necessary purposes.

Still, Judge Campbell, a man known to believe in justice and law was not about to simply believe that somehow Anton had a change of heart, but the blond man knew it was in his best interests to appear as though he was trying to do the best possible thing for everyone. He could go in like he was seeking revenge for those trying to establish a new government that would almost surely disapprove of him and the current JAG attorneys. Probably uncover their pasts as well, and that was something that the chief of the department could not afford. At all.

********

“Oh, oh, I’m sorry,” he said. Roy looked over his shoulder at the man, half regretting it because it pulled his left shoulder more than was comfortable considering the still-healing stitches.

“Just come in, Jean,” Roy told him. “What is it?”

“Breda got the approval for you all to be put on house arrest at your place, Roy, and since it’s easier to guard one place and you and the boss have been… well, close… since everything, it just made sense to put you together instead of sending him back to the dorms, which are harder to guard and have lots of people coming and going from them, and since you… kind of need one another, but need Al and Riza, who are your caregivers or something like that, Breda got the approval for them to stay there with you once you’re released from here tomorrow, and armed guards will stand out front to make sure you can’t escape, but the team will be left in to see you at specified times and so will Miss Rockbell, so I’m here to tell you, which I did, so I’ll go.”

Roy looked amused as he watched Havoc leave. He then looked down at Ed, saying to the teen, “I think that was all in one sentence.”

“One breath too,” Ed said, surprising Roy by actually finding the ability to give a small laugh.

Roy found it in himself to smile at the teen despite their situation. “I think we startled him, holding hands like this.”

And almost as soon as it was out of his mouth, Roy regretted his words, watching as once again, Ed withdrew physically and emotionally.