Chapter Text
Ed entered the apartment, flinging his suit jacket over the nearest chair and untying his tie before that too, followed the path of the jacket. The gloves weren't far behind.
He hated the uniform the most out of his dealings with the FBI so far. It was too confining.
"How are you feeling?" Roy had appeared, leaning on the doorframe of the adjoining room, watching Ed with amusement.
A loaded question. While Ed had filled him in with the details of the case in his texts on the plane, Roy hadn't dared broach the Question then. The, is this something that is going to make you happy, question. Is this worth it while we wait on leads, question. The same question that plagued every action or inaction in the past few years since they had arrived in this strange new world
Ed was prepared nonetheless.
"We aren't living under a bridge scaring homeless people with magic anymore… and it pays better than transmuting gold necklaces and trying to find a pawnshop that will buy them from people who don't legally exist." Ed said dryly.
They had struggled, tremendously, when they first appeared in a similar shack in what Edward now knew to be the middle of a settlement in the Appalachian mountains. A shack empty of people and echoing of alchemy. Notebooks and strange text books had littered the cabin. A crash course of information to this realm they were in that Hohenheim had squirreled away in what they could only assume was the other man's own desperate attempts of information gathering.
The only signs of recent life was a simple undated note in Hohenheim's neat scrawl, left on a wooden table:
I can't find a way back. Alchemy exists in a paradox here.
After much discussion and reading through the scant material left by Hohenheim, they concluded that they were stuck in limbo in this strange new world.
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
They couldn't stay in the cabin forever, and there was an uneasy feeling that it was unwise to do so anyway.
So Ed and Roy eventually left the cabin. Seeking what, they weren't sure, but being stuck in the middle of nowhere was not going to help them.
It took a while to figure out how the currency worked. How everything worked, really. Homelessness had afforded them many things, including the ability to gather information while virtually invisible. Ed had quickly learned to hide his automail limbs, though he couldn’t do anything about his unusual eye color that made people so incredibly uneasy here. They had tried to find employment quickly, but were also quickly shot down by all the more reputable businesses. Without a "social security card" employment and even housing seemed impossible. What even was a credit score?
It wasn’t like back home where, other than government jobs, documentation was an unnecessary formality in most small towns. And Ed couldn’t exactly fix things with alchemy in exchange for cash as he had in tight spots in Amestris when he was younger. The first (and last) time he performed alchemy in front of anyone had been a grizzled older vagrant who had shared food and information about their current town with them. Ed had attempted to fix the man’s broken lantern.
The man had all but attacked him, declaring him a yellow eyed demon, quoting scripture and pelting them both with rocks until Ed and Roy scrambled to grab their things and vacated the area. Luckily, Roy admonished, the ravings of a madman would garner only a small amount of attention, if any.
In lieu of employment, they discovered silver and gold were very valuable and also very easily transmuted in this world, and virtually untraceable. Their first problem was finding a reliable buyer.
They came to the same problem as when they sought employment: most pawn shops needed at the very least a driver’s license. In this new world of information and connectedness, they needed documents that they did not have and could not forge, even with alchemy…
Roy tilted his head and the corners of his mouth twitched.
"Good. Issac called earlier."
Ed froze. "Any news?"
"Unfortunately nothing more than dead ends. But he wanted to see how you were doing."
Ed scowled. "He could have called me himself."
Roy shrugged.
Isaac the US Marshall, brother to Abraham the pawn shop owner that bought Ed and Roy's illicit precious metals.
Abe was a stout, overweight older Cherokee man who owned a pawn shop in one of the seedier downtown areas and a bar in one of the upscale areas of one of the small mountain towns they had drifted to. Abe, after much consideration and more than enough silver and gold, was willing to look the other way when it became clear that how it was acquired was not technically illegal, though the method used was not divulged to him.
“It’s better if I don’t ask,” he hsd assured them jovially as he counted out bills. "But I've got a younger brother who is interested in you two."
Then there was Isaac. A younger, smaller version of Abe with a more severe face and a temperament that suggested he prefered things by the book. Isaac who made them legal using what Ed could only assume was illegal means, but when pressed was met with a thin smile and a "I owe your old man."
And that was all Ed could get out of him because Isaac was tight lipped about the how and why he knew Ed's father, but assured them that he did not know Hohenheim's whereabouts.
It was only luck that Isaac the US Marshal, who didn’t ask questions but for whatever it was that Hohenheim did, was morally gray enough to illegally craft new identities for the man’s son and his partner.
After nearly six months living on the streets, they were finally legal by a stroke of sheer luck. It was Isaac who suggested a university.
“The best I could get you guys were immigration papers, social security cards, birth certificates, and GEDs. Enough to get you started. But honestly, most guys Ed’s age are in university anyway and it’s not like people in their thirties don’t go back to school,” he had assured Ed and Roy as they signed their new documents.
Taking computer literacy classes and spending most of their days researching at the local library gave insights on this new world and how to survive in it. Ed thought the internet was the greatest invention this world had to offer.
University was an obvious next step. It was clear they were going to be here a while, and Hohenheim was nowhere to be found. This world, despite its unnatural connectedness, gave no clues for the man’s presence or to alchemy, despite being on the other side of the array they had activated in that god forsaken cabin.
Getting into the University had been easy for both of them. The basic math and physical sciences classes were childsplay for them; testing out had been simple enough for most of those classes.
Roy decided to focus on fire sciences.
“You’re so predictable,” Ed had said, rolling his eyes.
Two and a half years in, and Ed had grown bored of the courses, itching for something new. He had initially thought that maybe he could do enough research into quantum mechanics, that if he dug deep enough he could find something to combine with his alchemy to get them back home. He had come up with nothing, and after failure after failure to make connections, he stepped away from that branch of research and decided to dive into some electives that caught his eye. Introduction to Criminal Justice. Criminology. Behavioral Research.
In the end he was set to earn a triple major, the university encouraging him to continue to get a Masters and PhD on their dime. NASA and JPL had also sent offer letters to him for him to consider. Rocket science. Now that was *fascinating*.
He was nearing the end of his semester when the department head of the criminal justice department sent out an email inviting those within the respective courses to attend a guest lecture for extra credit. Ed didn’t need extra credit, but Roy was going to be out of town doing some sort of practical exam for his Fire Investigation and Analysis class and Ed was bored.
When the stage lit revealing the FBI agents and a powerpoint screen, Ed had sighed and rolled his eyes. Death by powerpoint. He didn’t want to be here for that; though he hadn’t been sure what to expect. A large part of his criminal justice classes had been powerpoint based. He contemplated walking out if it got to be too boring, but his attention was caught at the turn of phrase the agent used. Catching monsters, huh?
Sure, it was predictable. But it lit a small spark he hadn’t felt in years. A thrill in his chest with the memories of the adrenaline of chasing down rogue alchemists.
Everything in the story clicked into place as Ed felt his brain making connections in the same way it felt when he was constructing experimental arrays.
It was fun.
In the end it had been a memorable hour-long lecture that he expected to fade into a memory after he left.
And then two weeks later he received a phone call from a restricted number...
"I figured you'd be home late so I bought some take out." Roy said easily, interrupting Ed’s train of thought.
"Thanks. I'm starving," Ed said gratefully. He gathered up his things and went to move past Roy, but paused. He took a deep breath and sighed before leaning his head against Roy's shoulder, eyes closed.
"Rough end to the case?"
"No. Not at all really. It's just. This is the beginning of what the rest of our lives may look like."
"Yeah." Roy moved an arm around Ed, supporting him in a half embrace. He kissed the top of Ed's head. "But that doesn't mean we are giving up. Your father is out there somewhere. Hopefully he has answers and insight we don't."
"And if he's not much help when we find him, where does that leave us?"
"We will burn that bridge when we get to it." Roy said grimly.
Ed made a frustrated sound. "You can burn the bridge. I'm going to beat the shit out of him and his cryptic bullshit that got us into this mess."
Roy laughed and turned towards the kitchen where their dinner waited. "I wouldn't expect anything less."