Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Mummy said daddy isn't allowed out of bed yet, and his voice is still sleepy," Elicia answered solemnly.

"His voice is sleepy?"

"Yeah! Winry said it must be the medicine, and that he can't talk because his voice won't wake up yet, and I asked daddy if that meant his neck was all prickly like when your leg falls asleep without the rest of you but he shook his head so I don't know what it feels like, but he can't talk yet. So since he can't read me a bedtime story I'm gonna read one to him!"

"That's very sweet of you, Elicia. And how is your daddy, other than strangely silent?"

"Mummy said it's like being sick, that's why she's in there feeding him soup. Did you know Ed can make soup? It's really tasty, Uncle Roy."

"...I did not know that, no."

"Ed's been doing lots of cooking! He said Al left his sense of taste on a gate and then he and Al started fighting over the salt shaker and Granny Pinako started shouting at both of them. She's scary. She shouts almost as good as Miss Riza! But she also took the salt away from Al and gave it back to Ed. Mummy said it’s nice having someone else making food.”

“That… that does sound nice for her.” A snicker came down the phone line. “But I never heard Ed cooking while he lived here.”

“Maybe he didn’t have a kitchen?” Elicia suggested. “Daddy said the food in the dorms is terrible and that was another reason to love mummy so much, and mummy says you can’t make good things without good tools, so maybe the dorms don’t have a kitchen he can borrow like he’s borrowing the Rockbell’s. Al said they haven’t finished building a proper kitchen yet, so when we stayed at their house he made a fire outside and we had sausages.”

The snickers turned to outright laughter. “You should ask Ed to suggest the dorms get some place to cook then.”

“Okay! I’ll… Ed! Ed, Uncle Roy says you need to talk to them about a kitchen. Uncle Roy, do you want to tell Ed? I’ve got to go read daddy his story!”

“What’s this about a kitchen?” Ed asked as he moved beside the girl.

“If Ed wants to talk to me I’ll ask him,” Roy promised. “You go tell your daddy to call me when he’s feeling better. Good night, sweety.”

“Good night Uncle Roy!”

“No seriously, what’s this about a kitchen, bas- uh...” Ed repeated as the phone was fumbled.

“Already experienced Gracia’s wrath at teaching her daughter bad words, Fullmetal?”

“Oh hah hah. Are you making fun of me?”

“Would I do that? I was just hearing Elicia praise your soup. And other culinary skills.”

“Before you start, Gracia tipped us off about your stress baking.”

There was a prolonged pause on the other end of the line. “Touche. So what is this about Maes’ ‘sleepy voice’? Have you found a drug to silence him?”

“Hah!” Ed laughed without humour behind it. “No, that’s us not wanting to tell Elicia the reason her father can’t talk is because he screamed himself hoarse.”

“Oh. That… had not occurred to me.”

“Yeah. So to update you properly: the surgery went well, no complications, just the usual lack of voice and abraded wrists - well, wrist - and a few bruises. Winry thinks he’ll be able to move around the house without help by next week.”

Chapter Text

When he heard two of his team had dragged their now legal colleague out drinking he was anticipating (dreading) many things, but this was not one of them. Roy Mustang paused at the edge of the booth. "Were you playing drinking games with rotgut?!" He'd expected to see Edward tipsy or flushed or sullen or, if life was not being cruel to the other for once, happy. He wasn't expecting to see the younger alchemist half curled up in a panicked looking Breda's lap while Fuery laughed at them both.

"He said the seat was uncomfortable and started using Breda as a pillow," Fuery reported as Roy slid into the booth next to Breda. And further explanation was cut off by Ed pushing himself up onto his elbows, staring at him with head cocked for several long seconds, then slithering forward to drop his head onto a surprised Mustang's lap.

"Fullmetal, what are you-"

"You're warm. It's cold, and you're warm, and I'm stealing your warm," Ed informed him bluntly.

He looked at his team expectantly. Fuery was the one that responded. "I think getting drunk turns Ed into a cat."

"'m not a cat. Al's a cat. He likes cats, and he's always sitting and staring at things and reaching out to bat at them like a cat and he bought this feather toy to play with while he was recovering and Winry made the weirdest choked faces at it, but I dunno why, if he wants to tickle himself with a bunch of feathers on a stick he can," Ed declared with impressive lung capacity.

Roy and Fuery looked at each other with mutual ‘could he really mean…' expressions before Kain broke down into helpless giggles. Roy busied himself taking a gulp of his drink. Please oh please let that have been more innocent than it sounded, because he was NOT explaining such things to his subordinates. Any of them, no matter how confused Breda was looking.

"…anyway, you know how we were worried Ed may be an aggressive drunk? Apparently it turns him into a cat."

"Still not a cat! Can't be a cat. Cats eat people that try to put them on a leash," Ed protested with a clumsy wave in the direction of his watch chain. "They certainly don't come BACK. Sometimes I can't believe I let you talk me into it, bastard. Or that you told him to." The last was punctuated by kneeing Breda.

"Better than getting yourself tossed in a Cretan jail as a spy, chief," the other retorted with a jab back at the offending knee. Ed growled.

Roy facepalmed. "So how much HAS he had to drink?" A cuddly Ed was outside his experience. Ed's normal form of tactile appeared to be hitting things, not napping on them.

"One beer, which he didn't like much," Fuery began, "so Breda got him a whisky and a brandy and then we tried a round of one of those new drinks because we all wanted to know what pomegranate molasses was."

"An eastern speciality, which is why it went out of fashion," Roy said as he craned his head to the menu and tallied the amount of alcohol consumed. "You know Edward is…" Golden eyes gleamed up at him, and out of respect for their positions (and sheer self-preservation) he refrained from the obvious short joke. "That Fullmetal has two automail limbs, with the resulting decrease in blood volume?"

From the surprised and sheepish expressions crossing his men's faces, that fact had not occurred to them. Although not to Edward. "Most of the lower limb blood is in the thigh tissue not the calf and I still have half of mine, so even with the scapula loss my loss of blood volume should be closer to a quarter and not a third! And it shouldn't affect ethanol metabolism that much."

"At least we know he doesn't get less alchemist-y when drunk," Breda muttered.

Roy poked Ed in the shoulder. "I have seen people with automail drinking, and I assure you it makes a difference. Now sit up and eat some chips so we don't need to take you home in a wheelbarrow."

Chapter Text

Kimblee shrugged. “Creta is still skirmishing and fighting is upswinging again. It won’t go to outright war yet, not for a few years, but within a decade? Focus is on the gorges near the South-West border. Rumours of advanced artillery and dangerous new explosives.” The alchemist grinned. “Which, off the record, I can confirm. Not that they can use something so unstable, but if West Command is asking me if it can be made useful they’re getting worried.”

Roy glowered at him. “And you’re telling me this why…?”

The other clasped his hands and leaned forward over the Colonel’s desk. “Because I’ve run missions through that area. Send a unit of soldiers and half will be dead before they see the enemy. Small squads of saboteurs is the favoured tactic. But once you break through into the open, a small squad struggles to bring enough-” and he grinned darkly at the tension creeping into Roy’s fingers, “- firepower. I thought you’d appreciate the warning.”

“What do you want, Zolf?” he asked flatly.

“The problem with sending us is that the paths are narrow and neither of us are good with Creta dropping a rockslide on our heads,” Kimblee continued blithely. “I overheard mutterings of using Strongarm, but after Ishval they’re cautious of him, and he’s not good at subtle. But what if there was a close combat specialist that could cover our backs? Someone good at twisting terrain defensively? Who could keep up with us on the battlefield?”

There was heavy silence for almost a minute. “How soon?”

He shrugged. “Several years. Central Command is strangely reticent. I presume they have their own plans. Havilland wants Fullmetal posted to Briggs to see how he fares, but she’s worried the Ice Queen will ensnare him. She’s the one that assigned me as his backup. I expect she’ll try for more missions in future if not outright poaching him for West City.”

“I wish her all the best, Fullmetal will fight that tooth and nail. Or tooth and automail.” The smile slid off the Colonel’s face. “She’d be disappointed. He refuses to kill. If he was deployed to war, Fullmetal would likely surrender his pocket watch and quit the military.” That he would be strongly encouraging this went unspoken.

“You know they won’t let him quit. Not for that, and not for anything else. Human transmutation? At best they’ll let him drop to reserve until the next war, at worst he’ll end up in my old cell,” Kimblee scoffed.

“That’s quite a serious accusation,” Roy countered quietly.

The other alchemist just smiled and tapped the unopened report. “The dead rogue had a trick up her sleeve and managed to get Alphonse’s helmet and breastplate off. I’m not an idiot Flame, and they confirmed it once they’d finished shouting at me for taking out the witness. I was wondering why Bradley would bend the rules to let a kid sit the exam, but if they were conscripting him anyway…?”

There was no response, and after waiting another minute Kimblee offered a mocking salute before rising to leave.

“Why?”

He paused in the office doorway. “Because I dislike having my choke chain yanked as much as you do, Roy.”

Chapter Text

"And you can't do anything about the machine gun crew pinning us?"

"Oh, I'm sorry Flame, which of us is meant to be the precision crowd suppressant?"

Ed bit back a snarl as another wave of bullets raked their improvised bunker, and focused on inching that same bunker a little closer to… well, the equally improvised bunker belonging to the same military they (theoretically) did.

"And who is meant to be the artillery piece and is stymied by a wall!" hissed the alchemist crouched beside him.

The rattling stopped and Mustang risked poking his nose above the barricade. A snap and a thin tongue of fire swooped up and expanded with a roar, surging to incinerate a cluster of mannequins making for their position. Hopefully Briggs was handling their batch better, and curse whatever suicidal idiot decided setting a second wave of the things on the 'invading rebellion' was a good idea, because between that and the machine gun it was actually working.

"Unlike you I can't just rip my materials from the air, and I'm running a little short on phosphorus!" Kimblee snapped back, sawing off another chunk of dismembered mannequin and cupping it in his palms. A crackle of alchemy and he lobbed his grisly grenade at their opposition. The bang was closer to a corner store firework and the resultant shouts angrier than panicked and he glowered at the chunk of rock between him and their targets. "What idiot makes their army out of… this?!"

"Someone who didn't want every suspicious State Alchemist in Amestris breaking down their door wondering why they ordered that much phosphorus?" Ed muttered as he tried to work out angles."It's not like you're the only two with a good reason for it."

Mustang snorted. "Trust me, if I requisition more than two hundred and fifty grams I get the awkward questions too."

Kimblee paused to stare at him. "What do they think you'd be doing with one third of a person?"

...and as always it was creepy NOT being the only person in the room to know the elemental breakdown of a human being. Carefully Ed waved his automail hand above their bunker and was answered with another spit of gunfire. "Okay, this isn't working. If Crimson and I cause a big enough distraction can you melt the barrel, or something?"

And he'd spent too much time in the north with him if it was so easy to slip into using Kimblee's codename. Maybe. They both used 'Fullmetal' more than anything else, but Kimblee was the only one to habitually call Mustang 'Flame'. It might be a State Alchemist thing.

Mustang shook his head. "They keep moving it, I'd need to immolate the crew."

Kimblee looked at him in exasperation. "You were the one who decided the optimal approach was a coup, you don't get to have scruples now!"

"What else can we do when Brass want to sacrifice the whole country?!" Mustang snapped back. "And I don't have an angle on the second nest, we'd still be pinned!"

"Oh I don't know, pump carbon monoxide into the Brass dining room then slit their unconscious throats?" Kimblee offered sarcastically.

"Or just fuse the doors shut and steal the radio," Ed suggested. "It's not like they have any alchem- incoming!"

The roaming mannequins were keeping most of the military's heads down, but either nobody had warned this squad the things were attracted to motion or they subscribed to Ed's school of 'just stab them' thought. Now the question was whether or not they were friendlies seeking shelter from the dolls pursuing. Mustang's flames parted around them and one private had such a relieved expression Ed thought they had to be, but the lieutenant locked eyes with the trio of alchemists and grabbed for a grenade. "Traitors!"

Clap. The ground buckled and the squad staggered before a wave of rock knocked the two privates flying. The lieutenant, curse him, managed to leap over the worst of it. Ed shoved to his feet, keeping low, and behind him were twin crackles of alchemy as the others tried to keep him from getting shot.

The lieutenant was going for the pin again, holding the grenade high to keep it from his perfectly-average-height lunge. Ed ignored that and brought his automail knee crashing into the man's groin. There was a high pitched cry of pain and behind him a startled silence. The unarmed grenade was lightly caught and tossed back over towards Kimblee as the soldier crumpled in slow motion.

"Efficient," Kimblee chuckled, rolling the explosive in his palms. Apparently there was little he could do to enhance it though, as he slid free the pin and carefully lobbed it onto the improvised roof of their opponents' shelter.

Boom. The timbre of the resultant shouting was much unhappier, but the machine gun singing out seconds later suggested it hadn't worked. The lieutenant curled at his feet struggled to reach his pistol and Ed sharply rapped his wrist to dislocate it. The pop and yowl made him wince, made Mustang flinch slightly too, but better than killing him. Except now what? This is when he'd truss someone up and hand them over to the military or the police. Well, the trussing up he could still do.

"If you'd surrendered the Fuhrer would have blamed your scum of a commander for corrupting you!" the soldier spat at Ed. "Now instead of shooting you he'll have your whole family made an example of!"

Ed resisted the urge to break the idiot's nose, glanced up to see the others exchanging a grim look before Mustang raised one hand to snap and flicked his head in wordless signal to get out of the way. What?

"We can't take a prisoner with us, Fullmetal," Mustang said, answering the unspoken question. "Would you leave him to be eaten alive?"

Kimblee wasn't mocking, for once, just watching curiously as the weight of that statement settled on him. If they let him go, he'd try to kill them. If they left him the mannequins would consume him sooner or later, if crossfire didn’t first. An oath not to kill slammed against knowledge that this man would happily harm Al and Winry to get back at Ed. But he didn't deserve to burn alive for that, nobody would, and Mustang would do that for Ed to protect a subordinate, take that burden because Ed didn't have the courage to slide a blade across his throat. Every option was a waste.

A waste.

A sick swooping sensation filled Ed's stomach and he looked down at the soldier pinned under his knees, not even hearing the words the man was spouting. The three of them were pinned. Their allies might be dying waiting on alchemical backup. This soldier would kill them and everything they cared for if he wasn't killed first.

Killing a captured prisoner was a betrayal of all he'd stood for.

Mechanically Ed grabbed the scruff of the man's jacket and dragged him the few steps back to their shelter. "Fullmetal, we can't handle a capt-!" Mustang started to protest.

A heave and his burden was sprawled at Kimblee's feet. "Phosphorus," Ed cut off sharply. "Point seven kilograms. Enough to blow the bunker and get us clear, right?"

Kimblee's slow smile settled like ice in his gut.

Ed wasn't sure what their prisoner was thinking when a hard yank tore open the front of his jacket, the other alchemist pressing a palm to his bare chest while the other cupped the nape of his neck. It looked almost romantic and maybe the soldier was thinking the same thing in rather more distressing ways, because he clawed at a seemingly uncaring Kimblee with his good hand and kicked wildly.

"Edward," Mustang said softly, startling him. Why was the bastard using his name now? Mustang's expression was tight and grim and Ed was abruptly terrified of what condemnations might get heaped on him, but the Colonel was looking at Kimblee. "When I give the word, drop the corner of the barricade, make a straight path to the nest. I'll cover you."

Right, they'd done this before. Crouched between the two men he pressed his palms together, visualised the necessary circles and let the energy build. Kimblee looked past him and gave a nod as the soldier yelped and behind Ed there was a snap and a rush of fire streaming over their heads. "Now!" Mustang barked.

The wall folded in and back on itself. "We'll remember you," Kimblee murmured to the soldier, mockingly comforting, then swung to his feet and heaved. A beat of confusion and Ed realised what the plan was, redirected his alchemy to jerk the ground between the bunkers, like snapping a towel, and the rolling wave of cobblestone tumbled the screaming man across the divide until he hit the bunker with a thud and groan. The covering flames receded and the man started shouting he was a friendly, to help, that there were three rogue State Alchemists, and from the bunker there was a panicked yell to run and still Ed was frozen watching in dreadful anticipation-

-and Kimblee was crashing into his side, tattoos fading as Ed was shoved left and half spawled in Mustang's lap with a heavy weight across his back, not enough time to protest the manhandling before the world erupted into pressure and noise.

Someone's hand squeezed his flesh shoulder reassuringly.

The white noise faded and the trio scrambled back to their feet, hopping past the damaged remnants of their own bunker - cobblestones made decent sharpnel, good to know, could he forget that titbit now? - and Ed halted and stared at the void where their opposition had been. There was still some wall over there, and a bit of brickwork beyond, but mostly it was… rubble. And soot. And a twisted bundle of metal that was probably the machine gun, and he really didn't want to look at the chunks of red that was like the very worst of the chimera basements he'd investigated and that was…

"Break down after the fight, Fullmetal!" Kimblee snapped, snatching an elbow and dragging him onwards. "We've got you, now move."