Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(cover art by Akarri)

 When they finally found Roy, Maes thought it was already too late.

It was one of the deepest rooms in the lab, and with the power knocked out all they had to work with was the faint glow of the emergency light strips, an eerie sort of blue-green luminescence that barely managed to illuminate the room at all, never mind help clarify what had happened here. Just that the cage, formerly a host to what Maes could only guess to have been a chimera, had been violently broken- and that said creature was now nowhere to be seen.

It was Maes who carefully went after the three researchers on the floor, checking for a pulse in each one of the cooling, blood soaked bodies.

“Dead,” he said quietly. “Each one.”

Each one looked like they had been clawed to death. By something... big.

Not human.

Maes swallowed hard.

Ed squirmed another step back in the darkness, though Maes couldn’t tell if he was trying to get further away from the cage or the dead bodies. Either way, he could not blame him. “Well, what now?” the kid asked uncomfortably; the emergency lights glinted off his bladed arm as he waved it in the air, facing him in the dark. “Do we keep going?”

Maes nodded tersely, half lowering his weapon but tense all the same, all too wary of a chimera in the shadows. Perhaps, even, the monstrosity that had done- this. “I think this is probably the source of all this trouble. Whatever chimera that caused all of this came from this room, but they’re certainly not here anymore…”

By his side, Ed tensed a little again, his face sallow and unhealthy in the dim lighting. “Yeah, and look around, Hughes. I bet whatever the chimera did to these guys it was in self-defense. And now we’re supposed to put him down like a sick dog, right?”

“Ed…”

“It’s fucked up and wrong. The military researches on them like they’re braindead animals, then acts like it’s a cardinal sin for them to fight back. Calls us into-“

“If you want to try and reason with the animal that did all of this,” Maes gestured steadily about the carnage, “be my guest. If you want to lobby the military and speak out against chimera research, also, be my guest, but we’re not here to talk about animal rights. We’re here to make sure this chimera doesn’t hurt anyone else- including innocent civilians, Ed- people who have nothing to do with any of this at all.” Frowning a little, Maes returned his dagger to his sleeve as he picked up a nearby file, holding it out under one of the glowing light strips to try and get some more insight.

He was hoping this was all just a coincidence. One huge, horrible coincidence. He’d hoped for it since the moment the alarms had gone off, he’d hoped for it since he’d dragged Ed down here before Bradley could give the probable cease and desist order, and he was praying for it now as he squinted to read the file under the light.

He prayed for the best… even as his heart, more and more, feared the very worst.

“This isn’t that helpful,” he murmured, reading down the sheet. “It just says Creature Z…”

Ed made another small, unhappy sound, metal blade clanging with a cold and chilling ring against the wall. “That means it’s classified. If the animal used in a chimera was classified, or something like that- something they don’t want written down in too many places, I mean- they’ll call it Creature Z. The real name is only recorded in one or two places; probably not here.” Seeming to be done waiting in this dark, bloody room, Ed pulled away, squinting to follow the dripping, black blood stains along the floor and leaving Maes to scramble after him, file in his arms. “Al and I figured that out when we were looking into chimeras, what the military does with them. After N-“ Ed stopped, his small, dark form tensing a little against the wall. His voice wavered. “…you know.”

Maes, swallowing hard again, tightened his grip around the file in his hands, and said nothing.

He did know.

“…Anyway,” Ed went on, even more tense than before, only to stop at a fork in the path. Hesitantly, the alchemist took a small step left, then shook his head vehemently and swerved off in the other direction, not even stopping to explain himself or help Maes. “This way, this way- anyway, the military tries to keep it quiet, but they do a lot of sketchy shit. Does it say anything else?”

“What do you mean?”

Ed muttered something to himself, still seeming to be focusing more on the blood trail and the darkness and the flickering lights than what he was saying. “They have to record how dangerous the chimeras are, in case- well. In case of shit like this. It was based off how dangerous the animals were, how docile the chimera was, stuff like that…”

Made sense, Maes figured. He glanced uneasily back down at the file, holding it closer to the wall to try and decipher the tiny print in the darkness. No… no… not that… no…

He stopped.

He gulped.

“…All it says is to approach with extreme caution. Use of lethal force is necessary and condoned.”

Ed paused again, lingering uncertainly against the wall, metal blade still raised and back even tenser than before.

Then, he kept on going without another word.

Maes followed close behind, heart pounding so fast and hard it felt like the blood was racing in his ears and his chest was tight and screaming from the anxiety. The alarm continued blaring, faint blood trails gleaming and almost luminous under the strange lighting, slick under his feet, and every quick turn and locked door that barged past only sent his heart down further into his stomach- because he was afraid of what he would find.

He hadn’t spoken to Ed about his fears just yet. They were so close to surely unfounded he hadn’t been able to work up the nerve, too wary of how things might end today if he was wrong. And part of him was still praying that he was wrong, because the alternative was just too horrible to consider.

The research labs in the basement of HQ, a closely guarded secret but one that Maes, at his station and rank, was fully aware of, had sent them into a basewide lockdown, not thirty minutes ago today. There’d been procedures to be followed, gates to be shut, guards to be set out- but Maes had had his fears growing for weeks now, and Maes had seen the alarm gone off himself, had heard the escaping scientists gasping about an out of control chimera, and he’d known, oh, god, he’d known how paranoid he was being- he’d known how unlikely it was- how almost certainly wrong he was-

And he’d known that, on the very slim chance that he was right, that was his one and only chance to act.

He’d taken Ed, the poor, unfortunate boy who’d been by his side only by happenstance, and he’d ran.

It was dangerous. It was probably stupidly dangerous, because if he was wrong, and this was just a wild beast tearing the labs apart- here Maes was, completely untrained for it, and here Ed was, fully capable of fighting it off but with a soft spot for chimeras a mile wild, and none of the other soldiers knew where they were. This was a horrible, horrible situation and a really, really bad idea.

And he was too desperate to care.

If there’s a chance…

Just the slightest chance…

Ed came to a sudden halt again, pacing grumpily at a fork in the corridors, one hand clenching at his pants leg while the blade continued twitching by his side. “Hughes, I don’t know about this. I really, really don’t like this. There’s blood everywhere, we don’t know anything about what we’re going up against except that he’ll probably wanna kill us for being military, nobody knows where we are… why are you so insistent about this? It’s not safe- I really think-“

And then, out of nowhere, he stopped dead.

It was so suddenly Maes almost ran into him, barely stopping himself from toppling into his back at the very last moment. “What is it?” he demanded, voice just a hushed whisper as he jumped to move around him, shaking him by the shoulder. “Ed, what-"

“Shh,” the alchemist hissed. “Shh, shh… listen. Do you hear that?”

Hear something? Under the blaring alarms and his own panicked, pounding heart, no- no, Maes did not hear something. He could barely hear Ed’s words, for god’s sake. “Ed, I-“

“This way!”

“Wha- Ed-!” he cried, but Ed was already pulling him back down the left path, towards an even darker depth of the lab. "Ed, wait-"

God, Maes thought as he was tugged powerfully along behind a suddenly running kid barely even a third his size, some day this kid is going to be the death of me.

It then occurred to him, somewhat morbidly, that it was quite possible that day was going to be today, if the monstrous chimera that had slaughtered those three scientists back there was still in here, and Ed was dragging him straight to it.

It wasn't just Ed; there was something about that whole State Alchemy program, he determined as he was tugged along, something that made all its members bull-headed and stubborn and far too reckless to live past thirty, and made them drag along those around them on their stubborn and dangerous missions into reckless-land, and, oh, all right, he was a bit of a hypocrite, because the only reason Ed was in the mess was because Maes had dragged him along, but-

"There!" Ed suddenly cried, his bolt of a run jerking to a stop so suddenly Maes nearly tumbled to the floor. "Here, it's- do you hear that, Hughes? It's coming from right here, I think, do you- do you hear that...?"

Maes groaned, rubbing a hand over his face again. No, aside from the still steady, monotonous call of the emergency alarms that echoed anew with every corner, aside from Ed loudly babbling at him, no, there was nothing-

Maes, his mouth already half open to order Ed to just explain, stopped.

He frowned.

There... was something.

Ed had taken them to another door, this one marked with symbols on the outside to designate it as some such lab just like all the rest, and by the emergency lights on the floor this wasn't even close to an exit. The door was shut, and with the alarms still blaring it was almost impossible to listen through it, wouldn't have even tried if not for Ed, but...

He could hear it, now.

It sounded almost like... sobbing.

That was it. Deep, guttural, shaking sobs.

Sobs that did not sound entirely human.

Maes exchanged another tense look down with Ed. In the darkness and thin glow of the emergency lights, he looked almost green, sharp eyes wide and silent at the sound, his mouth fallen to a thin line, and Maes knew that he had come to the exact same conclusion that he had.

"Ed," he said, as quietly as he could and still be heard in the clamor. He reached out to touch his shoulder just as the alchemist moved to try the knob. "Whatever it is that's in there, if it tries to hurt either of us, you can't hesitate, all right? Just because the military's probably been cruel to it so far doesn't mean it'll do anyone any good for you to get yourself hurt."

Ed's eyes narrowed up at him, still silent and now, guarding reluctance. Guarding anger. At the probable injustice of it all, at the unfairness, at what had happened to Nina, all of it. But Ed was also not a child, anymore, and Maes could see in his eyes that he heard the truth in his words as clear as he heard the sobbing behind the door.

"I know, sir," he muttered darkly, quickly casting his eyes away, and he did not look at him again as he returned his focus back to the mission at hand, and at last tried the door.

It was not locked, to both of their surprises, and raising another question for Maes; if the chimera was behind this door, and it was sounding like it was, how had the chimera gotten inside at all? How had it opened the door? Was it more human than animal, more human than Nina had been, more human than a wild beast the military would want to put down like a diseased dog?

Because the ravaged, clawed apart bodies that he'd seen, so savage, so bloody... that could've only been the work of an animal.

Ed, with another wary, tense sort of breath, slid in front of him, and pushed the door open to allow their way into the rest of the room.

From over Ed's head, at first, all Maes could discern was that it was very dark, just like the rest of the whole underground lab complex, and rather small, the lights on the opposite wall flashing at him from what felt like less than ten feet away. He blinked hard several times, the flashing lights so bright and constant they felt burned into his eyelids even as he squinted down into the room, trying to discern details, searching for the source of the sobbing which had only gotten louder when Ed had opened the door, that deep, cracked sound of grief- of an animal in pain.

At first, all there was to make out was a great, trembling lump on the floor. Covered in something, like a blanket or an especially large coat, hiding the creature's humanity (or lack thereof) in its entirety. Just huddled there shivering there on the floor, and at first, that was all Maes could see.

Then in the flashing of the lights, there was a gleam of metal, the figure slowly, tremulously lifting something off the floor, and Maes shouted, "Gun!" as he threw himself onto Ed, and there was a sharp blue sizzle of alchemy to spring a wall up before them just in time for the gunshot.

Maes hit the floor gasping, curled protectively over Ed and completely stunned in the same breath, and looking down to the young alchemist saw him just as shocked as he was. His eyes were huge and face drained white, hands still pressed against the floor from the wall he'd brought up to protect them, that had protected them, because they weren't shot right now, but in his eyes Maes saw the same disbelief that had nearly stopped his own heart.

Had they just been shot at?

By a chimera?

"Stay down," Maes hissed, planting his hand back down on the kid's neck as Ed started to rise, trying to keep him firmly down beneath his wall. "Ed-"

"Did we just fucking get shot at?" Ed craned his neck, not quite peering beyond the wall but still gaping up at him, hands falling out of their clap as he started to try and maneuver himself around, trying to get a better look while at the same time not expose himself to danger. "Did we just- you said gun, was that- what the hell was that?"

Maes just shook his head back, hand still pressed to the back of Ed's neck. He had no idea what the hell it was, he hadn't even been able to glimpse anything beyond that shivering lump on the floor before he'd seen the gun. He glanced nervously back to the door behind them, the door that he just been puzzled over because how on earth could a chimera have opened it unless they were more human than animal- but if they were now being shot at...

"Full... Fullmetal?"

Maes, one hand still holding Ed down while the other moved to push himself up, search around the edge of the barrier, froze. Ed froze right next to him.

...oh...

Oh, no...

Another piercing, unsettling silence slid into place between them, between him and Ed and the chimera. The creature wasn't even sobbing anymore, perfectly quiet on the other side of Ed's barrier, the only sound the continued chorus of alarms that was so constant it had blended into almost nothing around them, a steady companion underneath the pounding of Maes' own heart. The lights flashed on, and Maes and Ed both stayed crouched there in safety, staring at each other in disbelief.

That one, single, fragile word... so low and cracked, so soft they surely could've misheard him- yes, Maes thought frantically, yes, that's it, we just misheard-

"F-Fullmetal...?" There was a soft, vague sort of shuffling sound from behind Ed's wall, cloth rustling together, then something almost metallic, a faint click of metal on metal. Then, "Fullmetal? Is that... is that you?"

Maes' heart clenched violently, then lurched to just sink like a stone.

Oh, no... oh, no... oh, no, please...

The young alchemist by his side was not looking at him, though, had not seen the blood drain from Maes' face or felt his heart grind to a halt. Ed, still tensed and taut like a coiled spring, began to creep up, and this time the hand on his neck was shrugged aside without so much as the slightest hesitation. His sharp, brilliant eyes were narrowed in the flashing lights, searching and heavy with all of the dread that weighed on Maes' own heart, and no longer allowing himself to be stopped, he pushed himself out from behind the wall to face the chimera.

Maes, his heart in his throat, followed him.

The chimera was still pressed back against the far side of the room, shrouded in what Maes at last realized was a lab coat. A lab coat meant for someone far bigger than him, because it dragged around his form like a winter blanket, only a hint of bare toes visible at the hem as the creature scrabbled to pull it up higher at their approach, a makeshift hood for his head that shrouded his whole face in darkness and left his whole form indistinct and uncertain. He scrabbled back a little more against the wall, still curled on the cold floor, still trembling, a tiny whimper crawling out to tug at Maes' heart.

And Ed, as carefully as if approaching a wild animal, inched forward.

"...Colonel?"

The tightly curled, trembling figure tensed back against the cold, opposite wall again. The heavy coat stayed hooded over his head, so much so that Maes couldn't even catch a single glimpse of his face.

But he nodded.

He nodded, one very slight, trembling twitch of his hood, and that was all it took for Maes' world to come crashing down around him.

But then, Roy was scrabbling to press himself back tighter against his corner, gun wavering back off the floor to tremble between them, the sleeve shaken so far over his hand all Maes could glimpse was something leathery and thick and decidedly not skin. "W-who- who's with you? Who is it?" His voice sounded garbled and strange, somehow, muffled in a way that Maes couldn't quite understand. "Fullmetal?"

Ed lingered back by his side, unmoving and silent at the almost plaintive request, wide eyes darting between the two of them, plainly stricken and Maes even worse. Even through that strangely warped, muffled voice, he heard the fear there, so unlike his friend, and it felt like there was a steadily cascading roar in his head as he dared to inch forwards again, hands help up in the universal gesture for peace. "It's just me, Roy... Maes. Are you- are you-..."

The words stumbled together in his mouth, failed, and then, died, his are you okay falling apart before it'd ever even hit the air.

He wasn't okay.

He wasn't okay at all.

"Can you put the gun down?" he asked instead, swallowing hard, coughing a little to even get those words out at all. Because the gun was still in the air, wavering unsteadily between the two of them, because he'd shot at them and was still trembling furiously down on the floor, and with him cornered now like a trapped, frightened animal... "Roy, it's just us. It's okay, you're safe now, so just- just, please, put the gun down..."

But Roy did not put the gun down, and a heartbeat later, the emergency alarms and flashing lights pierced through his skull and struck him with the reality that they were not safe. Roy was not safe. There were people still looking for him and Maes didn't know how long they'd be able to hold them off. Roy had that gun because Roy knew people were looking for him, hunting for him, and he wanted to be able to protect himself at any and all costs.

The colonel jerked again, breaths raspy, and Maes ached with the need to tear down the hood, to see, but Roy wasn't anywhere near close enough for him to reach and Maes wasn't suicidal enough to try. He stayed there just huddled up and shaking, head twitching back and forth, and so frightened and so obviously hurt it was more than he could bear.

But it was Ed who broke the terrible silence, the alchemist abruptly bolting into action between them, so sudden and strong it was as if he was the only sane one still in this room. "We don't have time for this! Both of you, we can't do this now; the military could be right behind us! We have to get out of here right now!"

Roy flinched badly at those words, another tiny whimper tearing past his hands, and Maes was alternatively heartbroken and infuriated, half of him needing to hold him and the other half shouting that it didn't matter because he was never letting those dammed "scientists" lay a finger on him again- but none of it mattered, because Ed was right. They were out of time. They'd been out of time since the alarms had gone off, since Roy had vanished three weeks ago, and now there was nothing left for them to do but run.

"Ed's right," he grated out past gritted teeth, moving closer as well. "We've got to get moving, now. Roy-..." Maes trailed off and cursed, hand dragging through his hair as he paced, mind racing. How the hell were they going to get out of here? Even if they could navigate back through the lab while avoiding the search teams, there'd be soldiers guarding the entrance and while Colonel Mustang would perhaps be able to bluff his way past a few... well, by the way he was covering his face, Maes doubted he looked very much like Colonel Mustang, anymore.

But with those whole place crawling with soldiers, then with Roy huddled up there with a bullseye all but painted on his face-

"The sewers," Maes muttered at last, turning to Ed again. "Ed, HQ is built right over the sewer system. Do you think you can transmute your way there and then find your own way out?"

"I- yeah, yeah, I can do that. I can do it." The alchemist flexed his dangerous hands again, palms already hovering not even an inch apart. "But what about you?"

"People will miss me if I disappear off of base. They'll notice that I'm gone and when they realize Roy is gone, too, too many people will be watching me to try and find him... I have limitations that you don't. You'll be able to disappear." Maes paced back and forth, heart pounding hard on a race to a finish line he didn't want to meet, listening again for the very slightest sound for any sort of approach from the hallway. "Ed, you had a mission out of town tomorrow. You're still going on it. You and Al take Roy and get out of the city as fast as you can, and get him somewhere that you think will be safe."

He didn't even need to ask Ed if he would do it.

He'd come with him this far.

The alchemist was already nodding, brow furrowed as he started pacing over the floor, probably searching for the best place to transmute his way out. Maes was too stressed to even be closed to relieved, but it was something, and he finally allowed himself the briefest sliver of a smile.

A smile that was quickly wiped away with a gutwrenching pang of trepidation and sorrow, when he turned back towards the still trembling chimera- Roy- on the floor.

"Roy?" he asked carefully, lowering his voice and his knees as he sank down closer towards his best friend. Roy flinched back away from them again, a muffled noise of panic escaping him as his covered hands shot up, grabbing at his hair and skin to- to shield his face from view, Maes realized with a gasp. He'd stayed shrouded in the oversized lab coat this whole time, face hooded without exception, but now it was worse; now Maes couldn't even look at him. Roy couldn't bear to even let him try.

His sorrow hardened in his stomach, this time, morphing into ice cold, unshakeable rage.

Rage at Roy, no matter how misplaced and unfair it was, because how could he? How could he think that he and Ed would ever care what he looked like? How could he think he needed to hide his face from them? Rage at the so-called scientists that done this, because in his heart he knew the Roy that was his best friend wouldn't have hidden himself, that the Roy hiding know was scared and wounded on the inside and out and had only gotten that way because they'd hurt him. Then that rage morphed into a cold, hard spike of hatred for the military for condoning all of this, the whole of the military all the way up to the dammed Fuhrer.

But now was not the time for Maes to get angry.

Not while Roy's life still hung in the balance, and hung there so precariously with every last second they remained standing here in this lab.

"Roy," he cajoled gently again, hand still hovering between them while Roy's own kept scrabbling to hide his face. Behind him, he heard Ed clap once, twice, then start running his hands over the walls, searching for the best place to start. Damn it, they were running out of time. "Roy, are you hurt? Or- or will you at least be able to hang on until Ed gets you some place safe? Or does he need to look for a doctor in the city instead?"

Maes bit his lip, his mind already racing with the implications of it, because Roy certainly wasn't speaking up to stop it. There was Knox, Knox was always willing to help Roy no matter how he'd complain about it... even if Knox was a doctor, for, well, humans, and there was a chance Roy was not-

Another stuttery breath sucked past through gritted teeth and Maes shook his head at himself, violently shoving such thoughts to the very back of his head where they could not continue. "Roy, come on," he stressed desperately, waving his hand a little in front of his face, trying to get his attention. Why wasn't he saying anything? "We don't have much time! How badly are you hurt? Ed needs to know! Roy- Roy, look at me-... buddy, please..."

Roy mumbled something. Muffled still behind his hands, warped still in that way that Maes still could not identify, but above all else, was not normal.

And god help him, he wanted to be gentle, because Roy deserved it more than anything in the world right now- but they were out of time.

"Roy," he said again, harder now, with steel. "Roy, look at me-"

"I CAN'T!"

It was a bellow. A- a roar. An impossibly deep, throaty, guttural roar, so low it rattled his bones and so loud it struck through him like a bolt of lightning.

It was not, in any way, the sound of a human.

"I," Roy growled again, softer but a definite growl, "can't. I can't see, Maes."

Maes blinked. His heart, a band clenched tight around it and aching with each thud, silently dropped.

He couldn't- oh.

He couldn't see.

A stunned stretch of silence slowly expanded between them. Roy continued to crouch, shivering hard and panting like an overheated dog; then, with another brutal jerk, his hands flinched back up to more securely cover his face again, and instead of a growl, the next sound he made was a choked whimper of indescribable pain.

Then, there was a brusque clap behind him, a rumble of earth in time with an azure crackle of alchemy, and any time they'd had left for this conversation had run out. Ed was there, grappling with the colonel, pleading with him, "Come on, come on,", struggling to haul the man up to his feet. Roy reeled beside him, buckling straight to his knees, pained moans growing ever louder while Ed just looked desperate. "Come on, Colonel!" he begged, and with one mighty heave he hauled the poor man's limp arm right over his shoulders, supporting nearly his whole weight as he dragged him to the exit.

The very last thing Maes heard from the pair was Roy, gasping, "Marcoh- I have to s-see Marcoh-" before Ed clapped again, closing off the tunnel he'd made seamlessly and utterly to his view, and Maes was left alone.

Alone, and horrorstruck.

Several moments passed in complete stillness. The alarms continued blaring in his ears, lights still flashing, but in the darkness all Maes could see was his best friend huddled on the floor, covering himself in any way that he could, and undeniably, certainly, almost defiantly, not human.

Maes clenched his jaw, a cold, angry wave of sorrow and anguish washing through him in the deadly silence that remained.

Then, he steeled himself, turned, and strode away.

The file for the chimera remained, secreted and safe, tucked away beneath his uniform jacket.

Chapter Text

The early morning train ride out of the city was perhaps the tensest one that Ed had ever taken in his life.

He and Al sat awkwardly and perfectly silent across from each other in their private compartment, Ed unable to help fidgeting in his seat while his brother was still as a statue. Ed had been running on next to no sleep already as it was, but sitting there in the lulling motion of the train hadn't been enough to even try to tempt his eyes shut. He couldn't dare let it.

So instead, he simply sat there across from his brother, and waited. First occupied by listening to all the hustle and bustle around him; other passengers finding their seats, the training starting up under and around them, and then, when the train had started, staring as Central City passed by outside their window in a thick, dead silence.

He never dared let himself move. Not once did he let himself do anything more than breath twitchily through gritted teeth, each one shallow and nervous in his chest, and try to keep his eyes glued on pretty much anything but the figure he knew lay in terrible, terrified hiding, right inside his brother's chest.

Al, he could see, didn't move either. Not even an inch. In fact, Ed was pretty sure he was all but frozen in a fear all to his own, so scared of jostling the precious burden inside him that he braced himself with every tiny jolt of the train and looked so apologetic whenever he couldn't Ed was half-surprised he didn't say how sorry he was out loud.

Ed couldn't even blame him for it.

He gritted his teeth harder, fists shaking in his lap and the tension crawling just under his skin knotting his stomach, too, as he was held helpless but to just sit there and watch the city stroll by. They passed through the busy borders without incident, but even as they reached the sloping farmlands around the city, Ed still held himself motionless and silent.

They still weren't far enough yet.

It still wasn't enough.

The minutes ticked on by, so slowly Ed felt like he was going to scream. It was too still. Too quiet. How could it possibly be so damn quiet? The colonel had been panting, all but whimpering near constantly, but ever since they'd set out for the station this morning he wasn't sure he'd heard so much as a whisper from him. It had been nearly an hour, now... so long, and with such silence, it made Ed's own trepidation rise within him.

He almost would've preferred hearing those pained sounds all over again.

At least he'd be hearing something.

The train started to roll around the first bend, a slow, gentle curve that bent them from east to south, a track that they both knew very well. It was the same path, in fact, that they took all the time, the one that brought them back from Central to Risembool. A train that any other time would've had them both smiling and hugely relieved to be on at all, because as much Ed denied it to everyone else, Risembool was still home and Winry was still their best friend...

Well, as much as he'd really love to, Ed didn't feel any relief associated with this ride now.

He gritted his teeth again, glaring hard back out the window, and tried once again to just ignore the anxious, taut nerves trembling in his stomach and be as calm as he could.

He knew his brother physically could not experience anything that Ed, in his flesh and blood body, was right now. That Al was of course scared and nervous and guiltridden as all hell, and Ed would never say he was jealous or that Al was better off, because he knew how much his brother would give up to just feel something. But right now- right now, from the nausea tightening his stomach into unbearable knots, the tension that crawled under his very skin like a nest of bugs had broken inside him, the way the back of his neck felt hot and his ports ached and he just couldn't make himself sit still-

Fuck, Ed was pretty sure he was freaking out enough for the both of them right now.

"...Brother?" Al ventured at last, voice small and hesitant into the constant noise of the train. "Brother, can we...?"

Ed shook his head wordlessly, not allowing himself to say a single word. They'd discussed it before. They couldn't risk it on this train. They could've been followed and if they had, if at any point a soldier came looking-

They could not find the colonel curled up in plain sight in their compartment.

That was also the reason that he didn't say as such aloud to his brother. If their compartment had been bugged somehow, if there was anyone listening in...

Or, at least, that was the reason he told himself.

Ed knew a decent part of it was because if he spoked aloud, he didn't know if he'd be able to keep his voice steady. He knew Al would hear the weakness and how much he wanted to give in- and damn it, at least one of them had to be strong here.

Fuck, he didn't want the colonel to hear him having to say they still couldn't let him out.

Al turned miserably away at his silent shake of his head, soulful, longing eyes redirected back out the window as he wrapped his arms around himself, cradling his empty chest cavity like it was a precious treasure or an infant. If Ed listened hard enough, he could've sworn he could hear heavy breathing from behind his arms, but against the noise of the train around them and his own heart pounding in his ears, he wasn't so sure he wasn't imagining it entirely.

And still, they sat there together in silence, and they waited.

The train ride was four hours long in good weather, a time that they usually passed reading or napping or just talking. This ride, Ed passed by glancing at his pocket watch with nearly every minute, sweating as the time ticked by at a snail's pace and waiting- waiting- for the moment to come.

No one ever came to look into their compartment. If Ed hadn't spent so long being read into military operations and knowing just how slick they could be when they wanted to be, he would've taken a bit more relief from that than he did.

And then, at last, the minute hand on his watch ticked to bring them into two and a half hours into the ride, and Ed knew this had gone on for long enough.

He nodded once to his equally nervous brother, bringing his hands together to crack his knuckles, then stood. His brother stood with him, moving as gingerly as a ballet dancer or trapeze artist to press his own hands together, then bring the to the ceiling.

The hole that opened up with barely even a crackle of alchemy was neat and clean, the ceiling splitting apart to make just enough room for Al to be able to fit through. But the noise of the train got that much louder, metallic cranks and creaking bursting in his ears and now joined by the hot rush of wind overhead, a clamor that stampeded straight through the second Ed opened his mouth and tossed his words to be muffled and swept up by the wind. With a growl that he couldn't even hear himself, Ed snapped his mouth shut to give his brother a thumb's up instead.

It took a little more maneuvering from there for Al to help him squirm his way up through the new opening, luggage in his arms and the sun and wind buffeting him in the face in a splitsecond. It burned in his eyes and swept his hair about to whip in his face, blinding his eyesight into a nest of windswept hair and Ed cursed and spat, blocking the gale with his suitcase held up like a shield, but it was nothing. This was nothing- it had to be, if he wanted to help Mustang. He'd been in tighter spots before and he knew he'd be in tighter spots in the future, and he'd get through his one just fine.

Hell, Mustang had sent him onto a train, with zero warning or preparation whatsoever, then a twelve year old child without the slightest bit of military training, to catch terrorists as a fucking test before he'd ever stepped foot into his bastard office.

So yeah, he was pretty sure he could handle this.

Al joined him up on top of the train in a flash, hauling himself up with his powerful gloves and a series of noisy clanks but underneath the wind and the engine, even those barely got through. Nobody could've heard them, not even if Al was stomping around right on top of their compartment. Sighing in relief again, the sound stolen away by the wind whipping about them, Ed knelt back down, clutching at the train with his metal hand as tight as he could and squinting through windswept hair to find the the forest blurring by just on the border of the tracks.

It was stupid, risky, and crazy. In fact, Ed could already just picture the look on Mustang's face, if he'd done this on a normal mission then had to recount it to him in his office once all the action was done. It'd be the blindsided and agape one, the one with a blank stare and slightly open mouth that said I do not get paid enough for this, and at some point in the meeting, he'd be guaranteed to lecture him that just because you look five, doesn't mean you have to act like it.

It was, quite simply, probably a terrible fucking idea all the way around, but Ed didn't want to risk not thinking it necessary only to find out he was wrong.

Once Al had clambered safely up to join him, moving awkwardly all the while, Ed leaned back around to close the hole, leaving as little sign of their escape as possible. If they really were being followed, someone who knew what to look for would be able to find out what they'd done, but unless they were psychic, they'd never be able to tell just where in the train's path they'd made a break for it.

They'd be safe.

Just as long as they could make a safe landing, anyway.

"All right, Colonel!" Al shouted, his young voice edging just a hint over the roar of the wind whipping about them, then crouched for Ed to clamber his way into his arms and clutch at him as tightly as he could. "We're going to jump now! Try to sit still, okay? You'll be out soon!"

If Mustang made a noise at all in response, it was not audible over the sounds around them so loud it had made Al have to shout.

Just like he had in the train, whatever noises he was making were so quiet not even Ed could hear them.

Ed swallowed uncomfortably again. The knot in his stomach pulled just a little bit tighter, and when he looked back up at his brother, he could see he was just as unsettled as he was.

This was going to get way worse before it got better.

Al clutched him tighter to his chest and crouched himself, clearly preparing to jump. Ed took one look at the at the rushing ground below, squeezed his eye shut, and held on for dear life.

Cushioned (however uncomfortably) in his brother's arms, the bone-grating thump when Al landed was so deep he felt it vibrate down to his spine. He bruised against his brother's arms, teeth chattering together in his skull, and goddammit, ow, ow, OW! His head spun and pierced straight through with a solid ache, his stomach lurched with the violence of it, stammered scream warped into a strangled gasp by the lack of air- but beneath all of that was a sudden, instant, head-swimming silence, and a jolting stillness.

The noise and motion of the train was gone.

And that meant that they'd made it.

In possibly the most painful jump of his life, but still.

Ouch.

"Brother! Ed, are you-"

"-all good," he coughed, then groaned, squeezing Al's glove with two trembling hands, then groaned again. Goddammit, OW. Mustang's right, maybe, I'm gonna get myself killed one day..."I'm- I'm o-okay-" he ground out, "I'm good, I promise," then moaned through his still spinning head.

That really sucked.

He blinked past the stars blooming in his vision, groping out with a blind, numb hand to find Al's and worm his way back down to solid ground. It took him a few painful steps to steady himself, still dizzy and lurching even within his brother's arms, but he found his balance as fast as he could and the instant he'd grasped it, shook the help off as fast as he could.

Because whether he was okay or not, the focus was here was not meant to be on him.

His stomach knotted again, and a dangerous unease started to gather in his throat.

If the jump had been that hard on him, then...

Taking a deep breath, Ed met his brother's eyes. He gulped no matter how hard he tried not to, and could tell very fucking easily that Al felt just as badly as he did. And he hated to see his brother like that, so taking as deep a breath as he could, even if it came out shaking and unsteady as all hell, he focused back down on Al's chest plate, and took a step forward.

"...Colonel?" he called weakly. "Hey, we're... safe now. Okay? ...Colonel?"

There was still nothing.

Just like in the train, the colonel really could've just gone off and died in there, and neither one of them would even know.

Damn it-

"Colonel!"

He and Al moved together, his brother tugging at one strap while Ed threw himself at the other, fighting to get his chest cavity open as soon as possible. Damn it, Mustang had promised he'd be okay, he had promised, if he'd fucking lied- "Bastard, I swear-"

Together they finally got Al's chest plate open, wrenching it back to reveal the inner cavity- and the figure waiting within- to the outside air.

And oh, fuck.

The colonel was curled just as they'd seen him hours before, when he and Al had worked to hide him while hiding themselves in a dark, smelly alley. He was settled limp and awkward like a forgotten, stiff doll, slumped in a bundle of sheets stripped from their dorm room that had been packed inside the cavity to try and cushion him as much as possible. Sheets that were stained in more than one place now with a distinctive red-brown smear but still clutched around him like an oversized blanket.

And just like he'd been in the lab, just like'd been in the sewers underneath Central, just like he'd been this entire terrible time- he still covered his face with one shaking, too pale hand.

Still alive, at least.

Ed just wasn't sure if there was anything else positive about his condition.

The colonel fumbled about, groaning aloud like a stiff old man as he shifted, one hand still hiding his face and the other clutching at the sheets. He mumbled something, Ed couldn't hear what, and stiffened badly when they tried to help him out, and were left helpless but to simply watch as he stumbled, first out of his furled little ball, and then, outside of Al's chest to stagger into the sunlight.

Ed held his breath, and watched.

The colonel limped forwards once, an unsteady, bare-foot step over the loudly crunching leaves and shifting grass. It leaned and tilted, listing to the side like a crumbling tower, but the whole of him was still shrouded in a loose fall of stained sheets and whether it was the shock of the fall, or-

Or...

Ed swallowed tightly again. Another wave of paranoid fear swept through him and, his heart shuddering painfully in his chest, he squinted through the ache in his head to analyze the colonel as best as he could.

He was standing still now, back to them and trembling like a leaf. But the shape, at least, was humanoid. He still had two arms and two legs, and still walked like one, too, even if reeling like a drink, and even with his bowed face covered he could still see that mess of familiar dark hair.

He didn't look any different at all.

If he really was a chimera, he didn't look like it from here.

Then, with another deep, ragged gasp, the colonel took one more step forward. He trembled and nearly slipped, wheezing, then tried again.

And with that, tumbled down to the forest floor like a tower of blocks pushed over by an unruly child.

"Mustang! You-" Ed shot forward with a burst of panic, catching his left side at the same time as Al moved for his right. The man- or whatever he was- stiffened again, trying to pull away, but this time Ed wasn't about to stand there and wring his hands about as his superior just fucking faceplanted. "Come on, Mustang... Al, over there-"

His brother nodded wordlessly, taking pretty much all of Mustang's weight because as much as Ed tried, the man really was too... not small... for Ed to carry any of it. Ed helplessly scrabbled on beside him instead, propping him up as much as he could while clearing the way the few steps towards the nearby river.

Once again, Mustang hit the ground so heavily it was as if he never wanted to stand again, sagging onto his knees half in the water without even caring as he got splashed. He tried and failed to shrug Al off him, panting high-pitched and pained into his hand, and for a moment Ed was frightened he was about to be sick.

"...That," Mustang groaned at last. "T-that..."

Ed exchanged another worried look with Al, his stomach twisting. It sounded like he could barely talk at all,l. "That what? ...Come on, Colonel, that what?"

"Talk to us, sir..."

But Mustang only shook his head briefly, saying nothing; by the sound of it, barely managing to stay upright at all. He took in another great, heaving breath, fumbling on his legs with both hands still occupied, trying to find support against anywhere else but them.

"That was the worst jump I have ever taken, in my life." He coughed weakly into his hand, the words coming out muffled and strangled, but sincere. "Never- and I repeat, never- do that to me again."

Then, he keeled over to dunk his upper half, facefirst and all, straight into the icy river.

Ed started again, stomach lurching with disbelief. He even started to reach forward, once again trying to catch him, support him, something- but it was agonizingly evident Mustang did not need their help.

Slowly, a weak smile filtered back across his face instead, and he sank helplessly back to sit with his brother on the riverbank, and wait.

No matter what was going on with the bastard's body right now, it was clear that his mind, at least, was still intact.

Bastard mind and all.

Mustang stayed sagged in the river for several moments, hands plunged underneath as well. His face also continued to be hidden, everything up to his shoulders still wrapped in the filthy sheets while his black hair swirled upwards in the current, obscuring everything about his face that he was trying so hard to keep hidden. Ed couldn't help but lean a little, squinting, trying to glimpse just a hint of something, but sitting like that, he really just looked like a normal person.

A normal person wearing a bedsheet and washing his face in the river, but a normal person all the same.

...A normal person with...

...pointed ears?

Ed's eyes widened.

Holy shit...

Is that... are those actually...?

In a dripping deluge of ice cold water, Mustang emerged from the river again, soaking wet and sodden, breathing in deep again but before Ed could even try to get a second look he had firmly turned his back, rubbing at his face with his arms in a pretty shabby job at toweling off, and even worse at than that was how brazenly he was refusing to even face them. Ed slumped again, scowling silently at the wet sheeted back that was all he could see of the colonel. Damn it, they could not pull this off if the bastard was going to be fighting them like this. If he was going to refuse to so much as fucking look at them.

"Mustang-"

Al caught him by the shoulder, quiet but stern and inescapable, holding him back from moving for the bastard to drag him around himself. Ed glared at him, trying to tug back forwards, but Al shook his head again and in his soulfire eyes, he could see very clearly that there was no room for argument.

Something stubborn yet tinged with defeat unfolded in his chest, bringing his arms to cross but his shoulders to sag. Because, as was really to be expected- his brother was right.

They had more important things to worry about now than yelling at Mustang for being stupid.

Al let go of him after a few moments, sitting back himself for them to form an awkward sort of triangle, them uncomfortable on the forest floor while Mustang continued to slouch with his trembling back to them, shrouded in blankets and wet hair. An awkward silence settled between them, broken only by Mustang's heavy, unsteady breaths, and Ed's own heart, pounding in his ears.

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

"...So," Al ventured at last, high-pitched and almost squeaky through the discomfort of it. "We should be safe here, at least for now. Dublith is about ten miles from here, but the only thing between us and them is farmland. And... sir, you- you said..."

"Kiel," Mustang coughed. The word came out gravely and weak, and once again, it took nearly everything Ed had not to yank him around to face them. "I h-have a... a friend in Kiel. He can help me. We have... I have to get t-there."

Ed rolled his eyes, because that fuckery didn't even deserve a response, but biting his tongue wasn't exactly his speciality, so he grabbed for his suitcase instead just to occupy his hands to stop himself from yelling at him for it. "Right. That Marcoh dude." He dug through the clothes and all the money he had and the dry packages of food to grab for the map, flattening it out even as he shot a suspicious glance to the colonel's back. He was still talking weird, too. Ed wasn't sure what the fuck was going on with his vision, because it was evident he could see something, now, but his words were still coming out oddly muffled and just a little slurred- and he wasn't even covering his mouth anymore.

Something was wrong with his mouth.

Just like something was wrong with his eyes, and something was wrong with his ears... and there was probably something really, really wrong with the pretty much all of him he was still hiding under the blanket.

Ed hesitated again. His eyes narrowed, lingering on the ears hidden back under his hair, then to the back of his neck, searching over for him for even the slightest sign of something that wasn't the way it should be.

Whatever the military had done, the colonel couldn't hide it forever.

At last, Ed learned forward, giving up on actually grabbing him to make him look but raising his voice nonetheless, because he just couldn't help himself. "Listen, I know you said this guy is a doctor, but Kiel isn't exactly a skip and a hop away. But Dublith is pretty much right next to us, and there are doctors there- and pretty much no one there likes the military anyway, you'll be able to hide out while we figure out what's going on-"

"No."

"No- no what? Come on, Colonel-"

"Sir, Ed really does have a point... please, listen to us." Al moved forward next, genuinely pleading in a way Ed could not, but the alchemist just sat with his back still turned and his face still completely hidden. "At least for a little while! You're not well, you're not in any shape to travel that far right now-"

"I said no."

"-or is it because Marcoh's an alchemist? Colonel, our teacher's in Dublith! She's really, really good, between the four of us I'm sure we could-"

"Alphonse," the man rasped. "Edward."

Just that. Just their names, two low, guttural, strangled croaks that sounded as if his throat had been filled with ground glass, and his mouth with blood.

It was still enough, to stop Al in his tracks.

It was still enough to make Ed's stomach drop.

By the sound of his voice alone, Ed really wasn't sure how much longer they were going to last out here.

But the colonel still drew himself up to his full height, or, at least, as close to it as he could get, leaning precariously against a nearby tree. He clutched the sheets tighter around, tugging them close, but in the process of pulling them against his chest they slipped just a little down his back- just enough to reveal a hint of skin on his neck.

A hint of dark blue, scaly snake's skin.

Ed blanched.

"Allow me to make this perfectly clear," Mustang growled. Not a mutter but an actual, genuine, animal growl that Ed could hear came straight from the throat, muffled or not, distorted or not. "Neither of you are equipped to deal with this situation."

"That's not fair! You won't even give us a chance to h-"

Mustang snorted like an angry bull, back coiling and hands slamming to the ground with a hot breath of- smoke.

That was not air. That was fucking smoke and sparks that he had exhaled, and that was bright flickering sparks there, now, orange and red scattered against the leaves and his hands, embers that glowed in the shadows and smoke that curled overhead.

Curled straight from him.

But...

He doesn't have his gloves with him...

Ed's heart skipped a beat. An almost immediate sense of utterly lost, stricken panic tightened his throat shut, and when he drew closer to his brother on instinct alone, he could feel the exact same emanating from him. The colonel had just-

Just fucking breathed fire.

What?

"...Colonel-"

"Unless you wish for me to end up like Nina Tucker," he spat, "you will shut your mouth, Fullmetal, and you will do as you're told, or I will find someone who will."

Ed's stomach knotted again, reluctance and hesitation gluing in his throat like ash. For a heartbeat, he couldn't speak at all.

His hand fisted in his lap, metal fist over his flesh and blood one, and his teeth gritted together so hard it hurt. Stupid bastard. Stupid smug, arrogant, rude, asshole, fucking bastard-

And, before Ed's very eyes, that stupid, smug, arrogant, rude, asshole, fucking bastard was now listing to the side, head sagging forwards and shoulders trembling through the sheets, and before he knew it, Al had just barely made it forwards in time to catch him as he dropped forwards in a dead faint.

His hot flush of anger snuffed out like a light, and in its place was a gut-wrenching knot of guilt and nauseated worry, instead.

Oh.

"He's okay!" Al called after a moment, crouching just behind him to hold him upright. The colonel had crumbled against him entirely, headfirst into his arm and slumped to fold in on himself nearly double and held up only by Al, his obviously terrified brother cradling his shoulders like they were made of glass. "He's okay, Ed, he just passed out..."

Ed rolled his eyes past the tightness in his throat, forcing off as calm an air that he could manage. "Yeah, because okay people pass out all the time," he grumbled, and it came out bitter, stifling his own sense of worry still turning his hand clammy but he knew his brother wasn't even close to fooled.

None of them were, because it was pretty damn obvious, no matter what the bastard said, he was not okay.

He stayed crouching back in the dirt, painfully aware that his help would only slow things down and watched instead, Al settling the colonel the rest of the way down with an agonizing sense of slowness. Carefully, gently, he got Mustang down, dropped to his stomach to lie limp and shivering in the crunching leaves, protected only be a mess of wrapped blankets that somehow made him look even more vulnerable than he would've looked without. After a few seconds of plainly uncomfortable deliberation, his brother then turned his wet, dark head as well, just a little so he wasn't eating dirt, then pulled the sheets over to half obscure it from their view.

Once again, it was Ed's turn to scowl. "Al."

"He doesn't want us to see it, Brother."

"Well, he's gonna have to get over it, isn't he?" Still frowning, Ed crawled forwards on his hands and knees, pulling up to Mustang's side to reach for the sheets. Al didn't try to stop him, but that was merely because his brother knew him well enough to know he didn't have to- because Ed reached for the sheet, and found himself faltering before his fingers had even closed around it.

Al was right. Mustang, very obviously, didn't want them to see.

And no matter how much the bastard could rub at him the wrong way, this...

He... really wasn't human anymore, was he? He could not longer just blow it off as his eyes not quite working or his voice not coming out quite right because he was sick or hurt. His eyes hadn't worked before, and his mouth wasn't working properly now, because he'd become sort of creature, deformed or not, where they didn't.

Something that wasn't human.

And as much as it killed him to admit it, finding out more about just what that something was wouldn't be enough for Ed to help. Mustang had said it himself.

They hadn't known enough to help Nina, and they didn't know enough to help him.

Ed's fists clenched again, and he sank helplessly back down on the ground without another word.

Al made an uncertain noise after a few moments, giving the colonel another hesitant once over before pulling his hands back to himself with an air of caution. "I think he's right, Ed. We don't really know enough to help ourselves here, but he seems to at least think he knows someone who does. That's better than us."

"Yeah, but who is he? I don't think I've ever even heard of a Marcoh, Al, and we read everything about chimeras that we could find! How does Mustang know this random specialist who's simultaneously so amazing and so secret no one's ever even heard of him?!"

"...I know, Brother."

Ed sank back down with another huff, his glare transferring back to Mustang's still back while his brother remained silent by his side, withdrawn and with downcast eyes. Ed could sympathize with him pretty easily, by this point.

They had no idea what was going on, and Mustang did not seem open to helping them figure it out.

Al made a clearing-his-throat sort of noise after another minute had passed in a thick silence broken only by the colonel's slow, raspy breathing. "If we're going to do this, then we need to do it now." He rose to his feet, dusting some of the leaves and dirt off his feet and gesturing for Ed to stay down in the same motion. "I'm going to get to Dublith and find Teacher, explain what I can. You stay here with the colonel."

"That's- me? Alone? Al, are you sure?" Ed's stomach twisted again at the very thought of it, every inch of him wanting to pull away, because that was simply a big, fat no. No, sir. Sneak into and around Dublith on a stealth mission, hiding from the military, getting help from Izumi? Absolutely. Sign him right the fuck up, because that was right up his alley.

Setting bedside with his unconscious superior and finding it thrust on him to somehow take care of him, letting his brother handle everything else, and wait helplessly for him to come back?

Yeah, that really was not his speed.

But Al was already turned towards the edge of the small clearing, leaving him sitting back alone with Mustang on the rough ground. "You could keep out of sight easier, but almost no one but Teacher's family knows what I look like here. Even if I get spotted and the military follows us this far, no one will be able to tell them I was here- and you know we can't leave Mustang alone." He dusted a few more of the leaves off himself, still wary and guarded and quiet, but under the facade Ed could see just how unsettled he really was, and that was enough for him to bite his tongue and keep silent.

Al was right.

Again.

And if he actually wanted to help Mustang like he'd promised Hughes that he would, then he was going to have to bite his tongue and sit here with him to do it.

Ed nodded once to his brother again. He swallowed hard, trying to silence the anxiety and unease still clenching around his heart, then made crawl forwards to sit down against the nearest tree next to Mustang's side.

He smiled up at Al then, a wordless promise that he understood, and more than that, that it was all going to be okay. Mustang wasn't in shape to take charge here, so Ed was going to step up, and that meant not letting his brother worry about him more than could be helped. "Go on," he assured. "I'll be here with Mustang."

Just... hurry back.

Please.

His brother hesitated only a moment longer, bright eyes still searching between him and Mustang with a heavy glow of reluctance. It was obvious that he didn't want to leave either one of them alone, any more than Ed wanted to be the one to stay. It was eve more obvious that he felt just as badly as Ed did about this whole entire thing.

But they both know that there wasn't time to spare.

And that was how Ed was left to sit alone in that sunny clearing, squinting through the trees to watch as his brother made his way towards Dublith as fast as he could- and trying as hard as he could not to look at the sick probable chimera, curled up in the grass beside him.

Ed swallowed hard again. He curled just a little tighter around himself, hands locking together around his knees as he sank deeper back against the tree, gaze searching desperately anywhere else besides the shining pink elephant right smack dab in the middle of the clearing.

Even when every low, cracked wheeze of a breath from the trembling form beside him snapped his gaze right back to it.

He shivered a second time. His skin continued to crawl, something sick and miserable curling in his stomach, and no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't get himself to look away.

Hidden underneath the oversized huddle of of bedsheets, spilled awkwardly across the ground on his stomach and head still lolling uselessly to the side, Mustang looked... small, somehow. Which kind of made Ed want to smile, only to find it wiped away in a heartbeat, something chilling gnawing at his insides in its place.

No matter what the bastard said, Mustang really wasn't all that tall. Half his team towered over him, for fuck's sake, and Al could probably crush him like a soda can- but no matter his physical height he still had an authoritative sort of air about him, a commanding aura that he brought into every room he found and could've let him rule it even if he was only two inches tall. Ed hated it, but when Mustang was up and speaking, really speaking, not snarking his way through a fucking short joke... it was like his height had vanished, and everyone else in the room had shrunk to be looking up to him and his aura of dominant, ubiquitous authority. The aura that was as much a part of him as gravity; as natural as breathing.

The aura that wasn't there now.

The self-assuredness that defined Roy Bastard Mustang, that irritated Ed to high heaven and drove him mad whenever he opened his mouth, the thing that made the bastard, the bastard, was not there now.

Because the same military they'd both given their lives to had taken it from him.

Ed shook his head vigorously to himself, sucking in a shaking breath to wrench himself back on track, because if he started thinking about that he knew he wasn't going to stop. His heart and mind racing together in a sweaty, nervous tandem all over again, he crawled for the colonel instead, focusing down on him as much as he could.

Come on, Ed... you can do this...

Hold yourself together, damn it... he NEEDS you. Come on, Ed, don't be a fucking kid...

Ed took another breath as deep as he could manage, fighting to banish away any such stupid, waste of time, utterly unhelpful thoughts, fingertips brushing together as he searched over the colonel. A warm flush started to rise in his cheeks, half embarrassment, half another wave of hard, unyielding guilt. They hadn't exactly had any clothes that could fit him, nor had they wanted to risk drawing attention to themselves by raiding his apartment, so all he really had was the oversized lab coat they'd found him in, and the sheets from their dorm. Neither were all that effective... or clean, he considered unhappily, gaze lingering on the dust, the dirt, the rusty blood stains that could only have come from Mustang.

Ed frowned again. His hands drew closer together on instinct alone, a warm alchemy starting to crackle between his palms without pause. Then, because he was Edward Elric, and dithering around doubting himself was not what he did, he clapped his hands straight together, then went to work.

It wasn't anything he hadn't done before. His coat got torn or worse on half the missions he went on, and having a fighting style that involved turning his own arm into a giant knife really wasn't the best for the state of his clothes in general; he and Al had gotten good at working with cloth a long time ago. It still wasn't easy, with his subject flat on his stomach and Ed too wary of touching him to even risk the slightest brush of a fingertip. It wasn't easy at all, when his material was not an already perfectly-sized, neat set of clothes but a flimsy and filthy, pathetic sheet, and he knew one slip up could reveal far more about Mustang before him than either of them wanted to see- or that Mustang might ever forgive.

And still, a few minutes later, Ed was left to sit back, folding his arms, and observe his handiwork.

Most of the fluff had been severed, lying now in an abandoned heap off to the side that it'd be easy enough to transmute into a flimsy pillow later. The rest of it he'd managed to seal into a loose sort of dress, since anything more complicated would've meant moving Mustang around and given how badly the man seemed to want to keep hidden-

Ed may've been curious, but Al was right. Forcing a look when he was unconscious and couldn't stop it didn't feel right and he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Which was what had led to the last, and most important, comfort he had tried to give the colonel: a hood.

It was sloppy and oversized, like pretty much everything else; too thin because it had been stretched from fabric not meant to be stretched, pulled haphazardly over his head in a way that made him look even more like a corpse than before. It fit in perfectly with the whole rest of the ensemble to look like a fucking mess.

And it hid those pointed ears and whatever else that wasn't right about his face from view.

Ed shivered again, an anxious and tight ball coalescing down in his stomach until it hurt to breathe. He stared on at the prone form again, hands worthless and ineffectual in his lap, and abruptly felt so selfish and guilty he couldn't stand it.

Without a word, he crawled back over to his tree, and, curling up back around himself against the trunk, he shifted around to continue watching for Al in silence.

It was nearing sunset, the orange glare too bright through the trees and sky, the shadows stretching, and the air around them cooling, when the colonel woke again.

It was sudden and swift in the long-lasting silence of the woods, a rough intake of breath that made his heart skip a beat like he'd just been shocked, even as the colonel himself jolted on the ground. The noise jerked his head up out of his arms, fizzing a shock of awareness through his head just in time to see Mustang stiffen again, a limp figure half in shadow that kicked, coiled, and whined like a struck dog.

Ed tensed at the noise, unsure of just what was going on now, and found himself frozen against his tree to watch and wait in silence.

When Mustang's next jolt had him curling, legs pulling up to his chest to bury another whine, a whine that did not quiet but grew louder and louder to end in another smokey, spark-laced snort that nearly set the grass on fire, he knew he couldn't afford to do nothing but wait in silence.

He couldn't bear to do it, either.

"Mustang," he called hoarsely, voice trembling. Clearing his throat, Ed started to venture closer, reaching out to try and brush his fingers against his back. "Hey, Mustang, it's-"

And he screamed.

It wasn't a bastard-yell, loud and brash and just a little bit hilarious as he hung up on Hughes or shouted at Havoc to get back to his office or against Ed whenever he'd gotten the better of him. It wasn't a Mustang-yell, a shouted order in a mission that brokered no room for disagreement or argument. It wasn't even a normal, human scream. It was thin and high-pitched and still muffled, somehow, distorted like he'd howled it into a pillow-

But it was a scream of agony all the same, and it all but made Ed's heart stop.

"Mustang- Colonel, stop it! You have to be quiet- Colonel!" His hands yanked back as if they'd just been scalded, fluttering uselessly over his back as he leaned over him, desperately wanting to help but no idea how to try. "Shhhh! Mustang-"

The alchemist jerked and gasped again, shaking his hooded head against the ground like a distraught child. It was terrifying and wrong, seeing a man so in control of himself and assured and confident just crumpled down into this... Ed couldn't grasp it, could barely even believe it was real. Not from the Mustang he knew. Not- fuck, he looked so wounded and- and frail, holy shit this was wrong, Mustang wasn't supposed to look like that- god, this was actually terrifying-

But finally, the spasm passed, shudders easing out of his shoulders for the man to at last lay still and quiet. A limp, panting shell on the cold ground, radiating nothing less than sheer, unadulterated exhaustion, a poisonous aura that was somehow even harder to see than before. He was sweating again, trembling with fever and the force of heaving, muffled gasps- he was so sick, so weak- Ed's stomach lurched for what felt like the millionth time and he pulled away, part of him wanting to be sick himself. Because he'd wanted to take the man down a peg or two for a personal victory, but this was not that... he had never, ever, in a million years, wanted or even fathomed of this.

He'd never even thought it possible that Mustang could look like this, and he knew, sitting there right here, right now, that he didn't like it.

"Full... Fullmetal," he gasped finally. A low, hideous croak, so weak it barely even sounded like him at all. "...Please. Don't touch me there."

"What?" Ed inched a little closer as carefully as he could, not daring to risk jostling him even a millimeter this time, hands still hovering uselessly over his back in a desperate desire to fix him even though he could not be fixed. Don't touch... "I- I did that?! I hurt you?!"

Mustang shook his head once, a vigorous ruffle of the hood that was all he could see in the dying light and there was an angry snort again, this time more smoke than anything else. "Not your fault," he struggled out, then shivered again, one hard jerk from head to toe visible even through the loose borderline sack he was hidden in. "J-just- don't touch me there again."

Regret tightened in his throat again, apology no matter what the bastard said to try and assuage his guilt, he knew he'd caused it. A cautious glance at his back didn't reveal anything all that illuminating, but something told Ed he really did not want to see what his back looked like underneath the sheet.

He didn't think he wanted to see what any of him looked like underneath the sheet.

But...

He shivered again, regret darkening into another prickle of unease, and his eyes rested down on Mustang's back.

He'd barely even touched him. Certainly not enough to hurt him if his back had been okay, but Ed had been hurt plenty of times, and he knew that the light touch he'd used on the colonel wouldn't have been enough to provoke that kind of pain out of a normal injury.

He had barely touched him, and just that light brush of fingertips against already covered skin had still been enough to launch him over the edge- and nearly irrecoverably, at that.

Something anxious settled in his throat, and Ed swallowed hard again.

Quiet stretched between them then, an uneasy silence that felt like neither of them knew how to break it. Mustang still curled on his stomach, panting into the dirt and clearly not very inclined to change it. Ed would've helped him move somewhere more comfortable, or at least to wash his face off again, if he hadn't been so afraid to touch him again after what had happened last time. His hands still wrung miserably together, itching to clap, itching to move, itching to fix, but with Mustang still collapsed and in some obvious measure of pain-

There just wasn't anything he could do.

"Al's in Dublith," he blurted out finally. He just needed to say something. "I think he's waiting until it gets dark to come back with help. It shouldn't be long now."

Mustang nodded several times again, but his only audible reply was another series of wet gasps into the silence. Ed pressed his lips together and swallowed hard, trying not to give into yet another wave of fear.

He was going to be fine. Just because he was this sick now didn't mean it was too late for him to fix it.

It didn't mean he was going to let him down.

It didn't mean this was going to become another Nina.

"...Mustang?" he asked again. The name came out just a bit choked and worried past the lump in his throat, so Ed swallowed it and tried again, because the last thing Mustang needed to hear was him freaking out over here. "You should drink something. Or at least try to." He tried to phrase it as little like a question as possible, not wanting to leave much room for debate- because it was true. No matter what the military had tried to do to him, no matter how bad he felt, water was pretty much the only thing that was all but guaranteed to help, even if just a little.

When the colonel did not respond, Ed tried again, drawing just a little closer to his head and reaching for a canteen from their luggage. "Come on, bastard, just a little." He didn't ask about eating anything. If he was right, and something was wrong with Mustang's mouth... well, that wasn't a road he wanted to go down until absolutely necessary. But water was easy, right? Even if his mouth was hurt or his teeth were messed up or whatever, he could surely still manage a few sips of water.

"All... all right," the colonel coughed, finally, slow and pained but the words were there, and Ed couldn't have been more relieved. He sounded guarded and wary, like part of him really didn't think it was worth trying, but Ed figured he also knew that arguing would get him nowhere, and he was at least willing to try.

He could work with that.

That was something.

Mustang still was not making any move to sit up, barely working his head up underneath an arm with a delicate, agonizing slowness, wincing with every move, making those muffled, gritted teeth whines whenever anything tugged the wrong way. For fuck's sake, all he was doing was pulling up an arm to rest his head on it, but by the noises it was making it sounded like every inch was raking him over red-hot coals.

This was bad. It was really, really bad. He could barely move. He couldn't sit up, wouldn't look at Ed, and had reacted so badly to being touched it was like Ed had punched him in the stomach.

He wasn't sure he was going to last to this Marcoh at all.

But starting that argument again was pointless. Ed's points for it hadn't changed, and moreover, Mustang really didn't seem like he had the strength for it. So instead of forcing that point again, Ed steeled himself, gritting his teeth down so tight it made his jaw hurt, and moved just close enough to his superior's head to offer the water.

Even from this close, with the hood and Mustang's position and the dim lighting, he could see very little except for the shrouded hand that waved ineffectually towards the bottle several times, brushing against it with vague incoordination and the weakness of a child. He thumped it several times, the limb trembling in the air, and never once managed to get close to grasping it.

This time, when there was a tiny whine, it was one of frustration and humiliation instead of pain.

Somehow, this one was even harder to hear than the ones before it.

Ed kept himself silent again, biting his lip until it nearly bled as he pulled the bottle back himself, unscrewing the top. Mustang made another small noise and Ed glared straight back. "Listen, if you want to be a baby about this it's gonna make it that much harder on us both. We're not gonna ever get to this Marcoh guy if you don't let us help you so just suck it up already so we can get it over with."

Mustang tensed a little again, just the smallest tightening in his shoulders and another low noise, a gentle prick of obvious shame. For a heartbeat, he was quiet, and in that moment Ed worried he just might've pushed too far.

Then, the colonel snorted again, a low growl emanating from his throat that was more animal than human, and without another word of a protest leaned forward, and allowed Ed to help him drink.

It was awkward and uncomfortable and terrible all around. With the colonel barely lifting his head a few inches off the ground and Ed still hovering uncomfortably over him, afraid to even touch him after what had happened before, he was pretty sure he got more of the water on Mustang than in him, and be the coughing and weak spluttering Ed worried most of the little water he got in him ended up right back out again.

But when the bottle had run empty in his hand, and Mustang's head had sagged back straight down with a heavy, exhausted thump, Ed knew he didn't have it in him to make him try again.

They were going to have plenty of time to give it another go on the journey to Kiel. For now, he just couldn't make him do it.

Didn't want to see his superior like that again.

Or... former superior.

Because- and it finally hit Ed then, for the first time the full, solid weight of the blow settled down over his shoulders as he stared at the stretched out form beside him on the ground, and finally conceptualized that no matter what else happened from here on out, Mustang was no longer a colonel. Mustang was no longer an officer at all. Even absolute best case scenario, where Mustang was fine and the military didn't find them at all, when Ed walked back into the office, Mustang wouldn't be there.

The smug, slick bastard who had nagged him, bugged him, irritated him, and no matter how it chafed to admit it, protected him and Al since day one- was the reason that he'd made it to Central and fought this far at all- and he wasn't his superior anymore. He never would be in that office again.

For a moment, it felt like the world had just shifted under his feet, like everything solid and familiar had tilted and become different and so disorienting it was blinding, and in that moment, it was too overwhelming to even think.

Ed swallowed hard again into the silence, forcing his hand and heart to steady. "There," he grunted, withdrawing his hand back, and went so far as to fake a pathetic little smile even if he was the only one to see it as he sat back against his tree. "Wasn't so hard, was it?"

The bottle was empty, he saw, glancing unhappily back down to it. How much of it had ended up anywhere besides the ground or Mustang's face was debatable, but... he had to have at least managed something.

Mustang grunted something back, low and inaudible even as he sagged heavier back towards the ground. He took in another few breaths, if they could even be called that, deep and guttural and aching, then at last just shifted to bury his face into his arm.

"Thank you," the colonel said, again after a long stretch of silence. It was a stumbling rasp again, barely more than a whisper- but still, those two soft, thick words were more than enough to freeze Ed right in his tracks.

Thank you. A real, genuine thank you. From the colonel.

"F-for... for the hood," he clarified a few moments later, soft again. Then, that said on the cusp of another hacked wheeze, he curled back in on himself and withdrew away, clutched into a wounded, hurt ball as protectively as he could.

Ed's throat tightened again, and at first, he couldn't even come close to responding at all. Mustang stayed there in a collapsed, pathetic ball, small and wheezing and desperately fragile, which was messed up because he was Mustang. He wasn't supposed to be any of those things.

He wasn't supposed to be so weak he couldn't drink on his own.

He really, really wasn't supposed to give him a quiet, sincere thank you.

Something turned in his stomach, sick and scared, and his voice went so lost in it that when he first opened his mouth to speak, nothing even came out.

"...How's everything else?" he managed finally, half because he needed to know, half because he was desperate for any change of subject he could find. Maybe it was selfish, but he was too strained and confused and- and scared to care. "You- you said you couldn't... see. Before. Is that...?"

But, to his intense relief, the colonel shook his head in the negative, barely a twitch in the low light but it was still there. "N-no," he murmured, again through another shiver. "I can't... I'm not blind. It's- it was just the flashing lights, I couldn't- my eyes..." Mustang trailed off with another frustrated sigh, shaking his head into the ground a second time. "It's nothing. Marcoh can fix it."

Ed bit back a protest of his own, narrowing his eyes at him. This miracle-worker Marcoh, again. Mustang was sure putting a hell of a lot of trust in him, and on one hand, he sure seemed like their best bet for getting help, right now, but on the other... well, the more he sounded like too good to be true, the less Ed found himself trusting him.

Saying as such to Mustang now, though, when he seemed to be clinging onto that desperate hope like a final lifeline, and, oh yeah, the colonel still wouldn't even tell them what was going on, really didn't feel all that productive.

"And your mouth?"

The colonel stiffened again, a gentle jerk against the ground. For a moment, there was nothing. Just more shivering, more panting, more sweating, more wheezing. But Ed waited, even as difficult as it was to watch and bear, letting the silence demand an answer for him.

"It's..." Mustang coughed, then shook his head, flinching away just a little bit more. "It's nothing."

"Nothing."

"Nothing," he whispered again. The word came out muffled still, and Ed's impatience flared, because fucking obviously there was something wrong with it, but one more crunchy footstep over the leaves closer and Mustang had flinched away again.

Flinched away like he'd just been struck in the face- and Ed had been the one to do it.

Ed shivered again, suddenly cold inside and out, and once again found himself powerless to say anything.

As badly as he wanted to treat this like the Mustang he knew, it was becoming increasingly apparent that he couldn't. Not because the man was so weak he'd crumble like glass at a single harsh word- but because this wasn't the Mustang he knew.

As terrified as it made Ed to realize that, it wasn't that Mustang, and sitting here now, with the colonel shivering, crumpled on a cold, dirty ground, and still whining with muffled agony, wasn't the time to go on a fishing expedition to find it.

It took another few miserable moments for a silence to lapse again, Mustang only settling when the interrogation was clearly done. But while it was obvious that silence was just what the colonel needed, it was the exact opposite of what Ed needed. Which was again stupid and selfish, because this wasn't fucking about him, but he'd never sat in helpless silence with Mustang before. The closest he'd ever come was the colonel making him redo his report right there in his office, because stick-figure depictions and chicken-scratch curse words were apparently inappropriate, or something, but that just- that wasn't this! That-

There was a difference between working with the colonel, and sitting next to him to watch, care for, and protect him like this.

Because until today, Ed had never seen him be so painfully, agonizingly, vulnerably human.

Which was just a little too much to bear, because the curled figure beside him probably wasn't all that human anymore.

Ed fidgeted, desperately uncomfortable again. His legs tucked further underneath himself, and his stomach knotted, and at another low, choking whimper, he knew he could not take this anymore.

He started to push himself towards his feet, glaring obstinately towards the darkening edge of the trees and really, just, anywhere other than the colonel that he could get. "Stay put," he muttered, dusting himself off. "I'm going to-"

"Fullmetal?"

He gritted his teeth, a frustrated whine of his own just barely staying muffled in his throat as he tensed and stiffened and all but cursed right on the spot. No, no- he was supposed to slip away to keep watch for Al, he was supposed to not have to see or hear Mustang be this anymore- wasn't supposed to hear that struggling voice, too weak, too cracked, too broken to be the bastard colonel's- damn it, you conniving, manipulative, you-

"What?"

"W-why are you... y-you... here?"

Ed tensed again.

Mustang stayed limp on the ground, although Ed was starting to worry he wasn't too weak to move, he was just too afraid of the pain it would bring to try. He hadn't turned to look after Ed's attempted departure, back still to him and hood still snugly nestled over his head, and for a moment, Ed had to wonder if he'd realized he was even trying to run tail like a coward at all.

With a great, heavy huff, Ed sunk back down to the ground again, folding his arms to glower to the ground. "You think you're in any shape to not keel over and die out here on your own?" he challenged back, only still managing a scowl because it remained on Mustang's back.

"...No. That's..." A small, disturbingly young sigh came out, too small for any measure of comfort. "...you can't take this back, Ed. If the military- if t-they find this out- for you and your brother, Ed. It's over for both of you, not just you. I'm... you don't understand. I'm not worth this. And not just- Maes, he has a wife, a child-" His voice cracked again, a dangerous waver through his voice that seemed even more dangerously close to an all-too-human sob."You're throwing everything-"

"Mustang?"

The colonel- chimera- whatever he was- fell worryingly silent. He twitched, trembling still, and for a heartbeat, was so still and paralyzed it was terrifying.

"...y-yes?" he rasped at last.

"Shut the fuck up," Ed said, and refocused his attention straight back on the edge of the forest to wait for his brother.

Artist: maikkuax

Chapter Text

Because his teacher and her husband were the most daring, badass fighters in this entire miserable country, his brother was simply the best brother in the entire history of the world- and a little bit of Ed was still convinced Mustang had the best luck he'd ever seen- that night, somehow, miracle of all fucking miracles, the moon rose on them all packaged into the back of a wagon, and on their way to Kiel.

Most of the country roads were not all that well-tended, save for the few used for military transport. Hiring- or stealing- a car to make their way with ran all too high a risk of a flat tire, and virtually guaranteed a ride more bumpy than their resident unwell colonel could bear. Alternatively, trains, as public and obvious and dangerous as they were, were pretty decidedly out of the question.

Which was what had led Izumi and Sig to decide to move their monthly deliver to the eastern town Eriangen, a mere ten miles from Kiel, up a week.

And to the middle of the night.

The three of them were packed into the back of the covered wagon like sardines, because it really hadn't been meant to carry someone as big as Al, or someone spread out like Mustang- the Curtises, in fact, had had to leave most of the the meat at home, just to fit them all in. If any soldier stopped them to actually look inside, they'd never fool them that they were actually out on a delivery.

But so far, there had been no soldiers. So far, there had been no interruptions at all.

Just the steady clip clop of the horses outside, pulling them to Kiel as fast as they could, and Mustang's continued unsteady breathing.

It was awkward, uncomfortable, and silent. Nervewracking to the point that every breath tasted shallow and made his stomach tighten in a nauseated, anxious knot. The wagon was dark and stuffy, claustrophobic and hot, and while certainly not the worst travel accommodations he'd ever experienced, was a far shot away from the best.

Mustang was not doing well.

It had been hell getting him into the wagon at all. Just lifting him three feet off the ground than maneuvering him into the waiting, thick nest of blankets had nearly been the end, the colonel writhing and gasping with every jostle and when Al's hand had had to brush his back, the gasps had capitulated into a deep and guttural howl of a scream.

Ed, having already anticipated this, had given Mustang the thin pillow from earlier to bite into. Just in case, he'd wanted to say, but in the end, looking down at the turned, hooded head and only able to hear the ragged gasps of a man in terrible pain, hadn't been able to say anything at all.

When he'd pulled it back after they'd settled him in the back of the wagon, the colonel limp and sweating, still trembling with the agony of it, the pillow had been torn and ripped straight through.

By something that obstinately could not have been human teeth.

Which was another thing he was still trying hard to not think about that.

They'd been bundled into the wagon for the past several hours, now, somehow only the very beginning of a journey that might well take over a day to finish. Due to the fact that it really was a cramped wagon meant for transporting products, not people, Ed and Al were pressed together near a corner while the old, wooden flooring had been cushioned with as many blankets as the Curtises owned, creating as thick and warm a nest as they could.

Which was where Mustang was collapsed now, and what was set to be his new home for the entirety of the journey.

It looked a little like Ed had to imagine he did, whenever he and Al took an especially long train ride but they'd been too cheap to go for one of the more spacious compartments. Just sprawled out on the floor and cushioned in every blanket they owned, head against an equally makeshift pillow and limbs tucked haphazardly underneath the sloppiest bed known to man. Even under the thick cover Ed could still see him kicking, sometimes. Little twitches in his legs, little spasms in coiled arms. Obviously uncomfortable. Obviously suffering. Obviously in pain.

And that was putting it mildly.

No matter how many blankets were piled on the floor, Ed didn't think it dulled the rickety, bumpy journal they were taking to the figure shivering within them.

It didn't change the fact that he was sick, in pain, and had still been dumped to sleep on the floor like garbage.

It didn't change the fact that, after all these years, after so long when the one thing Ed had wanted to see from Mustang was just getting a huge ass chunk knocked right out of his ego to make him show just as much humanity and humility as the rest of them-

And now, there he was, painfully, sickeningly not human.

There was no victory that Ed could, or even wanted to, to be able to take from this.

Ed sighed heavily to himself, arms curling loosely around his knees as his head dropped against his brother's arm. It was cold, bumpy, and honestly, a bit painful in the rough ride, but the reassurance from being close to him was so infinitely worth it he barely even noticed each hard clunk as his head hit his shoulder.

Across from them, Mustang shivered on in his nest of old, faded blankets, half-conscious if that, and with every new bump in the road whimpered out a new, strangled moan.

This was going to be a really, really long ride.

"I told Teacher to pass a message to Lieutenant Colonel Hughes."

Ed jolted against his brother, head and eyes still heavy with a half-doze and limbs languid with dead fatigue. He blinked several times into the darkness of the wagon, then squinted to his pocket watch that hung, swinging and ugly, from his hand.

Three hours in.

"I mean... when she's back home. After all this." Al fidgeted again, his voice falling even smaller in the creaking, wooden clamor all around them. It was almost as if he was wary of Mustang- as if afraid of speaking in anything more than a whisper would be enough to wake the suffering man up. "If he can track us to Dublith, she'll be able to send him in the right direction."

Ed nodded listlessly, his gaze resting back down on his limp superior in the dark. He wasn't asleep, he thought, but certainly wasn't awake, either, and by the way he was sprawled and his heavy breathing, Ed imagined he was probably trying to block out as much of what was happening around him as he could. If he was physically able to hear them right now, he certainly wasn't listening.

"That's good," he mumbled at last, free hand rubbing against his eyes again. He'd never really understood that Hughes and Mustang were more than just coworkers until that day in the lab, when Hughes had committed everything to getting Mustang out and safe no matter how it went against the military, but he could understand now that their public dynamic was an act. For whatever reason, the faces they showed in the hallways at HQ- Mustang's professionalism, Hughes' obnoxious pictures in his face, all of it- was all an act.

They were close. They were, actually, friends.

And with Mustang as sick and hurt as he was, he could probably use somebody around other than a subordinate he tended to do nothing but yell at and argue with.

A few more moments passed in silence, Ed wilting and even a little self-conscious, because he just felt useless. Which was funny, after the number of times he'd called the bastard colonel that, but- he shook his head again, rubbing his eyes, and somehow found enough effort to affix his mind back on track. "Wait," he murmured to Al, turning. "Are you sure that's actually good? I- we'd be able to use the help, yeah, but..."

He glanced reluctantly back at Mustang again. Some of the last words the colonel had said to him back in that forest came back, echoing in his head but instead of infuriating him like before he could only hear Mustang's sincere worry for them, for once undisguised by his usual smug snark, and now...

Now, alone with Al, he could let himself be worried, too.

"...Hughes has a wife," he mumbled at last, swallowing hard. He could barely get the words out at all, and every time they stuck to taste like lead in his throat he found himself feeling even more awful than before. "And a kid. He's- not like us. He can't just pick up and hide from the military until this all blows over. If he gets caught, somehow- or-"

Across from them, Mustang stiffened in his hazy sleep. He jolted and kicked again, like a dog dreaming of running or a little kid having a nightmare, then whimpered as a wounded, dying animal.

Even when the spasm passed, he still did not fall totally still or completely silent. Still shivering, even immersed into a pile of blankets. Still panting. Panting like a sick, overheated dog.

...and he was really going to have making those dog comparisons in his head when looking at Mustang, because they really were not helping.

"Mr. Hughes is really smart, I think," Al said quietly, when the colonel's restlessness had calmed from alarming back to what had become the new, still unsettling, still frightening, status quo. "He'll know the risks of coming after the colonel and'll be able to decide for himself if it's worth it. But I think he should at least know." He hesitated, going quiet for a moment underneath the constant, noisy roll of the wagon around them- quiet though Ed could clearly tell he had more to say. "Colonel Mustang's really sick, Brother. We don't even know what happened to him but it's obviously something bad, and we've got no clue where to even start to be able to help him. He seems really confident in this Marcoh person, and if he's confident I think we should be too, but- Brother, if... if he's..."

Al fell silent for a moment, obviously unsettled to even think it. He lifted his head up, just enough for two bright eyes to linger on Mustang's prone, shivering form.

Ed realized it, then.

He understood exactly what Al was trying to say.

Just a heartbeat before he said it.

"Mr. Hughes should at least have the chance to say goodbye."

Ed's jaw tightened, so hard it made his face hurt. A red-hot anger made his heart skip a beat, hammering in his chest and making his hands shake, and not for the first time since this entire debacle had started, he wanted to punch something in the face.

He wasn't dying. He couldn't be fucking dying. This was Mustang! Colonel Asshole who was untouchable, wrapped up in an impregnable aura of smugness that every time he tried to shove through it just found a new layer of arrogance and invincibility. He wasn't allowed to die; this was the bastard and with every bit of the stupid, stubborn invulnerability that that entailed, whose job was to sit behind his desk so smug because he was untouchable, and was as dependable as he was an asshole. Some people were vulnerable, some people could die, but he just wasn't one of them.

Hughes didn't need the chance to say goodbye, because there was no goodbye, because he wasn't fucking dying.

And Ed really just might've shouted that, if he hadn't watched his mom, who also hadn't been allowed to die, have her heart stop right in front of them.

Ed glared back harder at Mustang's trembling back again, and kept his mouth snapped shut.

The colonel whimpered on.

Seven hours in, Mustang set fire to the floor of the wagon.

It was just one of many raspy breaths in his sleep, a hard exhale that Ed had been dozing through, because that was the only way to make this ride bearable in the slightest. He only woke up when his brother started beside him, and had only found enough sense and clarity to check his pocket watch after Al had frantically smothered the tiny fire out, slapping it down with huge gloves that couldn't feel pain until there was nothing left but slightly charred wood and the stale scent of smoke.

Mustang still wasn't awake. Not enough to do alchemy, and even if he had been, he really obviously did not have his gloves on him.

The fire could only be coming from inside him.

Neither one dared say it. Neither one wanted to, to acknowledge the horrible truth aloud and have to look down at Mustang and fully accept not human. Fully accept that something was wrong, in there- something that Ed honestly didn't believe even this mysterious Marcoh could fix.

So when Al, clearly frightened and unsettled, finally sat back on his side of the wagon, and Ed curled back against him, eyes shut because he just wanted to escape that sweaty trembling and those warped whimpers of agony, neither one of them spoke. Neither one of them even addressed the fact that Mustang had just snorted fire in his sleep and could've killed them all, if Al hadn't been awake to put it out.

Then proceeded to spend the next several hours huddled against his brother's arm, and dreaming of an army of Mustangs, burning Central down and laughing maniacally with mouths like flamethrowers, while an equally huge army of Bradleys put more flamethrower Mustangs together piece by piece like he was nothing more than a mechanical puppet.

Ten hours in, and Ed was jolted up once again.

This time by a sudden light glaring straight into his eyes, and while he was half asleep still and not even close to conscious Izumi's hazy face was there, filtering into focus too close and way too loud for so early in the morning. "...awake? Good, there you are. Listen, kid, we're stopping to let the horses rest," she was saying, brusque and short. "If you want to stretch your legs, now is the time, because we won't be stopping much more."

Then, just as abruptly as she'd woken him up, Izumi pulled the sheet back across, separating them from the outside world once again and quenching the sunlight, and Ed was left to squint on and try- and fail badly- to get his wits about him.

Mustang still sprawled next to them. Back, still firmly to them, hood, still firmly up.

By the raspy breaths he could still hear, he wasn't doing all that much better.

But he was still alive, and Ed figured that had to be a plus.

Al gave him a gentle nudge, his fingers shifting the messy fall of his hair back behind his ear with an adeptness that should've been bewildering, from a hand so big and a hand that couldn't feel. But it only felt gentle against his head, and then, gentle against his shoulder, as Al prodded him towards the back of the wagon. "I'll keep an eye on him. It's okay, Brother."

Ed hesitated for a beat, still half-asleep, but even like this knew there wasn't much sense in pretending. He'd been sitting in the damn wagon for hours straight, squished up even smaller and bumped far more than a train ride would've done to him, and suspected even normal people would've needed to move around. Automail compounded the issue all to hell, and Izumi had said it herself; they weren't going to be stopping after this just to give him the chance to work out a muscle knot, and...

Behind him, Mustang coughed and choked on it. Another quiet and violent spasm, and each noise was so fucking recognizable as Mustang he couldn't ignore it no matter how hard he tried.

...and anything to get out of here.

Stiffly, slowly, Ed maneuvered himself to crawl back towards the end of the wagon. He shoved his hair back with one hand, giving his brother a parting glance and a smile, and then, just before freedom, turned to Mustang instead.

He glowered.

"Keep breathing, bastard," he snapped and then, hopped free to the ground.

It was too bright, outside; too bright after hours spent in that rickety, oppressive wagon and then also not bright enough, the sun barely rising and the sky still a mottled, cloudy grey. There was no light from nearby houses or street lamps, either, by virtue of the fact that they were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, not a road or settlement in sight and the only sign of civilization at all the nearby well that Sig was already working at, horses waiting patiently by his side.

Izumi stood, unnaturally still and calm by his side, arms folded as she searched across the still horizon with steady eyes, and even from here, obviously as tense and stiff as Ed felt.

He drew closer, eying the well for himself but for now, just had to be content with stretching out his automail. His right shoulder screamed, coiled and knotted, his left leg was numb and not in a pleasant way- god, even his ass hurt. And they weren't even halfway there yet...

And if you're this stiff now, just imagine how Mustang feels.

Ed glowered back down to the ground, hugging himself, and swallowed.

That wasn't something he really wanted to think about.

"How's your dog doing?"

Oh, hell no. "My-" His mouth twitched. He knew what she meant by it, that she'd call him a dog now just as much as Mustang, but just because that was what she meant didn't mean the words didn't hit the exact wrong way when she was talking about Mustang, who the military had just treated exactly like a dog. And not in a you've gotta follow orders way, but instead you're our property and if you're not a good dog, you're a dead one.

"...He's not a dog," he muttered sullenly. He couldn't quite bring himself to glare at her so just glared at his feet instead, all but sulking against the well as trepidation crawled up the back of his neck. His arm fucking hurt. "And- and he's okay. Still breathing, anyway."

That was all they could really hope for, at this point.

Still breathing.

Izumi gave a slow nod, remaining impassive and guarded but thrumming with the very same tense twitchiness that Ed could feel roiling under his own skin. He held still as her eyes searched the wagon again, then met back with his, guarding a sense of wariness that only served to put him on edge even more.

"If he's not a dog, any idea why the military chasing after him like a rabid one that needs to be put down?"

"If I knew, you think we'd be in this mess in the first place?" With a huff, Ed jerked away to rub at his face again, like if he rubbed hard enough he could force all the frustration and confusion away and still stretching his arm as he now squinted up into the rapidly lightening sky. Still no pursuers in sight. Maybe they were just lucky, but... he just really, really hoped it all stayed that way. "Look, Teacher, Mustang never tells me anything. Nobody does. All I know is that one day, he gets called out for a meeting with the Fuhrer, vanishes into nowhere, and a few weeks after that Lieutenant Colonel Hughes gets some call about an explosion in the labs and I was just lucky enough to be there with him."

It was, as brazen and impossible as it sounded, actually the truth. Ed knew nothing, either of what Mustang had done to piss the military off or what the military had done to him. Hughes and Hawkeye had been tight-lipped as all hell, and Mustang, obviously, wasn't talking.

He'd have been lying, to claim he wasn't frustrated by it. But one look at Mustang was enough to prove that now was not the time for anyone to pay mind to his frustration.

Just... later.

He'd get all the answers later.

After Mustang's okay.

There was a brief, utterly relieving silence after that, Izumi now just watching him quietly as he turned back to the well, the horses having had their fill and Ed able to get some for himself, now. His arm still ached enough to make drawing the bucket back up a pain, but it was a good sort of pain, one that kept him focused and awake as he splashed his face and hair.

It woke him up a little, at least. Chased away the sleep clinging to his eyes, anchored him down just a little more securely into the present and sunlight instead of still drifting and half-asleep.

It also did nothing at all for the anxious knot of worry in his stomach, and when he closed his eyes, all he could hear was Mustang being sick in his sleep, back in the wagon.

Come on, Ed... this isn't about you. You've got to hold it together. Don't fall apart now, you CAN'T fall apart now... come on, Ed...

It was too much. It was too overwhelming. Too-

Too scary.

A short, bitter laugh caught in his throat, one that probably alarmed Izumi a little but well, he had greater worries on his mind than that. There it was. He could admit it, even if only to himself while he leaned here against the well. He was scared. Something that made him more scared to even be able to admit it, but he just couldn't help it.

This was something he could not transmute his way out of. He could not fight it, punch it, study it, or fix it. Literally all he could do was sit there and wait, and that terrified him.

There was nothing he could to fix or help him at all.

Ed closed his eyes tightly again, pressing a hand to his face. Something sick swam through the pit of his stomach and in that moment, he couldn't breathe.

And then, that sick fear morphed straight into a hot, dizzying rage.

How fucking dare Mustang do this to them. How dare he make him feel like this- how dare he lie back in that wagon, scaring his brother and sick out of his mind?

How dare he worm his way into their lives like this and then let someone tear him apart to yank him away?!

How could he?!

"...Ed?"

He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, jerking his head back and forth in one wordless shake. He couldn't do this. Not now, not with Izumi- possibly never and with no one at all.

"Ed, are... are you-"

"I'm fine," he muttered coldly, yanking back from the hand to the shoulder that he knew was coming. Shaking his head vigorously, Ed passed the well's bucket over to her, turned his back like his life depended on it. "I've still got a lot of water with my stuff. I'm gonna go try and get some into Mustang, before we get back on the road." he said, giving his metal leg one extra shake. He knew he was being not exactly nice, but his patience had been yanked to the breaking point and no matter how grateful he was to Izumi for helping them now, he was stressed to exhaustion and too far gone to temper his voice into something polite.

If he saw the pity he knew he'd find in her eyes, he knew he wouldn't be able to hold himself together anymore.

Izumi, at least, he knew would be able to understand that.

She'd forgive it, when this was all over.

...one way or the other.

Ed limped back over to the wagon, shaking his shoulders out one last time. He took a deep, steadying breath, silencing the apprehension squirming in his chest to try and all of those awful thoughts, and instead prepare himself for another long stretch of interminable hours stuffed into that stifling, suffocating wagon with his ill, deteriorating superior.

"Ed?"

Another irritated sigh caught in his throat; bristling and bitter. Damn it, he could not do this now. Ed lingered on for a beat, hand still clutching helplessly at the back of the wagon, and for a splitsecond wanted to just pretend he hadn't heard anything at all, and finish his exhausted escape.

When he turned back instead, it was to find a quiet sympathy in his teacher's eyes that hadn't been there before, and more than that, something actually approaching a genuine apology.

"The military needs to keep certain parts of what they do quiet. If he's visibly a chimera, and it seems like he is, then advertising that he broke out of military custody isn't exactly a wise move when it would raise questions as to just why he was a human before they took him, and a chimera after it." She paused gravely, eyes flickering past him to focus on the wagon for a heartbeat instead then back on him, as if willing for him to understand. "If you're lucky, the military will just want him to disappear. If he does it on his own... I don't think you'll have to run from that many people looking for him. ...he'll be safe, Ed."

Then, with the slightest hint of a supportive smile, she turned back to her husband without another word.

Not for the first time, Ed wished he could share her optimism.

The next time Izumi spoke to them, it was well into the day, and she ducked her heard back into their tiny little stifling safe haven tension in her jaw and grim eyes. "You boys better buckle up," she said. "We're crossing into Kiel, now. These people know us, and we've never been stopped or searched before, but you'd better get ready just in case we are. Sig's going to run ahead, warn the doctor we're coming- I'll tell you when it's safe."

"...yes, ma'am."

Izumi glanced at Al once, then down to Mustang with another glimmer of sympathy in her eyes. With another stiff nod, she pulled the cloth back across the divider again, and they were once more left in darkness.

Apprehension fluttered in his chest, making him draw his arms even tighter around himself as he looked up to meet his brother's eyes. He could tell Al felt just as reluctant about this as he did, but just like everything else this whole trip, there really wasn't much of a choice, here. Either they did this, or risked being caught.

So Ed, with another shaky breath, steeled himself and the tension knotting in his stomach, and leaned forward to touch Mustang's shoulder. "Colonel," he called, little more than a whisper. "Colonel, did you hear that?'

The man, still slumped in his pile of blankets, didn't respond in the slightest. In fact, Ed wasn't so sure he'd even moved within the past hour.

He swallowed hard again, and forced himself to stay calm.

"Okay, Colonel, time to do this again. Just for a little bit. Come on." With Al's help, he began to carefully maneuver the man upright, Ed struggling to prop himself up underneath him while his brother wrapped the blankets around him again, creating a cushion for what was surely to be a rough ride. He was heavy, threatening to collapse and trap Ed underneath him with every inch they dragged him, panting and sweating and trembling, and the reality of it all was just too close and too much to bear.

Even through the blankets and hood, he could still feel the sharp heat prickling on his skin, stale, sticky sweat of a high fever. Could still feel how limp he was, how, just, half-dead he was, and in just that one moment, was so scared he could barely stand it.

This couldn't be happening. He was going to be fine, wasn't he? He had to be, this was Mustang, he couldn't be like this- he just- god, no-

"C-come- come on, Colonel, work with us- don't make me fucking- here we go..." All but manhandling him about now, Ed managed to haul Mustang up off the wagon by just a few inches, a deadweight in his arms as they dragged sheets and blankets around to nestle back into his brother again. Together, they folded him back into hiding, Ed doing his best to just not see the whole picture of Mustang crumped up like a broken doll, limbs positioned and body manipulated into what amounted in little more than a tiny cage.

It sure as hell wasn't comfortable, but, Ed surmised, searching over the ailing figure once again, it was just the best they were going to get.

With a rough, apologetic sigh, Ed pulled away. The second his hands were

The second Ed's hands were gone the man sagged over, folding in on himself like a puppet with its strings cut. Knees curled up to his chest, head lolling to Al's side, arms to his lap, and neck bowed at an almost bone-breaking angle.

Once again, he looked almost... dead.

Oh, fuck you, Mustang.

Cursing under his breath, Ed moved forward, adjusting the blankets to try and get him curled up in a way that was at least marginally comfortable. The hood slipped about, revealing flickers of a face every so often, sometimes familiar, sometimes- pointed ears, sharp teeth, yellow eyes- sometimes- not- but every time it happened his stomach lurched violently and when he had at last gotten the man settled, he yanked the hood as secure as it would go, then pulled his hands back firmly to himself. Mustang didn't want them to see and Ed could no longer pretend he felt okay about ignoring that. Not when he was this sick. Not when he was obviously this hurt.

He's not a dog to order around and control.

He's NOT.

"All right, Mustang," Ed grunted, when his work was finally either complete or obviously doomed to be a failure. The colonel was again nestled down deeply into a thick bundle of blankets, his head in particular cushioned on every side so no matter how hard a bump the wagon took, he wouldn't ring his skull against hard, unforgiving metal. Ed hoped, at least. "Time to take a nice, quiet nap in here, Colonel. Don't vandalize or roast my brother, and you'll be back out soon. All right?"

The man's hooded head bobbed silently, lolling about on his neck. It was not at all an answer to what he'd said, and, in fact, Ed worried calling it coherent at all would be much too generous.

Please be okay, Colonel...

Just... just, please be okay...

Without another word, Ed helped Al push this chest plate back shut again. His brother strapped it into place, and, as casually as Ed could be, he crawled to sit on the other side of the rickety wagon, and waited for Izumi to tell them they were safe.

And with that, the noises started.

They came slowly, at first. Small whimpers that echoed as tiny and metallic, barely audible past blankets and armor and the creaking wood of the wagon, a fidgeting that came after barely two minutes of being shut into Al's chest. Mustang never spoke, not even one single word, but the fidgeting was still present, and all too sickly audible, at that.

A gentle clang against metal, choked, minuscule whines. A tiny and strained cry of what could only be pain.

Then the noises got louder; still too weak to be anything but small in the noise of the wagon, but they were there and Ed could not ignore them. Scraping like nails on a chalkboard, except the chalkboard was Al's armor, and the nails were- something not quite human... but the sounds were there, all the same. High-pitched and grating. Agonizing.

Mustang, trapped and helpless, and reduced to nothing more than scrabbling weakly, right at the inside of Al's armor.

Trying to get out.

Ed's eyes widened with horror.

He was trying to escape.

Because he was barely conscious at all, had barely been conscious this whole ride, not even close to awake enough to have understood what they'd tried to say to him no matter how earnestly- but he was awake enough to realize he'd been moved. He was coherent enough to understand that he'd been loosely curled up and free on the floor before, uncomfortable, in pain, but free, and now, was forced and confined into a tiny, dark hole with barely enough space for a grown man.

He was awake enough to want out.

The whining got louder. Muffled little whimpers, pathetic scraping against armor, little thumps that could only be the colonel trying to find a way out. Ed wasn't sure how much he could see, still, but in the darkness of the wagon it surely couldn't be enough to understand what was going on. Because he obviously didn't get it. He obviously wanted out.

He was obviously scared.

Ed curled tighter, anguish bubbling in his throat that he just couldn't quiet no matter how hard he tried. At another high-pitched whine he buried his head, tucking it into his knees to try and get away from it, because it was so undeniably Mustang it just wasn't fair, but he couldn't hide from it no matter how hard he wanted to. That was Mustang, that sounded so hurt and scared to be little more than a young child. That was Mustang, who was trapped and hurt and suffering and wanted out- and that Ed could not, no matter what, risk helping.

If Mustang was reacting this badly to being confined inside Al, he was left with little question that the military had confined him in just the same way. And that, certainly, had not been to help him.

Just like Nina.

Across from him, Al looked absolutely heartbroken. Helpless and sick, like he couldn't bear this anymore and wanted so desperately to end it that he couldn't stand it. Like the only thing he wanted in the whole entire world was to stop those noises from coming inside him, and that was the only thing he could not risk.

Mustang hadn't been the only chimera to hide inside his brother, Ed realized with a jolt, and nearly immediately after that, felt so terrible he had to bite his lip to stop from moaning aloud.

This wasn't going to end like Martel. This wasn't going to end like Nina. That was just- that was a fucking fact.

They were going to get him to Marcoh, and this Marcoh was going to save him, the end.

There wasn't another fucking option.

If Mustang had to whine and scratch like an abused cat in the meantime, scared because he was too sick to understand what was going on- well, tough shit. Ed would rather him scare himself all the way to a heart attack than put him at risk of being caught by the military again.

Even if he had to sit here, head buried into his arms, and desperately think about Risembool, and Winry, and home, and Mrs. Hughes' apple pie, and Mustang teasing him, and anything else but this.

Anything else but his superior officer desperately scratching with a plaintive, childlike fear, and pleading to be let out.

No soldier ever came searching the wagon. The closest Ed heard was Sig exchanging greetings with the village corporal, and he'd tensed, then, panic lurching through him while Al had frozen in terror across from him, because Mustang still wouldn't just shut up. If someone came searching, they were going to hear whining like a stuck pig from inside his brother, and there'd be no talking their way out of that one-

But that was all it was: greetings. Just a hello, how do you do, nice weather we're having, and goodbye.

Then the clip clop of the horses continued on, and underneath them, the soft, strangled whines, from within his brother's armor.

Ed was moving the very instant his teacher's hand slipped back into the wagon, flashing them a thumb's up that was as good a reassurance as any. He tugged while Al pushed, hauling back the chest plate with a high-pitched creak and groan of metal, and- oh, fuck. "Mustang," he moaned, reaching for him, but it was a little too late to matter.

The colonel had curled himself against Al's side, somehow not even filling up all of the cramped space as he made himself even smaller, as constrained a tiny ball as he could manage to hide his face and scratch like a caged cat for freedom. Except he was borderline blind, so he was pawing away at Al's side- still pawing away, trying to hide from them, because he didn't realize his way to freedom was right in front of his fucking face. Except he could paw away all he wanted, Al's armor was not going to give away, and the proof of it was right there in black in white.

In red, black, and white.

Because there were now blood trails smattered along on the inside of the metal, smudged red fingerprints and further scarlet smears around his sleeves. He'd scratched and struggled against smooth metal without any give for what had to have been an hour now, whining and clawing for freedom on something that seemed to be little more than instinct alone- and the result had been no freedom at all, and instead, just the idiot colonel wearing his fingertips raw.

And just how fucking far away were they from this Marcoh, again?

"God damn it, you stupid bastard- stop that! Mustang-" He hauled out, scrabbling with the blankets because there was more of them to grab than Mustang. "Al, help me..."

Not for the first, Ed was grateful for the darkness in the back of the wagon; it made it almost impossible for him to actually get a good look at the colonel's face. He still could glimpse nothing more beyond something stubbornly not human, not even as Al helped him wrestle the colonel out to lay him down again. "Come on, sir," his brother pleaded, tugging another stretch of sheets out free from his chest cavity.

Except jostling Mustang about when he clearly was too out of it to know who they were, where he was, or what was going on, was quite clearly a terrible mistake.

The first burst of fire came out almost as a sneeze, a spasm of his head and a hurking noise that turned into a noxious cloud of sparking embers, orange and red and holy shit, bad. BAD. Then when they tried to touch him again, Al brushing his shoulder while Ed grabbed to tug at his sleeve, it got worse; a hard snort that set fire to the fucking sheets and it was only going to get worse from here.

"Colonel, stop-!"

"Bastard, you're gonna- Al, grab him! Mustang!"

Al wrapped his arms around the colonel shoulder's from behind, obviously struggling to avoid any spots that hurt him while restraining him at the same time, but this only scared him more. He kicked and fought, making those muffled whining noises over and over, tossing his hooded head about like a bridled horse in stricken agony and no matter how hard Al tried to stop him, to Ed's horror- snorting flames nonstop.

There was no longer any question about it. If Mustang kept on going, he was going to burn the fucking wagon down.

Ed threw every last bit of caution to the winds, murmured, "Fuck it,", and shoved forward to pinch Mustang's nose shut with one unforgiving, cold, safe metal hand.

The reaction was as immediate as it was terrifying.

The colonel bucked and howled, the sound minuscule from behind Ed's hand but they could hear it all the same, both flinching away even as Mustang fought back with everything he had. He shoved at them, wheezing, panting as Ed held on, refusing to let go since for whatever reason, he seemed to be unable to breathe fire from his mouth, and as long as he kept his hand there they'd all be kept safe. Even as he cried out, even as he whimpered and whined, even as he was trapped in Al's arms and screeched so desperately in his throat it sounded like he was dying.

Even as Ed and Al hung on, Al pinning his flailing limbs, and Ed all but strangling him breathless to keep them all alive.

With Mustang as sick as he was already, Ed wasn't particularly surprised when even that lack of air was enough to subdue him. It was slow, at first; struggled kicks and whining from behind his hand but kicks that faded in vehemence and strength, struggles that no longer were strong enough to fight them but reduced him to a pitiful fight from within inescapable arms. The hood stayed up and barely secure through some kind of miracle, sagging over his face, but the blankets about him were charred, now, crumbling- and as the colonel slowly fell still, Ed slowly found... things.

Flashes of skin from beyond sheer, torn, fraying blankets, but as Mustang sagged, it was not human skin. Sometimes the wrong color. Sometimes the wrong texture. Sometimes both.

Whimpers of a deep, animal moan of pain. Like a wild dog with its leg caught in a trap, or a a wild cat who'd come to find her cubs gone missing. A sound that was so animal in its pain, it was not one that a human could make.

The slightest glimpse of a hand, when his charred sleeve rode up- a hand that did not end in curled fingers, but in cold, metallic claws.

When he sagged forward in Al's arms at last, the lack of air crumping him down against Ed in a dead faint for Ed's grip to be the only thing that kept him from faceplanting, he felt the shape and contours of his body against his, and it was not that of a human.

For several moments, they both just crouched there, breathless and stunned. Ed holding Mustang up, his heart stopped in his chest, and Al across from him, staring at him from a metal, frozen face that even then, screamed horror.

And then, with one last, final creak, the wagon lurched to a halt around them.

Oh, thank GOD.

Ed sagged straight back against Al with a painful wave of relief. But Mustang kept on with his borderline fit as he swayed dangerously on in his arms, swaying like a precariously balanced top in severe risk of spilling back down on his face, and at another ragged breath by his ear Ed was so startled he nearly shoved the colonel down himself.

But with the ragged breath did not come smoke, or fire, or anything else but just a guttural groan and the limpness of a man utterly unconscious. His head lolled forward just a little more, the hood catching on his hair to once again reveal a pointed, leathery blue ear.

And then, the cloth over the wagon was at last ripped back, and with that, they were safe.

Even squinting past exhaustion, way too many fucking hours left without sleep and into a way bright white sunlight that was blinding, Ed knew he did not recognize the man who had come for them. He was older than Mustang, older than even Sig next to him, and shorter than Mustang, too, with greying hair and a grave, wrinkled face and despite what Ed had been expecting, no military uniform in sight.

His wide-eyed gaze landed, first on Al, then zeroed in straight on Mustang, still slumped and shivering in Ed's arms. His face paled, and his hands fell slack as if he'd just been struck.

"Oh, my," he said.

Chapter Text

The couch in Marcoh's home was, quite easily, the most comfortable place that Ed had found since jailbreaking Mustang.

Granted, that wasn't all that impressive a compliment to give, because everywhere else he'd found had been pretty shit. Central's sewers, with a sweaty and freaked out colonel draped all over his back. For hours and hours. Secluded forest out in the middle of nowhere, sitting with his ass in the mud and, again, with a sweaty and freaked out colonel. Again, for hours and hours.

Packed into the back of a cramped and hot wagon, in the dark, and listening to Mustang pant and whimper, for hours, and hours, and hours.

So, yeah, saying Marcoh's couch was the best he'd had in days really wasn't all that great a compliment.

Still, though.

It was.

It had been hours, now, since they'd turned up at Marcoh's place. He and Al had been left alone, without any explanation, for pretty much the entire time.

Upon their arrival, the still mysterious and unexplained Marcoh, with Sig's help, had carted the man- chimera- whatever into his house, Sig lifting him up easily into his arms while the doctor led the way into his basement. Ed had tried desperately to follow after them, Al on his tail as he strained on his tip toes to catch a glimpse of the colonel, but to no avail. They'd been moving too fast and Mustang had been too huddled up for him to get any more of a look than just a flash of him slumped, shivering, in Sig's arms.

Ed had trailed behind with Al into a secure, safe room that reminded him almost nauseatingly of a hospital. The bed, messy and small, tucked against the back wall. The tools, little knives and packs of gauze and vials of medicine, scattered about and abandoned on tables that smelled so strongly of hospital antiseptic he'd covered his nose and gagged.

He hadn't had the time to even get used to the smell.

Not five steps into the room, Mustang already flopped back onto the bed and shaking, hood heart-stoppingly close to slipping back, and they'd been forced to a halt. Marcoh had stood in their way and held his arms out even against Al, twice his size and five times his strength, and and with a voice solid as unyielding iron, had ordered them out. Something had told Ed there was not much sense in arguing.

Izumi and Sig had left almost immediately after that, with little more than a brief and tight hug from their old teacher to wish them well. It was still vital they not attract attention, and the Curtises hanging around the town doctor's place was a surefire way to do just that. Which Ed really had been all right with, at first- he knew Izumi would help them as much as she could, but the most she could do for them now was get straight back to Dublith, as fast possible.

But now, lying there in Marcoh's lonely, dusty house, curled up on a painfully unused couch, and alone with his brother and his own sick worry for hours on end, Ed found himself, missing the company. Because without it, there was no distraction- and without a distraction, whatever patience he'd had was really quickly running out.

They still hadn't heard so much of a single word, about Mustang.

Not one word.

Ed had already poked around Marcoh's house a bit, as much as he could. And... okay, yeah, against Al's weak protests, because it was clear his brother really wanted to know more, too, he just didn't feel right about digging about in a house that wasn't his for information. Fortunately for Al's reluctance, unfortunately for Ed's curiosity- there just wasn't all that much lying about for him to find.

Searching through the front room had uncovered curiously little of anything of any worth at all, actually. From what Ed could tell, this was actually the guy's house, not at all a doctor's office, but to his eyes it still somehow felt startlingly... un-lived in. It was a house, all right, but to him, the dusty clutter and stretching shadows felt like the gaping difference between some cheap hotel room and the Rockbell's.

As if this was just some old military safehouse used to stash people in, and Marcoh was just crashing here for the week.

Not that this was his home.

It felt downright weird, and despite having only been here for a few hours, Ed already wanted to go.

There weren't any pictures at all, and what furniture there was was all drab and utilitarian. There were books, at least books upon books upon books tucked away into dusty bookcases, but a few cursory glances through them revealed them to be medical texts. Some medical alchemy, some alkahestry, some not alchemic at all, but every last one of them was some dry medical textbook. And aside from that-

Well, there really wasn't much else in the room to sift through at all.

Some mail on the table. Which Ed tossed through, once again despite his brother's protests, and found nothing at all besides a few bills.

A few bills, actually, that were addressed to an Anthony Mauro, and not Tim Marcoh.

That was literally the only item of interest in the entire fucking room. In this cluttered, dusty old room of ugly, ancient furniture, lined in enough textbooks to make it a stuffy old library, the only item of any interest at all was the extraordinarily odd fact that this town's doctor apparently went by a fake name. Or, perhaps- just had a damn roommate.

Oh, right. And there was the day's newspaper, settled alongside the bills, forgotten on the old table. The day's newspaper, in which Ed learned that Kiel was holding a harvest festival soon, and that it had been approaching four days since he'd slept in a bed. That had been the last detail to filter through his fuzzy brain, because he had then slumped straight for the couch to mold himself to it and punch it as comfortable as he could make it, and had been settled there ever since.

Waiting.

Despite the old couch being pretty much the only comfortable source Ed had found in days, he couldn't sleep. He'd spent over a day cramped into that damn wagon, in a half-doze for hours on end, and just because it hadn't been a restful sleep didn't mean he was tired enough to sleep again.

And even if he had been, there was still that anxious little knot, right down there in the pit of his stomach.

Ed wouldn't have been able to sleep if someone had paid him for it.

Ed curled up tighter with a sigh, trying to pummel the ancient pillow under his head into submission. It was flimsy and half-deflated, like it'd lost its stuffing a long time ago, and Ed gave it another glare before shifting onto his other side instead, head against the arm of the ugly, grey couch and blanket hugged loose to his chest. He just couldn't stop fidgeting. Meanwhile, he could tell Al felt just as unsettled as he did, but his brother had always been better than him about hiding something like that, and instead of twitching about had instead settled down to try and read one of Marcoh's book on alkahestry.

Ed was pretty sure he still hadn't made it past the first chapter, and it had been hours.

"Brother?"

Be blinked tiredly, eyes wandering back to glimpse his brother through his hair. Al still looked skittish and uncomfortable, playing aimlessly with the corner of a page with stiff fingers and reluctant eyes. The look on his face alone was enough to make Ed want to sit up, to move closer, but there was nothing he could say to make this better and they both knew it. "Yeah, Al?"

Al drew just a little closer, one cool hand brushing against his side. It was gentle despite his size and lack of feeling, so careful and soft it was almost more comfortable than the couch, and it was all Ed could do not to melt into it right then and there.

"You can sleep, if you want... I'll wake you up if anything happens." Al paused, then aimlessly turned by yet another page. "We might not find out anything more for a while yet."

Ed scowled to himself, even as he curled even more comfortably against his brother's hand. He was right, he knew he was right, and he hated it. "This Marcoh guy should've let us down there," he grunted irritably. "We wouldn't have been in the way, we're not stupid. We could've even helped him, if he needed it! Maybe we're not doctors but three sets of hands is better than one, isn't it?"

Al laughed a little, face softening into just a hint of a smile. "In my experience, most doctors aren't all that impressed by that argument, Ed."

"Yeah, and what the hell do they know?" With another huff, Ed tucked his legs closer to his stomach to just glare downwards and say nothing. They hadn't come all this way to be left sitting alone and in the dark up here, and worse than that, they really had not come all this way to just abandon Mustang in the hands of mysterious stranger. He hated this. He couldn't fucking stand it.

And the longer he found himself lying here, the worse he felt.

Al would actually be pretty used to this by now, wouldn't he?

Forced to sit on the sidelines as helpless and silent, twiddling his thumbs in a hospital waiting room. Because this might not have been a technical hospital, but all the details that mattered were the same and Ed was too tired to draw a distinction beyond that. But sitting here, not having any way at all to know what was happening- not even a hopeful estimate of how much longer he'd be left in the dark. Ignored and powerless, with simply nothing more to do than sit here, try not to freak out, and wait for news.

Ed swallowed uneasily again, tucking his chin to his chest, and shuddered once, all the way down from head to toe.

His brother was probably really used to this by now.

And the least he could do now, was simply not pass out on him, and keep him company instead while they were forced to wait.

Keep him company by... blinking sleepily on his side... hugging a blanket... and head swimming through a half-doze so thick it felt like he was falling into a nap so securely he couldn't even try to break free from it.

Yeah.

Real good company.

With a dragging, exhausted groan, Ed switched directions, pushing himself around to be closer to Al- and, to easier glare down at the stairs Marcoh had disappeared with Mustang down hours ago. "What's even taking so long, anyway?" he grumbled, sandwiching his head against a pillow that had gotten squished against Al. "What's this Marcoh guy even doing to him? I- who even is this Marcoh, or Mauro, or whatever his name is- this place looks like a hovel, Al; we're supposed to believe he knows what he's doing? That he can actually help?" He cursed under his breath again. Maybe they could drag Mustang off to a reputable hospital, not some creepy guy's dusty house, maybe there was still time...

"Whether we do or not, Colonel Mustang does," Al chastised gently. "Besides, he's done well enough so far, hasn't he? I imagine most doctors would've kicked us out straight away. Since he's- um. H-he's..."

"...not human."

Al wilted wordlessly by his side, seeming to almost shrink, cold immutable suit of armor or no. He bowed his head without reply, and once again, Ed found his stomach turning with guilt.

That was really the first time either of them had actually, really said it. Given voice to horrible possibility and acknowledged it out loud, so impossible and final it could never be taken back. Except it wasn't just a possibility, was it? Ed may not have really seen all that much... even now, when he thought Colonel Bastard, he saw Mustang smirking at his desk, smug and arrogant behind piles of paperwork.

Undeniably, unquestionably human.

The hooded figure they'd shepherded into Marcoh's place...

Ed squeezed his eyes shut again to clench his teeth, and bury another guiltridden groan into the back of his throat

He couldn't picture Mustang's face, now. Whenever he tried it'd take him back to the smug bastard in the office, but- that wasn't his face anymore. That was as clear and undeniable as fucking day. If it was, Mustang wouldn't have spent every last moment hiding it so aggressively. If it was, then the few glimpses Ed had managed to steal wouldn't have been so earth-shatteringly wrong.

And it was inescapable, now. He'd said it, and now he couldn't take it back.

The bastard really wasn't just human, anymore.

Which meant Al was right, and the fact that this Marcoh had taken them in without a second thought, and been downstairs trying to save not-human Mustang's life for hours now, pretty much elevated him above any other option they had.

So this was their best option, then.

Settled here together in this odd stranger's house, not knowing if Mustang was dead or alive just a few feet underneath them, and forced into waiting in exhausted silence for someone to finally tell them what was going on.

Ed sighed to himself, rubbing his eyes again. He pushed the pillow further into submission, then opted to just glare sullenly down towards the staircase that Marcoh and Mustang had disappeared down, and keep his mouth shut.

He was really, really sick of being left in the dark.

He wasn't going to let that go by for all that much longer anymore.

Ed had been dozing against his brother for another painfully long stretch of a silent few hours when the door to the basement creaked open, loud and inescapable like a death toll, and the strange and mysterious Doctor Marcoh ventured back up into the light of day once again.

He'd stiffened the instant the basement door's creaking shoved its way into the silence, and was wide awake before Marcoh even stepped into view.

The man looked older, somehow, older than the doctor they'd met just that morning. With heavy shoulders that slumped and dark, hollow eyes that reminded him almost of Mustang's, proceeding up the stairs with an aching slowness and something drawn on his face that made Ed's stomach lurch. Like whatever had gone on downstairs had aged him ten years or more, and now, dragging himself back up here to face them, he was about to age another ten, and was so defeated and resigned to the fact that he didn't even care.

It would've been chilling, if Ed hadn't already been so anxious and high-strung he couldn't stand it any longer.

Marcoh, or whatever his name was, turned to them straight away, his face softening immediately into a struggling attempt at a comforting smile. It was just immediate, and steady enough that to stop Ed's deep, needling sense of fear from catapulting him into worrying after the very worst. "He's sleeping, now," he said quietly, one hand dragging through hair that was ragged and disheveled already, as if he'd already drawn his hand through it many times, by now. "He's going to be okay."

Ed breathed out harshly, sagging back against his brother. A wave of dizzying relief swam through his head and he rubbed his eyes, so exhausted and so, so relieved. Going to be okay. They'd done it. Mustang was safe, and alive, and finally Ed could be sure that he was going to stay that way.

His heart clenched, this time aching with worn relief, and for a heartbeat he wasn't capable of doing anything more than letting himself, after way too fucking long, relax. It felt like something was squeezing him and had been for hours, constricting each breath and making his skin crawl, and Marcoh's pronouncement had only loosened just one of the screws binding him in place.

He was going to be okay.

...

According to mystery doctor who Ed still wasn't at all sure how much they could trust, anyway..

And which didn't answer pretty much anything of what the hell was going on.

Al, at least, remained collected enough to respond the way they were meant to; god bless his brother for smiling back, leading the situation when he could not. "That's- that's wonderful! Thank you, really... we were so worried about him." He inched forwards, one hand still settled protectively on Ed's shoulder. "Thank you so much for helping him."

The doctor smiled weakly back, but it was hollow, too; hollow and defeated like everything about him. "There's no thanks necessary. I'd do anything to help him." He crossed back across the room to sag down into the nearest chair, head settling against his hand and gaze dropping down to the table instead of them, tracing over the scattered papers with an air of such fatigue effusing from him it was nearly too much to stand.

Nothing about this felt okay at all, and Marcoh really wasn't helping.

"So... so, um, Doctor..." Al started to move forwards, then seemed to think better of it, drawing just a little closer to Ed. He shifted unhappily, obviously not very comfortable with the thick, new silence that had settled throughout the room. Ed could sympathize. "Doctor Marcoh? Colonel Mustang didn't exactly... well, he never really talked to us, or, um..."

"We don't know what's going on," Ed said bluntly. Marcoh's heavy eyes shifted to him, and Ed stared right back in as blatant a demand and challenge as he could make it. "Like. At all. Mustang has told us jack shit and, while I am really grateful to you for helping us out, Dr. Marcoh or Mauro or whatever your name is-

"Brother!"

"-it'd also be really nice if you could also give us an explanation."

Al moaned aloud, shaking his head and waving his hands about, trying to placate Marcoh, but oddly enough, he seemed more flustered than the doctor himself. In fact, Marcoh just smiled faintly, his gaze turning to the papers scattered over his table before fixating back on them without even the slightest sense of offense or reprimand. "I see you've been snooping."

"My brother doesn't mean that, he just-"

"It's quite all right. I don't mind... there is very little of consequence here for you to find." He smiled bracingly again, features still guarded and just a bit too tense to be calm. "I would appreciate it if you called me Mauro outside these walls, though. Marcoh isn't a name I've gone by in a very long time."

Ed tensed further, teeth grinding together so hard it made his jaw hurt. That wasn't answering the fucking question. It wasn't a damn answer and the further he was left to sit here in the complete and utter dark, the worse he felt, and the harder it was getting to stand. Why was he dragging his goddamn feet?! Why wouldn't he tell them what was wrong with Mustang?!

"Brother and I will, sir. We promise."

Marcoh sighed quietly again, settling back in his chair with folded arms and a gaze that seemed just a little too guarded to be calm. "Thank you," he said, and god, Ed would've wrung his neck then, just to see if that might yank some words out of it, if he hadn't, then, at last started to talk. "Roy's eyesight will return. I'm sure you'd noticed he was having trouble seeing?"

Roy. So he and the colonel are on a first-name basis... not even Hawkeye calls him that. "I- yeah." Ed shared a look with Al and shuddered, trying to cast the memory of that out in his mind... that raw, belly-deep roar all the way back in the labs when he'd first learned that Mustang couldn't see them. "He tried to blow it off and say it was just the lighting, and I know he could see something, but..."

Roy- Roy, look at me-

I CAN'T SEE!

Ed swallowed hard, heart lodged firmly into his throat, and looked away.

"...I really don't think he was being all that honest about it."

With a sigh of his own, Marcoh sagged back in his seat, resting his face against the palm of his hand. His mouth twitched, almost into something that looked like a faint smile again, but it was gone before Ed could see for sure and faded back into that same exhaustion that had shadowed him before. "Did he, now? Well, you're right. Looking at him now, I imagine he wasn't able to see much more than outlines of big shapes and some colors. But I'll be able to fix that, in time. His eyesight will be as good as it ever was."

As good as it ever was... Ed frowned slightly, his eyes narrowing. Medical alchemy wasn't really his speciality, and he certainly didn't know all that much relating to eyesight- but that didn't sound right to him. A huge relief and obviously the best answer they could've gotten out of him, but...

Well, Ed had heard a lot of bullshit claims, over the years, and something in him was set off now the instant he heard anything that felt too good to be true.

And this did.

Alchemy wasn't a magical switch that could fix wounds or restore lost senses or stitch back together a broken body. The body was endlessly complicated, the brain even more so, and alchemy just wasn't advanced enough for there to be much of a field into it. He and Al had been traveling for years now, searching through the twisted and most insidious depths of alchemy that they could find- and he'd never once found a working array that would've even given him his arm back.

An arm was a lot less complicated than an eye.

Just who the hell is this guy?

"His mouth will be all right, too," the doctor continued gravely. "I'm sure you noticed something about that, too? It will take a little bit of time to heal, and I think I'll need to call a friend of mine to help, but it'll be all right in the end." His face shadowed, a gentle crease of revulsion deepening across his brow, and for the first time, his dark eyes seemed to hide something other than a guarded wariness. "His jaw was wired shut. Broken, too. ...I think intentionally."

For the first time in hours, Ed was wide awake.

"They- they what?" His hand wavered, inching up towards his own face, then froze as he stared back at Marcoh, heart pounding. That was what had been wrong with his mouth? This whole time, it had been- what the fuck? A cold, sick anger swept through him, chilling him like a wave of sold ice; anger at the military and a particular pulsing revulsion towards every single fucking alchemist who called themselves scientists when all they did was cobble together chimeras only to cage them like animals. They'd what? Yeah, he'd been able to tell Mustang was having trouble talking, that something about his mouth had made him uncomfortable, but...

He'd never once figured that was why.

He could tell his brother was equally horrified next to him, staring at an impassive Marcoh and hand suddenly tightened reflexively on his shoulder, a bruising grip of shock and disbelief. "Why would anyone do something like that?" he gasped. "You're- you're sure it was on purpose?"

But this time, however, Marcoh did not answer right away.

Those dark eyes continued to search between them, still wary, still silent. He looked especially tired, now, mouth tightening in unquestionable reluctance, and something about the look on his face made Ed's heart squeeze with another wave of fear.

There was something the doctor wasn't saying. He could tell that right away. Something unsaid about this whole damn mess, that explained who Marcoh was, what Mustang was, why this had happened to him- all of it.

Whatever the answer was, Marcoh knew it.

And he wasn't saying it.

The frustration and fear welled up again around his heart, and once again, Ed had to battle back the ferocious urge to stomp straight up to his feet, stalk back downstairs to Mustang, and ask him the question straight to his face for himself.

Maybe would have, in fact, if Marcoh hadn't already told them the colonel was asleep, and if this morning was any indication, he was going to stay that way for a while.

If he didn't actually believe the colonel was so sick he wasn't going to be up to answering any questions for quite a while.

"Just how much do you know about Roy, you two?" Marcoh asked them finally. His voice was monotonous and somber, chilling in its simplicity, and his gaze pierced, first at Al, then met Ed's with suspicion that was uncanny. "I recognize you- Edward Elric. The People's Alchemist, they're calling you... since the military seemed to forget that's what all alchemy's meant to be for a long time ago. You work with Major Mustang, is that right?"

Ed stiffened again in apprehension. Something about the gaze just made his skin crawl. "...he's a colonel, actually," he said, narrowing his eyes. And had been a lieutenant colonel when they'd met- fucking years ago.

First name basis with the guy, but apparently hadn't met him in years?

"Really?" Marcoh's eyes brightened for the first time since they'd met, the first gentle spark of warmth in this whole day of madness and the warmth melted the tension layered thick between them to give way for a slight and proud, genuine smile. "I hadn't realized... good for him. Very good for him. And that would make you his... subordinate, then?

"...let's call it a mutually beneficial relationship and just leave it at that," he muttered, because no matter how little he cared for military rank and law, something in him still chafed at being called Mustang's subordinate. But there was a hell of a lot more here to question than that, and Ed scowled again, narrowing his eyes back across the room as his mind raced with any number of answers to this nightmare- and very few that ended well. "And how do you know him, then? Apparently well enough for him to track you down in the middle of nowhere, but you've not even spoken in years?"

"Brother," Al said again, this time much quieter, just between the two of them, but Al had always had more patience than him and right now, Ed had none for this stranger.

Luckily, however, Marcoh still didn't seem all that affronted by the obviously suspicious question, even giving another vaguely amused smile as if laughing at a joke reserved just for himself. "I suppose that's fair, isn't it? If you must know- you are correct, Edward. I haven't seen Roy in years. But I'll always do anything I can to help him, and he knows that. I..." His dark gaze drifted away, fading downwards with another long sigh. His face was drawn, now, again, that little bit of warmth already squashed away like a bug, and only that same sense of old guilt and regret as there to replace it. "I hesitate to put words in his mouth, but... I believe he considers me a friend."

Ed narrowed his eyes again.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was the constant confusion and irritation at being left in the dark. Maybe it was the misplaced sense of betrayal, spurned on by whatever military alchemists had done this terrible crime but still prickling in him now, just waiting on edge to be set off again. Maybe it was all of those things; maybe it was none of them, and instead something else entirely.

But all Ed could really tell was there was something about this that still wasn't right- something that was not being said. He didn't think Marcoh was trying to trick them or hurt Mustang, exactly, but...

But something just wasn't right.

"And... and you don't consider him a friend back, sir?" Al ventured. The words came out hushed, somehow- soft, like the musty clutter of the house was suffocating them.

Marcoh frowned again. His eyes stayed down, but this time, his expression had shrouded itself shadowed and ill, guarded in a way that reminded him of Mustang but tenfold, and expressly wrong. "As I said before, I would do anything for him, and that's the end of it. However, also as I said before, I'm really going to need to know how well you actually know Roy before you get anything more than that." He leaned forwards to face them again, inscrutable and almost infuriatingly impassive, and no matter how hard Ed searched his face, he couldn't find even a single flicker of a clue as to what the hell was going on. "I could tell he's been breathing fire. Somewhat... uncontrollably. Do either of you have any idea as to why that could be?"

Ed bristled unhappily, feeling his mouth twitch back into a habitual scowl. What did that have to do with how well they knew Mustang? Seriously, could anyone give them a straight answer, here, or was he now just doomed to listen to everyone around him talk in cryptic riddles until he could browbeat the answer out of someone? "I mean, he's- we found him in a military lab," he huffed, trying and failing, yet again, to rub the sleep away from his eyes. He didn't want to say more than that, didn't want to say the horrifying reality once again, but they all knew it was true. They all know he was a... a chimera. Ed shuddered again, his throat tightening. He still hated to even think it, but if he wanted to actually be of any help at all to Mustang, he was just going to have to et over it. "I'd almost want to say they mixed him with a dragon. But no one's seen any of them for decades... I was hoping Mustang would be able to answer that question himself."

"He doesn't have his gloves," Al added. "I suppose he could have an array hidden somewhere on him- it's not as if we searched him! But it's... it doesn't feel like alchemy. I think Brother's right. Only the colonel can really tell us, but until he does I think we're just going to have to assume it was something the military did."

Ed nodded reluctantly himself, even though the reminder that it was the military responsible for all of this, that they had turned him into this just like that sick psychopath had done to Nina, turned his mouth bitter and his heart heavy. Because Al was right. He'd never quite understood Mustang's particular brand of alchemy. Even after purposefully devoting the time to figuring out, sneaking a copy of his array down and trying to puzzle it out- it had never made sense to him. Whatever symbols and history he'd studied to make his array work, they were not written down anywhere that Ed could find and study for himself, and the array on his spark gloves was rendered as foreign and unreadable as Cretan.

But he didn't have to understand Mustang's array to realize that what he'd been doing these past few days wasn't alchemy. It had always been too quick, borderline instantaneous, even, to be the activation of an array. He'd never felt or heard any alchemic energy about him these past few days, and each and every display of fire had felt just too... instinctive.

After all, Ed had had plenty of bad dreams himself, these past couple of years. He'd been badly sick and badly injured, too, and yeah, Al claimed he'd been delirious with fever that one time, which Ed didn't remember, so no, thank you, he had not been-

Well, he'd never once woken up to find that he'd been transmuting in his sleep.

Once again, Ed was reminded of a dragon- and unsettlingly so, at that.

But no one in Amestris has seen a dragon since the 1800s...

Marcoh, however, did not look very surprised by any of what he'd said. Not even when he'd mentioned his fear about Mustang being transmuted with a dragon, which was all but a horrifying confirmation to him that was exactly what had happened. No- the man barely even reacted at all. There was a little twitch in his eyebrow again but whatever the truth was behind it remained unclear, eyes still clouded and features still infuriatingly calm. "I see," was all he said, at first. "That's... interesting."

"Interesting?" What the hell? Shaking his head, Ed shoved his hair back away from his face, still utterly bewildered and lost and now, once again, wanting to just tear off downstairs to pull the truth from Mustang himself. What the hell was Marcoh hiding from them?! "Listen, I don't know what's going on, here, but-"

"Yes, I understand. However, as I am now Roy's doctor, I'm afraid I'm going to have to keep his privacy in mind, and refrain from answering any more of your questions at this time."

Ed was struck silent.

And dumbfounded.

And utterly, completely, stupidly lost.

...

What?

"I'm sorry," Marcoh continued, stacking a collection of letters together as he swept to his feet, and when he faced them there wasn't even a flicker of indecision or hesitancy anywhere present on his features. "But, quite frankly, I don't know who either of you are. All I know is that Roy needs a place to hide out for a while, and needs to be kept safe from the military- which, Edward, you are currently a member of."

Ed gaped a second time. What the hell was this guy playing at?! Shock washed through him in another wave, so brutal and overwhelming it nearly had him paralyzed right there on the couch. The idea of running back to the military to tell on the colonel was so utterly contrary to anything he'd ever even dreamed of; this time, his brother didn't even try to restrain him from shooting to his feet, and if he would have, it wouldn't have been enough to stop him. "We're the ones who brought him here in the first place! We wouldn't have helped him if we were just going to turn him in! We want- we want to help him! That's why we're here; isn't that obvious?!"

"I understand that, but-"

"My brother's telling the truth!"

And then, Al was the one up on his feet, pushing up so fast that the couch groaned with it- and so blazingly intimidating even the impassive doctor to flinch back. "We're on Colonel Mustang's side, not the military's! Even if my brother's a State Alchemist, we know what the military will do to him if they find him. We've seen how they treat chimeras before, and we'd never let them do that to him. We- we just want to help, sir!" he begged, metallic, echoing voice wavering so perilously close a crack it sounded more human than anyone else's in the damn room. "You have to let us help him! Please, sir!"

But if possible, Marcoh remained even more unswayed than before- like this was something he did every single day, like turning down someone begging to help was just a part of his normal day. "I will be glad to," he said, steady and sure, gaze lingering back on Al. "And once Roy is awake, if he gives his permission, I will, without question. But for now, for Roy's sake, I'm going to have to ask you both to wait until he's recovered enough to make the decision for himself."

Another wave of tension curled through Ed, hot and hard, like being punched in the stomach. It took every last drop of his remaining dregs of self-restraint to keep his jaw clenched shut. He still wanted to shout for a fucking answer, or perhaps just stomp his way off downstairs to put an end to this once and for all. But the words still struck a chord, faintly reminding him of something his brother had said, just days ago, and that something was enough to keep him back and his mouth shut.

He'd already spent days, so far, letting the stupid bastard haul a hood over his changed face, when they both knew Ed could've gotten rid of it in an instant any time that he'd wished. Because he'd wanted to see it, but had wanted even more for Mustang to actually make the choice to show it to him. That part of it had been more important than anything else, and no matter how stupid and bull-headed Mustang was being about it at least it would be his choice. Being turned into a chimera hadn't been, but letting them see it would be. Ed just could not force him knowing that he'd be the second one to take his choice away.

And this was the same thing, wasn't it?

He wanted to help Mustang, and knew that Al did, too. He wanted to shove Marcoh out of the way and plant himself downstairs and not move until Mustang stood up again and smirked and was back to the same proud bastard he'd always known him as.

But just like he'd had to bite his tongue and let Mustang hold the reins this entire clandestine journey to Marcoh's little village- if he really, really wanted to help him, to honestly be as much help to him as he could, and nothing beyond that-

Then he was going to have to do the same now.

That was really just how it was, now. As startling and new and different and miserable as it was, that was the truth and he couldn't do anything to change it. Ed wasn't really sure he'd ever been of any help to Mustang; certainly not any help like this. Because, simply, Mustang had never been one to need it. He was too immutably strong and solid, not even remotely related to the hooded, pained chimera Ed had had to drag around these past few days because he couldn't even walk under his own power. He still couldn't reconcile those two of being one and the same in his head, but the fact of the matter was, they were, and if it came down to a question of loyalty between the military itself and the bastard-

Well, it wasn't even a fucking question.

If Mustang needed his help now, he had it.

And if this small, mousy doctor wanted to doubt that, then Ed was going to stick around right in his face to prove it.

He looked back up at his brother, meeting his eyes for a silent nod, trying to convey the sentiment without words. Al didn't even need a splitsecond to understand before he nodded back, already in perfect agreement.

"We'll go, then. Come on, Brother." Al looked back towards the doctor as he settled into place behind him, cold and unyielding. "We're going to go find a hotel or something, so we'll have somewhere to stay, because we're not leaving. We'll be back soon."

Marcoh seemed to deflate at those words, just a little, shrinking minutely with a sense of relief. Probably because all three of them knew that if they had stood their ground, he would not have been able to actually stop them, or do anything at all but get flattened as they made their way back down to Mustang's side. "We'll be here," he sighed, all but sagging back over the table. "Thank you, really. I understand you're upset, but Roy will appreciate-"

"But."

The doctor wavered into silence again, words fading with no further provocation than that. He sat warily, watching them with the same guarded suspicion that had shadowed his eyes since they'd first met.

Ed, full aware of what his brother was about to say, kept silent.

"Like Ed told you, we're here to help Colonel Mustang. If at any point we start to think that you don't have his best interests in mind, then we will stop giving you the benefit of the doubt, and take him to someone else who does."

That said, Al then strode solidly on straight for the door, and Ed followed right behind him.

The last thing he saw before slamming the door shut was Marcoh, still standing back at the table with a downcast face, averted eyes, and a withdrawn shadow across his features that was just as apologetic as it was guilty.

Chapter Text

The last six weeks had been some of the hardest in Maes' life in a very, very long time.

It had all started, ironically enough, with a very good night. His daughter had had her birthday, and Elicia was still at the age where the party was really more for her family than for her, so already the night had been set for him to gush over and put on a princess pedestal the most precious little girl in the entire world, thank you very much. The night had only gotten that much better when Roy had knocked on his door midway through, materializing all the way out from East City for a surprise visit bearing wine, and his version of a smiling face.

...Okay, so, his best friend for some reason had thought wine was the right thing to bring to a two year old's birthday party, but Roy had never really got the whole gift-giving thing down, and the better present had been his surprise presence, anyway.

Roy had come to the capital a night early for him, an afternoon meeting already scheduled with the Fuhrer for the next day. As was somewhat typical for whenever Roy was in town on business, he'd ended up in Maes' office to kill time, skulking about like a gloomy storm cloud and grumping up the place, to Maes' vast amusement. Meanwhile, Ed and Al had been in town for more research and had crossed paths with the wandering colonel, and- after the inevitable shouting match- had somehow ended up all relaxing in his office, Maes fighting to maintain the peace while Ed and Roy had been busy doing everything they could to usurp him.

And then, out of nowhere, a pair of MPs had marched in, and asked Roy to come with them.

Well, asked had been a pretty loose word. Maes had been there, and to him, it had seemed an awful lot like an order.

In fact, he was pretty damn sure Roy had been under arrest- all that had been missing was the handcuffs.

Roy, he remembered, had realized something was off, too. He'd paled at the mere sight of the MPs and took just a second too long to comply with their orders, sitting stock still and chalk white in his seat like he’d known something was about to happen but couldn’t stop it. But, without a single word of protest- indeed, he’d tossed a smirk at Maes and another short joke at Ed- he’d at last gotten to his feet and complied with the command, following the military police out of Maes’ office, straight-backed and sure.

That had ended up being the last time Maes had seen him until that terrible day underneath HQ, weeks after.

Roy, it seemed, had just dropped off the face of the earth. Maes had checked, checked, and checked again, once his best friend had just never come back- there was no record of Colonel Mustang leaving the building, there was no record of him ever having been put under arrest, and not a single one of his contacts had seen him in the prison or the holding cells in HQ. His best friend’s file had nothing. When he’d inquired about the MPs, he hadn’t been able to find any trace or history of their orders concerning Roy, and Hawkeye had been just as stunned as he had been, to hear about how they’d basically arrested Roy- she hadn’t been able to think of anything they could’ve gone after him for.

Much worse, though, was that the Fuhrer had never come asking to find out why Colonel Mustang had shown for his meeting.

Whatever had happened to Roy had been endorsed by the military itself. So high up there wasn’t even a paper trail for him to follow, but Bradley himself had known exactly what had happened to him.

Had perhaps even ordered it himself.

And, worst of all, all Maes had had were two clues to go off of:

Scieska, by pure coincidence, had passed by Roy on her way back to his office. She’d confirmed to him that the MPs had been leading Roy down to the basement of the building- or, not to Fuhrer Bradley’s office, as they’d first claimed.

Military police had their division identified by their uniform. It had taken Maes a few hours to track down the emblem from their shoulders, as rarely used as it was, but once he’d finally found it, a leaden weight had sunk down into his stomach, and continued to sit there ever since:

The emblem of the research labs.

The MPs that had taken Roy had been sent by the research labs.

Maes had hunted as hard as he could from there on through weeks straight for any hint of his best friend, no matter how small. And Ed had helped, too, the little alchemist and his brother lending their talents more and more with each passing day as it had become more apparent that something was seriously wrong. But they just hadn’t found anything. It was as if Roy had been wiped from the face of the earth, and every single attempt of his to open an official investigation had been stymied by his superior, who would say nothing but that orders from the higher ups were that Colonel Mustang’s situation had already been taken care of.

The thought of just what taken care of could mean sent shivers down his spine.

The days had passed like that, in steadily increasing horror; by its end, Hawkeye had been all but ready to desert and come down to Central herself, Mustang’s men with her, while Maes had been about to risk his very career- possibly his life- to break into the research labs himself. His career didn’t matter if Roy wasn’t there for him to support, damn it; he would give up a hell of a lot more than the stars on his shoulders to save him-

And then, Roy had answered the question for him by starting to break out himself, and all Maes had had to do was help him along.

The official word so far was an alchemy accident. That was what the papers had said, anyway, when story about an emergency evacuation and lockdown at military HQ had hit the press. Or, at least, that was what Bradley had told them to print, and the editors knew if they wanted to keep their jobs, they'd print what the Fuhrer reported as the word of god. Unofficial word had been hard to come by, especially with Maes trying to stay as under the radar as he could, carefully and calculated disinterested, asking questions that only could've come from just one of the many curious soldiers who'd heard the alarms, and wanted to know why.

Unofficial word that had taken him weeks to glean had been even more troubling.

An escaped chimera that, according to Maes' contacts, had been put down like a rabid dog before he could even get a single breath of fresh air.

This was particularly odd and disconcerting, considering Maes had watched said chimera stagger outside with his own two eyes, and the day after that, had gotten word that Ed and Al had left on the early morning train out east, right on schedule.

Someone wanted Roy gone. Not re-captured, not in the news as an escapee and a traitor, but gone. Either dead, or so thoroughly vanished from the public eye that he might as well have been.

Which, granted, was a better turn of events than Maes had expected, but still was not all that reassuring.

Maes hadn't been all that sure of what was really going on, in the aftermath of it. He'd known he was being watched, and had kept his head down because of it. Done his work dutifully, come home to Gracia and Elicia, and once he'd sensed his investigations were starting to attract attention had shut up and stayed out of it. He'd been desperate and scared, each day more unbearable than the last, but he couldn't help Roy if he was arrested himself, and he's also had his own family to think about.

Turning dutiful and silent, gritting his teeth to bear it, and wordlessly swearing to Roy he'd be there for him the second he could, was just all he could do.

He'd fully been expecting for someone to pull him aside at some point anyway, because while he tended to not be taken seriously, it wasn't exactly a state secret that he and Roy were friends- meanwhile, whatever had happened to Roy was.

But the questions had never come, and instead, all Maes had had to do was bide his time, and wait for a mission out east to come up.

From there, he had promised his family he'd come back soon, packed a bag, and headed straight after Ed and Al.

And now, here he was.

Sitting in a hotel room in Kiel, and learning that evidently, he was meant to just go back home.

"You're... quite sure that's what he said?" he asked, elbows settling on his knees as his hands wrung together, curling so tightly it made them ache. "You're positive, Ed?"

"You'd better believe it." With a sulky, almost aggressive huff, the alchemist flopped onto his stomach, scowling so darkly at it that if looks could kill, Maes imagined the wall would've crumbled right then and there. "I've been over there every day since we got here. Same answer each time."

Something clenched in Maes' stomach, and then, his spirits and hopes fell just a little further.

Same answer.

So- no.

Ed had gone back to Marcoh's home, asking to see Roy. And Marcoh had told him no.

Or, Roy had said no. He'd just said it through Marcoh.

Maes pinched his forehead, trying to chase away the headache he could already feel building. "You're sure," he repeated again, this time somewhat to himself, then shook his head. No, this was really not how today was supposed to have gone. At all. "And that's all Marcoh's told you? Just that Roy doesn't want to see you?"

Ed gave another grumpy nod, head still pillowed against his hands and feet in the air, looking for all the world to be just a petulant teenager. Maes would've been fooled, if he didn't happen to know that so-called petulant teenager had risked everything to save his best friend's life. "That's all he ever fucking says. That Mustang's going to be okay, and that he doesn't want to see us." He kicked for a moment, twisting in a veritable sulk, then suddenly was shoving onto his side instead, glowering to Maes instead of the wall. "It's been weeks, now- fucking weeks! Why is it still just he's going to be okay; shouldn't he be all right by now? Or at least as all right enough for Marcoh to stop talking like he's sick! And why the hell won't he let us see him?!"

A tired vein pulsed in Maes' forehead again. It took a forced, deep breath for him to grit back his irritation at all, and if it hadn't been for Ed rolling about like he was about to lose it over there, he would've just let him flop back onto his own bed to scream.

Quite honestly?

He agreed with Ed.

Maes may not have understood all that much of what was happening, here, but the knowledge that not only had Ed not seen Roy for weeks, now, but that he was apparently still unwell enough to need a room in Marcoh's basement was distressing to say the least. The fact that all Marcoh would tell Ed was he doesn't want to see you was even more so.

With another heavy sigh, Maes pushed his glasses up more securely then just gripped at them leaning to bury his face in his hands. There had to be something here that he wasn't seeing. Just something that would make it all make sense, something...

Roy, damn it, what did they do to you?

Ed remained flopped exhaustedly on his stomach across from him, scowling and petulant and so obviously tired Maes didn't doubt he was stretching at the frailest seams of his patience. He looked like he'd been in a slow, prolonged falling-apart for weeks, and now, caged up in this little town with a stubbornly unhelpful Marcoh and avoidant Roy, was about to start scratching at the walls to tear them down.

Maes could sympathize.

For now, it was just the two of them. From what Maes understood, Ed's old teacher had been here in the beginning, and so had Al, for as long as they could manage it. But while the Elric brothers had exponentially more freedom than officers like him or Hawkeye, the fact of the matter was, they also had things they had to do if they wanted to avoid suspicion, and that included carrying out their missions. Even so, they hadn't wanted to leave Roy all alone, here- seriously, had Maes mentioned how wonderful these two were, yet? So, just a few days prior to Maes' arrival, Al had set out to take care of Ed's mission, and be back at his side as fast as he could.

Ed obviously wasn't happy about it. Maes couldn't see Al to compare, but he doubted the younger alchemist was any more satisfied with the turn of events than him.

But they couldn't get anyone looking into just why Ed and Al had high-tailed it out of Central on a mission just a day after their superior officer had gone missing, and yet no mission had been done.

Which left the matter pretty much as hopeless and despairing as it could get.

No Al, Ed one wrong word away from punching someone, and Roy just...

Gone.

Helpless anguish clenched around Maes' heart, and with one exhausted, groaning sigh, he sank back onto his back to stare in utter hopelessness towards the ceiling.

This wasn't how today was supposed to have gone.

He'd prepared himself for the worst; for so many worsts, because this had been bad from start to end and he'd known it was dangerous only to let himself hope and not be ready to be let down. He'd known there was a very good chance that the message left for him in Dublith, three weeks old and tenuous at best, would prove to be out of date when he got to Kiel and found that the boys had already moved on, and Roy with them. He'd known there was the even smaller chance that it was a trap, and he'd get to Kiel to find the military waiting for him, either with Roy and the Elrics back in their hands or hoping he'd lead them to them.

Part of him had known, and an even smaller part had actually been able to acknowledge it, that he'd get to Kiel, and find Ed and Al waiting for him- but not Roy.

Part of him had been terrified he'd get here too late, and find his best friend dead.

However, none of him had expected to get here, find all three of them alive and at least fairly well... and still be told that he wasn't allowed to see Roy.

Wasn't allowed?!

Weeks' worth of fear culminated into a crushing weight on his chest, forcing the breath and nearly the life out of him as his heart shuddered, sick nerves cresting almost to a breaking point. What was going on? This whole time, nothing had made sense, and just when he'd thought he was finally about to get some answers, this? Roy was his best friend; however Marcoh knew him the doctor had vanished years ago and was an old acquaintance at best. He had no right to stand in between the two of them, because it had to be that, it had to be Marcoh refusing them access and not Roy speaking through him. Because one Maes could handle, tear his way through so he could fix things, make this all better, but the other was-

Was so much worse.

Maes swallowed hard again, overwhelmed and hollow, inside, and hugged himself through another violent shudder.

God, he just wanted to just be able to talk to Roy so badly...

"...meanwhile, we're fucking stuck here- can't do anything," Ed was grumbling on, settled on his side, now, as he ranted on with a flushed face and unfocused eyes blazing on. "We tried doing research but there's not even an alchemy library here, never mind anything about chimeras. And whatever Marcoh knows, he won't fucking say."

Maes sighed heavily, leaning his head back against the wall. Yeah, that sounded like those State Alchemists, all right. Guarded their secrets closer to their chests than anything else in the world... even when it might've done a world of good to divulge them.

Well, at this point, he had half a mind to head off over to find Roy himself right now and make both his voice and Ed's known, whether his friend wanted it or not.

"...Lieutenant Colonel?"

Maes sighed to himself, trying to wrench himself back under control, at least for Ed's sake if not his own. "Yes?"

"This- this Marcoh, guy. He..." Ed hesitated at last, his rambling, emotionally charged speech at last dwindling into fear-tinged upset. His fierce eyes were still turned away, but now he sat there arms wrapped around himself, chewing on his lower lip, but instead of teetering on the edge of punching something indecision and doubt had clouded over to temper blind rage into sincere, sick worry. "We're really, really sure Marcoh actually is on Mustang's side, right?"

"...what do you mean?"

"Well, I've... been thinking about it, actually." Distress clouding across his face once again, the kid seeming to not want to actually think about the words that he was saying but the fear eating away at his tired eyes said otherwise.. "Me and Al haven't actually seen Mustang since we got here. We've only got his word that Mustang's okay. And I know the colonel trusted him, but-." He stopped again, working his jaw as he struggled to find the right words. "But..."

"But you don't trust him," Maes filled in heavily.

Ed shook his head once, gaze still averted to glare sullenly at the adjacent wall, coiled and tense like all the restless energy that had built up since this crisis began was building again towards a breaking point. "Well, yeah. He's not done anything but hide Mustang from us so far. And Al's said I should trust him to help Mustang, but what if he's not?! I'm supposed to just sit here twiddling my thumbs until it's too late?!"

To that, Maes bit his tongue and did not respond. It was part of being a soldier, he wanted to say, but what relevance did that even have? Ed may've sold his skills to the Amestrian military to the time being, but he was no more a real soldier than Maes' secretary, and- Roy wasn't one anymore, either. It ached to acknowledge that, was still so impossible and wrong he couldn't stand to believe it, but it was now true. Roy would never wear a military uniform again.

Just because Maes could remember biting his tongue to sit and wait in restless, ever building tension in Ishval, helpless but to wait for an order to come down that would end it, didn't mean that mattered here.

"Hey, are you listening to me?!" Ed pushed closer like the wild hellcat he was, hot anger split through the fear in an instant. "I'm serious, Hughes! What if we're just wasting time right now? How are you so calm; I thought Mustang was your friend!"

Maes tensed again, a sharp, piercing wave of anger stabbing straight through his throat. "I'm calm because I'm thinking, Ed," he admonished, but the wound hewn straight through him by the accusation alone made his mouth taste like lead and his blood oil. The only reason at all he was able to keep his words steady was because he knew Ed felt just as bad as he did, but just because he wasn't loud and proud about it like Ed hardly meant he was fucking calm. But there wasn't enough here to support the both of them losing it, so with Ed already knee deep in paranoia and worry and rants and Roy- Roy doing whatever the hell he was doing- Maes knew he was just going to have to be the one to keep his head on.

Also, because yelling at Ed to shut up, you unrepentant brat, I've known Roy nearly longer than you've been alive, wouldn't help anything at all. It could get him a startled or somewhat wounded, apologetic Ed, maybe, but nothing helpful.

The alchemist tossed himself back against the pillow with another aggressive huff when he got no further answer than that, so hard it nearly thumped the fluff straight out of the cheap hotel bedding. "You know, I don't even get why you or Mustang are so eager to trust this guy in the first place. Didn't you say he was a State Alchemist, like us? You know- in the military? How do we know he's not still-"

"Ex-military, Ed," he corrected, sighing. "He was a State Alchemist, a long time ago, but he left long before you even joined. He deserted years ago. Calling the military in on us would just get himself arrested."

Surprise flickered across Ed's face, just a little flicker of something else still mired in all that hostility. "So that's why he uses an alias here..."

Maes raised an eyebrow. "Does he? Well, yes, no wonder. To be honest with you, Ed, I didn't even know he was here myself. Roy asked for me to keep an eye out for any reports on this place years ago... that I should divert any reports that came through about AWOL soldiers in Kiel. I know Roy knew Marcoh, during the war, I think, but I never did."

"...he was in the war?"

Once again, Maes sighed. He caught a glimpse of new unease in Ed's eyes, the way he always seemed to be uneasy, being reminded of the civil war. But this was dwarfed, now, by how unsettled the both of them were here in this messy, troubling turn of events, and if Ed had been able to handle Roy and getting him here when he'd evidently been a prickly, suffering chimera, he could handle hearing a little bit about their country's dark history. "Yeah," Maes muttered, meeting his eyes. "Almost all State Alchemists were. People with specialities like Roy in combat roles, but Marcoh was there as a researcher... or at least he was, until he deserted in the middle of the war. People were talking about that for days." Maes sighed again, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Another glance at Ed and he couldn't help but lower his voice, as if it were just a secret, just between the two of them. "It's not really public knowledge, what it was he was doing there, but the rumor's always been that it was something to do with chimeras."

There was a harsh, unsettled silence. Ed stared at him with newly huge eyes, frozen on his bed with a new and shocked understanding, and Maes found the only thing he could do was just give a grim nod of assurance that he was right.

There was a reason that Roy had sought out Marcoh, and Maes was pretty sure that Ed now knew why.

When the uneasy quiet just stretched on between them, Ed at last drew his knees up to his chest, resting his head on them and turning his gaze back down with a nearly oppressive sense of discomfort. The hostile outer shell was gone, now, extinguished away by the hungry fear underneath that made him look so much more like the child he was, and for a moment, all of Maes' own anger washed sickeningly away and he wanted nothing more than to pull him into a hug.

"He'd never talk to us," Ed croaked, guilt and hurt in his eyes. "Not the whole way here. We only wanted to help him, no matter what, and I wanted to but I could never actually get myself to ask him what- what kind of chimera... what animals they.... mixed him with." He shuddered hard, lip pulling back into an expression of sheer revulsion. "Whatever it was, it's not like Nina. His head's all there and he actually seemed okay. Or... as okay as possible, I guess. He was trying to hide it but I still managed to see some things, and-..."

"And what, Ed?" Maes pressed. His heart squirmed anxiously again, everything but his own sick fear squeezed out of his chest until it hurt too much to bear. He knew Roy was a chimera, now, that he was half human and half something else, but- god, what was he? What had the military turned him into?! It'd been haunting him for weeks, now, and for the horrible truth to at last come up but like this...

Seeing Ed look that unsettled, was terrifying.

"...and I think they mixed him with a dragon, Hughes."

...Huh.

All right, then.

A dragon.

That, he had not been expecting.

"A- a dragon," he repeated, stunned.

Ed nodded back. "Yep."

...

"All right..." Maes started guardedly, when it became apparent that the alchemist was not going to simply explain the near impossibility of it all without some prompting. Ed thought Roy was half dragon. "I'm not exactly an expert, so tell me if I'm wrong, but I thought for that you'd have to have- you know, a dragon."

Ed gave a second short, grim nod, this one in time with another toss of his hair back over his shoulder. "You should. I think. I'm not really an expert either, it might be possible without, someday, at least, but... I think so."

So...

A vein throbbed in Maes' forehead, and it took about all his self-control not to smack his hand to his forehead.

"Ed," he sighed at last, patience sizzling near vanishingly small, "no one's seen a dragon in decades. The last hunt was- god, when I was a kid. Some people think they're extinct entirely."

This time the kid just scoffed at him, short and abrasive and mocking. "Firstly, Hughes, the only people who think they're extinct are some stuffy scholar who's never done any field work- but. Well, um, yeah. I know that. Not seen in decades. I know."

"Then how-"

"I don't have an explanation as to how, but all I know is that he was breathing fire, Hughes. No array or gloves or anything in sight- just breathing fire right out of his face. So," he said again. "Either you show me another animal that can do that, or somehow, the military made him part dragon."

Maes stared at Ed again, all pretenses thrown aside to evaporate and leave him stricken with disbelief. He blinked several times to the confident alchemist across from him, utterly baffled, and for several moments couldn't speak at all.

Roy was... part dragon.

Um.

...wow.

His best friend was a dragon?

But-

But that wasn't possible. It couldn't be. He couldn't picture it at all in his head; every time he tried to connect Ed's words to the image of Roy in his head it was as if something shorted out, the picture going dark and his mind just blank because there was nothing that he could see. He laughed weakly, first little more than a chuckle but then it went on and suddenly he couldn't stop, a half-hysteria building and tightening in his throat. It wasn't even possible, because the dragons were all but gone, whereas Roy was right here, not gone. Roy was not a dragon! It was impossible, ludicrous, there was no way, it didn't...

Maes frowned.

It didn't make sense.

Roy was already a walking human flamethrower. Just as destructive as any one dragon could be, with his exact command over fire and oxygen and all that that entailed, unquestionably powerful and probably the single most effective soldier the military had. Roy was good.

So, what was the point of putting that single most effective soldier in jeopardy through a uniquely dangerous transmutation, just to... what?

Keep him a flamethrower?

And even if Ed was right, why Roy? Because whether Ed was right or not, Maes was still right as well. If the military had merged him with an unspeakably rare dragon, why waste such a precious resource on the one soldier that it'd be...

Well...

A waste on?

Maes pursed his lips, his skin crawilng like an itch that he couldn't scratch. There was too much about this that didn't make sense, and too much that he was worried about to stand, and too much that just scared him, about all of this. None of this was okay, and because this was about Roy, that meant Roy was not okay. His best friend was not okay, and needed help.

And Maes was never going to sit idly by when Roy needed help, and do nothing- whether Roy wanted him to or not.

"Ed?"

Ed lifted his head back up to look at him, eyes overbright on top of that glimmer of fear. He looked small, again, too small and too young for the fierce soldier he was trying so hard to be, and instead of the prickly alchemist mad from weeks of being kept in the dark, instead, Maes saw the child who'd dragged Roy halfway across the country to save his life, and now, no one would even tell him if he was okay.

Pride and gratitude welled in equal parts about his heart, and Maes had to swallow back the lump in his throat to give Ed his strongest smile, instead.

"Let's go try another visit with Roy."

The walk over to Marcoh's was short; the swaying Ed part of the venture was even shorter than that. It was clear the alchemist had been going stir crazy, these past few weeks, and when given the chance to finally act, he'd pounced on it like a moth to a flame. In fact, Maes was almost struggling to keep up with Ed. Despite the kid being little more than a third his size, he was moving so eagerly through the town he outpaced him without even trying.

Maes would've been amused, if he wasn't so infected with toxic worry and fear it made him sick to his stomach.

He'd known all the way back in that dark, bloody lab that it would be the right decision to trust Ed with this, and he was so, so relieved to be proven right. He hadn't wanted to, still, because Roy was his superior but Maes' best friend and he hadn't wanted to just hand him off like an object to anyone else- but if he'd really, really had to, he was just glad it was Ed.

No matter how they bickered like cats and dogs, no matter the fact that Ed would surely never say it, he was loyal to Roy, and Maes knew that meant more to his friend than words could say.

"Gotta say, I'm surprised you're doing this," Ed commented once, just as he was leading the way around a corner to take them to another close to deserted street. By the twitchy way he was searching about, Maes had to guess he and Al had planned this route weeks ago as one that attracted as little attention as possible. "Don't get me wrong, relieved, too- but surprised. I thought you'd side with Al and tell me we should just be more patient."

Maes smiled a little, saying nothing. The look on Ed's face alone was all he had to see to know exactly what the kid thought about being patient, here, and nearly laughed aloud. It was just so very Ed- and Al, too-and right now, Maes just really felt he could use something familiar. "Let me tell you a little secret about Roy Mustang, Ed," he said, settling a hand down on his shoulder. "He's even more stubborn than you."

Ed rolled his eyes, even as his mouth twitched through a restrained smile; Maes squeezed his shoulder again, willing him to keep listening. "He is. I once watched him try and do a handstand on his desk, just because Hawkeye said she didn't believe he could do it."

"He did not."

"-nearly broke his back- anyway, Ed, as nice as being patient might sound, sometimes, being patient just means people like Roy get stuck in a rut and don't have any reason to break out of it. You've been patient with him- hell, you saved his life, Ed." Warm, liquifying relief spread through his chest again, and Maes smiled down at the kid fondly, simply too grateful for words to say. "It's been long enough by now that if he was going to give on his own, he would have. He doesn't need patience, anymore, he needs to know he can trust us." He paused again, reaching down to squeeze the alchemist's shoulder with as much reassurance as he could muster. "Trust me, Ed... you got him this far. Let me get him the rest of the way."

The words, as heartfelt as he could make them, weighed heavily in the quiet between them. But no matter how hard he'd tried, it was clear the alchemist could not be swayed by words alone. Ed was well aware of both the gravity of the situation and Maes' own ditstress, thick and just underneath his words, and no matter how strong he was trying to play it- Maes could see in his eyes that he was every bit as worried as he was.

But he could also see that something about his attempt at confidence had still gotten through to him.

Ed nodded slightly once, setting his jaw.Then, without a single word, he focused back, and kept on leading the way.

It was only when Ed had turned his focus away that Maes allowed his reassuring smile to fade, his insides twisting, and a sense of unease that crawled up the back of his neck like a cold snake.

He'd been worried for weeks already. Getting here at last to find Ed, this anxious ball of upset nerves, and Roy, just... hiding...

Something about it felt extraordinarily wrong, so inherently so he felt down to the very pit of his stomach, and the feeling got ever worse with every step that he took.

At last, Ed got them to Marcoh's house. Sufficiently far from both the train station and the hotel, and utterly nondescript in every way; just one of many houses on the street, blending in right in plain sight. For someone hiding from the military, it was assuredly a good choice, at least. Maes never would've guessed a State Alchemist on the run had hidden himself in there. Or that another State Alchemist and possible chimera, also on the run, was being cared for in his basement.

Somehow, just the sight of it filled him with another sense of trepidation as Ed headed up the stairs to the front door, and with little more than a clap of his hands had finagled his way past the lock, and lead the way inside.

Maes winced.

The room was dark and musty, stale, somehow, as if Ed, Al, and Roy had been the first visitors here in a decade. Shadows and probably cobwebs clung to the corners, dust eating away at the very air, and so suffocatingly lonely it took a great deal of willpower not to step back. The entire house gave off painfully unlived in aura, like whatever it was Marcoh had been doing since the war, it hadn't involved actually starting a life, here, or finding friends or a purpose- hadn't been anything more than just existing.

It reminded him, painfully so, of Roy's existence after the war. That was exactly what it had been- the mechanical going through the motions as a soulless puppet. The way his first apartment in the city had been just like this, dusty and dark and empty, housing little more than a cot and a fridge for weeks that had become months, and Maes had started to be afraid that all his friend was doing was just sitting in some dusty corner to waste away.

It had taken years for Roy to haul himself into being something even approaching a functioning human being.

By the looks of it, Marcoh had never really made it at all.

"Come on," Ed murmured, voice carefully hushed into the stifling quiet. He pointed towards the stairs, all but tip toeing his way there over wood old enough that seemed to be begging to creak and give the away at any point. "The bastard's down there. Marcoh's probably with him, too."

The bastard... Roy.

So there he was, then.

He'd spent weeks searching, hiding, hunting, and now here he was, just down there. Every last thing that the military had done to him would be on display and there'd be no pretending it wasn't real anymore. He was going to see every inhuman thing there was about him and he wouldn't be able to take it back. Roy was- was-

Oh, just shut up, Maes!

And that was how, with Ed leading the way, they at last stepped into the basement.

Which was all it took to scramble everything into chaos.

There were two figures across the equally dark, stale room, one sitting upright in a bed, the other looming over him, obstinately a doctor seeing to a patient in a basement that was even more obstinately a homemade hospital room, shrouded in dim light. Regrettably, Maes didn't have the time to glimpse simply anything more than that, because the instant that Ed had pushed the door open, the scene was shattered straight through.

Roy, because the 'patient' could only be Roy, scrambled backwards, kicking first at sheets to press himself back against the wall before abruptly throwing himself away entirely. Silent and shivering, he hit the floor in a sloppy stagger, little more than a dark shadow as he whirled away to hide his face and cower in what could only be stricken, heart-stopping terror. He huddled away, limping back towards the wall as fast as he could, and the sight alone made Maes' heart stop. He moaned, desperate, horrified, but Maes could do nothing more than reach out to help him before Marcoh was there to stop him.

The doctor moved fast as Roy, but while Roy had flinched back to hide, Marcoh was thereto stand in their way. He slid right in place with his arms thrown out to plant himself firmly in between them and Roy, and in the flickering firelight of the basement his face had transformed so harsh and dangerous, Maes knew that he would shoot them, if he had to.

"Edward!" Marcoh shouted, unforgiving and even more unyielding. "What are- you? What are you doing here?!"

"Long time, no see, Doctor," Maes murmured testily. He barely found enough scraps of patience to direct an ounce of attention towards him, gaze still magnetized right over his shoulder to the horrific, unbelievable sight of his best friend, still cowering against the wall.

It was dark and Roy was all but trying to melt into the wall, certainly not trying to make himself part of the conversation in any way, but the instant Maes spoke he saw his friend stiffen as if he'd just been struck. He lifted his head, still turned away, then dropped it again with a violent, almost agonized moan. "Maes?" he gasped. "Maes?! You- no... what are you doing here, Maes..."

Maes' eyes narrowed. What?! A sharp, deep hurt prickled around his heart and he stepped forwards again, sick anger caught into a crumbling betrayal. "What am I doing here?! Of course I'm here, you idiot! You're really surprised I came, Roy? Or did you forget that we're friends?!"

But Roy only shook his head, still pressed away and shaking, now; either because he wasn't meant to be on his feet or the emotional turmoil of the situation, Maes could not tell. He wished neither were true; wished none of this was true at all. But idle, hopeless wishes would not be granted, and instead Maes simply steeled himself to step closer again. He desperately wanted to reach him, to help him sit down, get it through his stupidly thick skull that whatever it was he was so scared of, to just stop-

But this time, once again, it was Marcoh who stopped him.

"Captain Hughes," he warned. Arms still held out, the doctor only pinned him in place with his hard gaze alone, but his eyes were so dark and cold that the force of it was enough to drive him silent. "Like I've told Edward, Roy is unwell and does not want to see you. Go-"

"Back upstairs, and let you proceed to not give us any answers?" Maes shot back, glowering. "Ed already told me. Sorry, but I'm not very interested in sitting around helpless when someone I care about is hurt." He stopped for a heartbeat, glancing back at his friend's turned back in the hopes those words had drawn something out of him- but still, nothing. "And it's Lieutenant Colonel now, Marcoh."

But the doctor did not waver. He didn't even come close, still positioned right in between him and Ed and Roy, a harmless doctor in the middle of a brutal, deadly alchemist, a potentially inhuman, dangerous chimera, and Maes might've been comparatively normal but he knew he could disarm and pin the man in a matter of seconds. But it did not seem to matter to him, because Marcoh still held in place and Roy with him, trembling across the dim room with a bowed head, and pressed to the wall like it was the only safety in the world.

Maes tensed again, and his heart clenched at the sight, so violently it hurt.

Roy wouldn't even look at them.

Roy... PLEASE...

Marcoh sighed, long and heavy. His eyes still flashed, and his arms stayed up, but there was just the faintest flicker of sympathy on his worn face, and when he spoke again, Maes could hear it there, too. Just that one wavering flicker, hovering underneath the words. "If you hadn't noticed, the only reason I want you to leave is because Roy wants you to leave. He's hurt, and needs to rest. You're hurting him by doing this, not helping him, unless you want to make it worse you have got to leave." He stepped closer again and forced Maes back with it, even if Ed stayed glued in place, staring past his arm towards where the colonel was still trembling and hiding his face like his life depended on it. "You can't force him to see you!"

The words made his stomach tighten like he'd just been struck. Force him? This wasn't about forcing anyone, this was about helping him, for god's sake! They shouldn't have to force him at all- after all they'd already done for Roy, surely they'd proven themselves to him by now? How could Roy possibly doubt them now after Maes had found him cowering in a pool of blood that wasn't his own in that godforsaken lab but had still come for him, now, still wanted to be there for him no matter what the military had done? How could Roy possible doubt either of them now?!

The lump in his throat ached, drawn and dry and hurt, and Maes couldn't help but moan again, hand still reached out and to no avail. "Roy," he begged again, straight past Marcoh to the shadow of his best friend, "Roy, listen to us, please," but the colonel said and did nothing.

No matter how badly he wanted for Marcoh to just disappear and to be able to just get to Roy- touch him, talk to him, fix this the only way he knew how-

For the first time, Maes had to at last confront that maybe there was no fixing this.

Roy wouldn't so much as face them. Roy was so unsettled- genuinely frightened- by them being here that he'd thrown himself back and was trembling and all but cowering against the back wall when it was painfully evident he was sick and needed to be back in bed.

Roy wasn't human.

His legs felt weak underneath him, and for a moment, Maes was so sickly helpless he actually did want to retreat back from the insufferably heavy, unbearable reality he had walked into down here, and leave Roy back shivering by himself.

And then, for the first time, Ed stepped forwards.

"Hey! Bastard, listen to me! You listening?!"

Roy flinched again, and badly at that. He pressed further away, one hand grappling unsteadily at the wall for support- a hand, that Maes realized with a sharp jolt, even underneath the overlong sleeves of his shirt, was misshapen.

His stomach dropped.

But Ed did not care what his hands looked like. Ed had seen worse, both from the world and probably from Mustang himself, and Ed stalked forward again without so much as a flinch. Marcoh tried to stop him but the kid shoved his arm down in a spastic jerk that could've sent the old doctor to the floor if it had been any harder, eyes bright and flashing in the dark and the low light gleaming off his automail in the keen edge of violence. "You can't hide down here forever, Mustang! What, you think we're going to give up eventually, just go away if you wait us out? That this'll all just magically go away?!"

Even from across the room, Maes could see Roy's shoulders trembling again, and worse than before. His heart lurched,, and he nearly pulled Ed back with that alone, because yelling usually didn't work, not with Roy; Roy would just shut down-

But Ed was not stopping.

"Hey, I'm talking to you! And so is Hughes- he came all the way fuck out here and probably risked a lot; he's your friend, you asshole! You can try and ignore me and Al, but you can't just ignore him, too!"

Roy stiffened again, a slight, new set of his shoulders. His head jerked back and forth once, and at that Marcoh actually did pull forwards again, reaching for Ed.

This time, Maes was the one to stop him.

He wasn't sure what he was really thinking, when he grabbed Marcoh by the arm the very instant he reached for Ed and yanked him backwards to keep him silent and out of the way. He wanted to help Roy, Roy who was now flinched back into the corner and trembling while Ed shouted at him- Roy who it was becoming increasingly obvious was too hurt and scared and violated to handle this now.

Roy who Maes had badly misjudged as ready for this, when he so clearly was not.

But the fact of the matter was, Ed was at least trying.

Either Ed would get through to him, or he wouldn't, but one thing that Maes knew for dead certainty wouldn't help was letting Marcoh stop him in his tracks.

Ed tried again, when Roy still did not respond, advancing forwards another precarious step. He was at the bed now, and soon would be close enough to touch him. "Do I need to just come out and say it, now? All right, bastard, I'll say it- you're a chimera. Okay? We know! We know you're a chimera now, bastard!"

Roy's head jerked again, another almost pathetic attempt at a denial as he curled even worse against the wall. "You don't know anything," he rasped.

"Don't know anything?! Don't know anything?!"

"F-Full- Fullm-"

"You think I don't know what a chimera is, Mustang? That I've never seen one before? That we don't get it's still you in there no matter what you fucking look like?!" Ed threw his hands up in the air and this time when Roy flinched, it was the violent cower of one afraid of being struck "You think any of us could really give a shit what you look like, Mustang?! That that could matter to either of us?! You're a chimera- yeah! We got it! But you're still the same bastard you always were in there; why would anything beyond that even matter?! It obviously doesn't to us, or why would we even be here to help you at all?!"

Roy, this time, did not move at all. Still hunched and head bowed, pressed safely back against the wall, only his back visible. Maes, like him, hardly dared to even breathe.

Come on, Roy... please, just listen to him...

"Fuck you, look at us, Mustang!" With an angry snarl, Ed suddenly grabbed at his collar and buttons, ripping at buttons to shove off his shoulder and reveal his metal arm all the way up to the grotesque, severe ring of scars hewn right around where his arm had once been torn straight off. Discolored and ugly and malformed against his skin, and now, revealed to everyone in the room except for Roy himself, because Roy still was not looking. "I'm half metal! I stuck my brother in a fucking tin can! You know that! How could you think that we could ever give a shit what you looked like?! You're still human in your head, that's what counts, you-"

"NO, I'M NOT!"

Ed froze.

For the very, very first time, the young alchemist froze in place, not five paces away from Roy- and Roy, still crouched there against the wall, face hidden and bowed, tensed through a roar so guttural and wrong-

It was not human.

It was the same roar that Maes remembered from back in the lab. The roar when Roy had howled at them both that he couldn't see.

It was the same roar that had been haunting his nightmares for weeks now, but only now, after talking with Ed, did Maes hear it for what it actually was.

It was a dragon's roar.

His heart dropped like a stone, and his arms, previously occupied with pinning Marcoh, fell limply straight after it.

He's... he's actually... a dragon.

He actually is.

...oh my god...

Roy...

"You... y-you are," Ed rasped into the silence. He sounded shellshocked, just as stricken by the sound as Maes, but still he stood there, candlelight gleaming off his cold metal arm in a display that there was no way even Roy could ignore. "You're no less human than Al is. Just because you may look different-"

"Edward."

Another chilling silence fell.

Roy, with a deep, steadying breath, drew himself back up to his full height. Back still turned to them all but now, shoulders straight, arms loose by his sides, and head finally up instead of hunched downwards to cower like a frightened child. He breathed deeply again, so heavy that Maes could see it from still across the dark, claustrophobic room.

And then, he turned around.

"Do you think I'm human, Fullmetal?" he asked, voice flat and cold like winter. Finger by finger, button by button, he lifted a hand up towards his collar, undoing his shirt just like Ed had undone his own to face them all with the undeniable truth. "Can you really look at me, through all of this, and say that I'm human?"

Everything lurched to a horrifying halt.

Cold, pale eyes flickered at them from across the room, a light and sickly blue that was not at all the warm black Maes remembered so well. It was too dark and Roy was too far away for him to be sure, but staring at him there those blue eyes almost looked to be the wrong shape, too- too narrow, somehow... almost... reptilian. They looked weirdly out of place, unsettling so in a face that wasn't quite right to begin with; the cheekbones too high, the skin too dry and flakey, like a snake shedding its skin, around a mouth with lips pulled back just enough to reveal the gentle point of fangs.

It would've been a startling let down, perhaps- because after all that it had been built up, now, with how hard Roy had tried to stop them from seeing his face, with how suspicious Marcoh had been acting, with how Roy had turned around to show it to them now, even- well, it was not that bad. He wouldn't have passed for human, not really, but he also wasn't some grotesque monster. Maes could very clearly see his friend in that face, and the idea that Roy had thought that that would've been enough to scare them off was as insulting as it was heartbreaking.

But then, with a slow, obscene, almost dramatic flair, Roy loosed the last button on his shirt, and without any care whatsoever, let it fall to the floor.

Maes choked.

His skin was patterned a dark, unhealthy blue, ropes of leathery, lizard-like scales twisting about his torso, his arms, his shoulders like some kind of macabre painting. Half of him human while the rest looked like he was being eaten at from within by some sort of disease, crawling around his stomach to clutch at his pale skin, morphing him into some sort of half-human monstrosity. His hands were even worse- if they could even be called hands at all anymore. Gnarled and stiff, scaly and thick all the way around but fingers seeming clenched and hardening...

Like they were solidifying into claws.

Oh my god...

"I'm not human, Ed," Roy said quietly, his unnatural eyes gleaming in the low light. "Not out here-" he splayed a hand over his chest, half scaly and blue, half pale, fragile skin, "and not-" he tapped a stiff finger at his head, "in here."

Ed stood limp and blank in front of him, staring at Roy with such open shock Maes would've winced, if he'd looked any better himself. It took the kid more than several seconds to shake his head at last, stammering out a first attempt at speech, then dropping into a cough, obviously stricken. "...of course you are," he said at last, but his voice was weak, and almost immediately overrun by another chilling laugh.

"I told you. I told both of you, you don't understand." Roy smiled again, or maybe it was just baring his teeth, his sharp, inhuman, dangerous teeth. "I'm not human, Ed. Maes. I'm not-"

"Yes, you are! I- I told you, we don't care what you look like- just because they mixed you with a dragon, that's n-"

Roy laughed a second time, so cold and abrasive it ran Ed's speech into silence before it ever got off the ground. "You still don't get it, do you? You figured out which animals I am, but you still don't get it." He shook his head coldly, dragging a hand through his rough, shaggy hair and smiling so sickly it nearly made Maes' heart stop. "They didn't mix me with a dragon, Ed. They mixed me with a human."

Once again, everything lurched to an unsettling halt.

...uh...

What?

Another startled blink later, and it became clear that Maes wasn't the only one dizzying lost. Ed stared vacantly at Roy like he'd just sprouted a second head. He worked his jaw for several moments, trying to talk; in the end, Maes really couldn't judge him at all for managing nothing more eloquent than a blank, "Huh?"

Roy's newly pale, reptilian eyes narrowed.

"They mixed me," he repeated, slow and long, like he thought the both of them were incredibly stupid, "with a human. I'm not human. Not because I look like this- because I wasn't born one."

Maes blinked dumbly.

Huh?

"C- Colonel...?"

Roy shook his head shortly, turning his face away to shield it again behind the tangled fall of his hair. He smiled again, but it was weak and cruel and like he was laughing at himself, pointed teeth that looked perfectly in place in that mix of blue scales and skin.

It looked nothing at all like his best friend.

It looked nothing at all, in fact, like anything he could ever recognize as Roy, or anything that he could ever understand.

He just knew that the look on Roy's face was perhaps the most bitterly resigned, defeated thing he'd ever seen in his life, and all he wanted to do was pull Roy into his arms and make it go away.

"...he's telling the truth," Marcoh said.

Maes jumped, flinching back to reel in another wave of disbelief tinged with shock. He stared back down at Marcoh, desperately hopeful for someone to make this make sense, but the instant he turned back towards him was the instant in which his fledging hopes smashed straight back down to die.

He looked just as defeated as Roy.

Defeated... and so sick with guilt the look on his face was as if he just wanted to keel over and give up right then and there.

"Twenty years ago," Marcoh said heavily, "the military set out to create a chimera from a dragon and a human. They desperately wanted to control the power of fire, they had seen how destructive it could be, but experiments on that front had gone... poorly. They had all but given up on mastering flame-related alchemy on any sort of reasonable time-frame, but biological alchemy and chimera experiments were improving much faster, and so, they realized if they could just harness the dragons' ability to control fire, there would be no need to master flame alchemy. So they hunted dragon cubs, and experimented on them one by one. Roy was the youngest, and, twenty years ago, was the only one to survive."

Maes' head swam. A heartbeat after that, his legs shook, he almost fell with it.

What?

Roy stayed, silent and utterly still, back against the wall. His shirt still hung open for the pattern of lizard-like scales to catch the light, the hide of of a genuine, real-life dragon, and his angled, scarred face was just as alien and unrecognizable as the rest of him. The hostile anger and misery had both bled away to leave him sitting there like a soulless husk, dead on the inside and out.

He did not say a single word in his own defense.

Not even the slightest stammer that none of this was true.

At last, in that oppressive, sickening darkness, Marcoh pulled away from them all. He sat down on the bed himself, not looking at them, not looking at any of them, broken as if infected by every bit of emotion that Roy had cast off to be slumped and bowed like a man condemned to die.

"He's not human, Edward, Hughes," he murmured. "He never was."

Roy spat out a disparaging laugh again, the noise laced with self-loathing that pierced through unfamiliar eyes and a fanged smile "I don't know how, but a few weeks ago, Bradley got wind of what we were planning. That we wanted to usurp him. I don't think he had figured out who else was involved, but he knew I was, and I guess he decided he was tired of letting the lab rat run on such a loose leash. So he decided that the liberties I'd been given wouldn't be extended to any future subjects, and that my time in the project had come to an end."

The project. The project, Maes heard, so faint it felt like he was going to pass out.

Roy's existence was a project.

"I don't still speak with any of the scientists on that team," Marcoh went on when Roy stopped, the colonel's pale eyes still averted and shoulders hunched again, as if he still wanted to hide himself. "But I do have a friend who works in the libraries. He told me several years ago that they had found a way to unmake chimeras... or had at least found something that they wanted to try. I didn't know if they'd ever use it on Roy, but I was prepared in the event that they were."

Maes stared numbly, first at Marcoh, then back to his withdrawn, dejected friend. His legs suddenly felt weak and he desperately wished to sit down, but to do that he would've had to move, and that felt just beyond him as he stared at Roy, so stunned he couldn't think. The blue skin, the fangs, the misshapen claws. His snake-like skin and eyes. Roy was- was-

This whole time...?

"...what...?"

It was Ed'd who spoken, again. A half-glance at the alchemist showed him to be just as stunned as Maes. Wide-eyed and gone all but limp. His shirt was still wrestled half-off, revealing the scar about his shoulder and the metal limb, but while it had looked glaring and obvious before, now, next to the twisted, inhuman creation across from them, it looked almost pathetic.

The two weren't even comparable.

"That's why I was sick," Roy said. "They used that on me, a few weeks ago. They... just wanted to see what would happen, and figured there was no better way than to get rid of their experiment but with one last test. It would've killed me, and even if by some miracle it hadn't, they were going to kill me anyway. Dr. Marcoh, luckily, was able to reverse it for me. This..." He gestured one stiff hand down at himself, the scales, the discoloration, the fangs, still averting his eyes severely away. "This isn't always what I look like. I had to pass for human and I- usually do, with the uniform. I look worse now because they nearly turned me back into a dragon, and Dr. Marcoh couldn't just flip a switch and make me turn me back. Some of this will go away."

"..some of this," Maes repeated, dazed.

Then instantly regretted it, when Roy's pale eyes flickered back over to him, and for perhaps the first time some of that unfailing, familiar confidence crumbled away to reveal a fragile vulnerability underneath.

A fragility that Maes had never once seen from him before, but looking at him now, he was starting to realize had been there this entire time.

"But-" Ed stammered, then broke off with another harsh, wavering intake of breath. "But. Y-you... you're... Mustang," he said, like that was all he could do. "That's not- possible, y-you-"

Roy's gaze turned to him, fading from vulnerable to merely wounded instead. He gave another slight and unnatural smile, almost sympathetic, and shook his head. "I was a chimera long before any of you ever met me. Before you were even born, Ed." He paused for a moment, searching over the alchemist, then something else came over his face again. With another deep, shuddering breath, Roy straightened himself up again, this time dropping his stiff hands back down to his sides.

"See for yourselves," he said quietly, and then, slowly turned his back again.

Except this time, it wasn't to hide from them, but show them.

His back was patterned leathery and blue just like the rest of him, stretches of vulnerable pale skin criss-crossed by a rough and leathery hide that seemed to only get worse the further down Roy he looked. What wasn't outright deformed to look like a snake was often red and inflamed, the skin raw and almost certainly painful, irritated from weeks of being outright poisoned. His entire back itself seemed wrong, somehow, just like his face had, the proportions just not quite right- like his spine and shoulders were still shifting and settling back where they were meant to be after Marcoh had saved his life.

It would've been horrifying enough, if that had been what Roy was trying to show them.

It wasn't.

There were two long, twin scars stretching down the length of his back, one on each shoulder that curved downwards all the way to his waist. Each one was easily was as long as Maes' arm, the skin gnarled and twisted and the scars so deep it made his stomach lurch and his own back crawl with sympathetic pain. Those scars were bad. Over a foot long and so deep and twisted he blinked and could see Roy's entire back dripping with blood. They would've nearly killed him.

"The first transmutation was successful, but only to a degree," Roy explained quietly, his voice as monotonous and drained as the dead. "I still had my wings. I... don't think I could've flown with them anyway, but it didn't matter. They were too big to hide. That meant they had to go."

Maes stiffened again. For several seconds nothing filtered through at all, the words running into a brick wall in his head because there was no understanding to be had or sense to be made. At first he really couldn't manage anything beyond just staring blankly at his best friend's scarred back, the world whizzing around him while his mind sat dumbly at a dead halt.

And then, he understood.

They'd cut his wings off.

His- his wings. Roy, his best friend, his obstinately human for as long as he'd known him best friend, had had wings.

And the military that Maes belonged to had chopped them off.

They'd... chopped them off years ago. Because that, truly, was what Roy was showing them. Not just the existence of the scars, but the scars themselves- they were not days or weeks or even months old. They were massive and terrible but completely, utterly healed.

There was simply no feasible way those scars could be anything but years old.

Long before that group of MPs had found Roy in Maes' office, and forced him to come with them.

Maes' head swam. If it hadn't been for the wall right by his side, he might've fallen straight to the floor.

Roy and Marcoh were telling the truth. He wasn't human. He...

He'd been best friends for almost ten years, now, with a lab experiment.

Maes clutched at the wall for support, and simply stared, dumbstruck, at the scarred, scaly back.

He was too stunned to do anything else.

At very long last, his friend finally began to swivel back around, retrieving his shirt with an awkward stiffness and his face still turned firmly away to shrug it back on. Maes had never been more relieved just to see someone but their clothes on; even when in the next instant, he felt intensely guilty for it, almost wanting to throw up. "Marcoh-" Roy said waveringly, then broke off, voice failing him like wet paper.

Marcoh, somehow, seemed to be the only person left remotely functioning in the room at all. While Maes was left to stand numbly back, still staring at his best friend in speechless, grating shock, the doctor pushed to his feet again, approaching Roy where both Maes and Ed had failed to. He touched at Roy's discolored, unnatural face and neck, feeling for fever and Maes didn't really want to know what else.

It only took him the briefest of inspections to sigh, shaking his head again. He muttered something to Roy, too low for them to hear, then turned back around to face them. "I told you both to keep out for more reasons than Roy asked me to. It's too soon. I'm going to have to ask you both to leave, and come back tomorrow. ...this time, I hope you'll listen."

Maes laughed hoarsely though not much was funny at all, head still spinning, and soon found himself clutching at the wall for support. Leave? He could barely think straight. It felt like every bit of solid footing he'd ever known was crumbling before his eyes to leave him adrift in a chaotic sea, and every word Roy said pulled solid ground even further away.

But Marcoh was not waiting around for them to catch up, and instead was already helping an increasingly unsteady Roy to sit down. He wavered on his feet, each step measured and awkward and precarious, and this time, Maes couldn't help but stare down at them instead of Roy's unnatural face. Were they like his hands? Was the reason he could barely walk because they were- what? A dragon's paws? Another weak laugh caught in his throat and he swayed, abruptly lightheaded. He was- a dragon...

Marcoh brusquely ignored Ed outright while Maes was left standing numbly back, brushing the alchemist aside as he started to sit Roy back down on the bed. His friend looked dizzy and barely upright at all, sagging against Marcoh's supportive hand and the slices of human skin on his face faded to an unhealthy grey pallor that made him look deathly ill. He swayed still, eyes roaming anywhere at all but on them, and Maes' heart shuddered.

He didn't realize that he was the only one still too stunned to think until Ed, after minutes of almost perfect silence, spoke up.

"Marcoh?"

Marcoh did not even turn around at the question, his focus still only for Roy. "I believe I asked you both to leave," he muttered dispassionately, roughly pressing the back of his hnd to Roy's neck again, but Marcoh did not know Ed like Maes did, and he certainly did not know him like Roy did.

He did not hear the slow, creeping sense of anger roiling underneath Ed's voice, and he did not see the hostility that gleamed in his eyes, sharp and bloody as broken glass.

But Maes heard it, and Maes saw it.

And Roy, when Roy narrowed his eyes at his subordinate's voice, apprehension slipping onto his scaled face, Roy heard it and saw it too.

Ed stood stock still, hands curled in the earliest beginnings of fists at his sides, and spoke again.

"Why did Mustang know that you would be able to help him?"

For a moment, there was nothing but stillness. Marcoh remained only focused helping Roy, his back turned and attention directed completely elsewhere.

And then, even from behind and in the dark, Maes could see it hit him.

"Ed," Roy murmured. He shook his head once, a silent warning to back off, and when Ed did not he brushed the hand on his face back to shift Marcoh to the side and behind him, pale eyes only for Ed.

But the alchemist clearly was not in the mood to be soothed.

"Hughes said you were an alchemist that specialized in chimeras." Ed jerked backwards, tensing like a wild animal to breathe in one ragged breath, hands clenched and dangerous by his sides and whole form radiating such violence it stole Maes' breath away. "Is that true?"

Maes' heart skipped another beat. Disbelief coupled with horror tightened in a thick band around his heart, and in the shock that followed, he slowly found himself turned to stare at Marcoh's back.

Marcoh was, in fact, an alchemist who specialized in chimeras.

He seemed to know absolutely everything that had happened to Roy. Everything that even Maes, after ten years of friendship and to his view, the closet friend that Roy had, had had no idea about.

He had been there all the way back to the very beginning, even... Roy's shadow that Maes had recognized as nearly always present all the way back to when they'd met in Ishval.

He'd been there then- and he was here again now.

And with that, Maes at last understood.

He was here because, for Roy, he'd been there the whole time.

Marcoh's the one who did this to him.

Something important in Maes' brain fizzled, then snapped. The shock that knotted his stomach and emptied his mind froze, to twist and distort straight from a lost, stunned disbelief into white-hot rage.

And once again, it was Ed who reacted the fastest.

"How COULD YOU?!"

"Ed-"

"You did this! It was you!"

"Fullmetal, st-"

The alchemist brought his arm back, and socked Marcoh right in the face with with a solid metal fist. The blow sent Marcoh crumbling and Maes hated himself for liking it, relishing the almost sickening crunch of bone because he'd done this to Roy, and when Ed pulled back his fist again he had absolutely no inclination to stop him.

"Fullmetal, stand down!"

"You piece of-"

And Roy brought his head back, and breathed fire.

It was a sharp explosion of hot flame, a red and white plume that burst out from his throat and lit the room alight in a shockwave of heat. Maes flinched backwards in shock, covering his face from the hot burst but as soon as it was there, it was over; light and heat extinguished out as little more than an instantaneous blast of fire for smokey heat to ring outwards around them all- and Roy's head still tilted back and teeth bared to do it again.

It was, ironically, nothing that Maes had never seen before. Because he'd always known Roy as the Dragon Alchemist, and this was nothing more than the skill he was so good at it- he'd even done this before; spitting fire to stop an argument, get attention on him. But this-

This time, there was no dramatic flair from a snap of his fingers. A snap with spark gloves that Maes now realized was completely unnecessary, and that Roy had only ever used them to begin with to make people think his skill was with alchemy. But there were no gloves in sight now and it hadn't mattered, because he'd just spat fire like-

Well.

Like a dragon.

"Fullmetal," Roy snarled again, and this time there was no doubt about it; that was the noise of a dragon. "Yes. Marcoh is one of the original alchemists who turned me into this. However, he also saved my life many times since then, all the way up to the day you brought me here. So unless you're going to take up a chimera focus in your own alchemy and figure it all out for yourself, you're going to need to take your anger out on something else, preferably an inanimate object, and leave him alone."

"But-!" Ed yanked away like, all but stomping his foot with his red face twisted, eyes blazing with righteous fury that begged again to be let loose. "But he- Mustang-"

"This is not up for debate. Either you help me in his place, or you go punch a tree instead of him." His snake-like eyes flickered again, then turned back off of Ed to meet Maes' for one of the first times in this entire conversation. "That goes for you as well. No one is to touch Marcoh."

Maes recoiled, stepping back yet again in another wave of disbelief. He hadn't even touched Marcoh- nor had he been going to! He wasn't an idiot; he could look at Roy now and see how badly his best friend still needed a doctor-

Even if said doctor was the one who'd... done this to him in the first place...

Another sick wave of revulsion settled in his stomach like a lead rock, and in that moment, Maes found himself wanting to punch the bastard, too.

Ed stared between them all, clearly still caught in a panting, undeniable rage, fists clenched and desperate. He opened his mouth again and even took another step forward, but one solid, icy glare back from Roy had cowed him more effectively than a parent yelling at a child. Another warm flush washed over his face in the dim light, the young alchemist gritting his teeth and trembling on the spot, and for a moment, Maes thought Ed really wasn't going to be able to listen.

Marcoh, he noticed, still wasn't making even the slightest move to defend himself. Hadn't even wiped the blood off his lip from the first blow.

At last, with another angry snarl, Ed whipped around to turn his back, and ran for the stairs as fast as he could. Not even a full second later, Maes heard the door slam open and shut back upstairs, and with that, he was gone.

Once again, there was another dizzying, nearly unbearable stretch of silence.

And then, with a quiet little laugh that was so cold and self-loathing it felt like ice, Roy flopped back down to the bed, tilted his scaly head back, and smiled. "I knew it was a bad idea to tell them," he murmured to Marcoh.

He remained the only one to be smiling, and Maes felt so sick he wanted to throw up.

Chapter Text

"You're sure you don't want to come with me?"

Maes sighed heavily, his heart still lodged uncomfortably somewhere around his throat, and shook his head.

Ed stayed uncertain in the doorway to their hotel room, a reluctant hand clinging to it and eyes still clouded. He worked his mouth several times, clearly wanting to protest with something- and if it had been relating to anything else at all, Maes would've helped him in an instant.

It wasn't.

"You'll be fine, Ed," he promised, and his smile felt pathetic, but it was just all that he could do for him. "We shouldn't go together, this time. He's already not doing great, and after yesterday... he probably doesn't want the two of us there interrogating him."

"But..."

Maes took another steadying breath, one that did nothing to put at ease the nerves tightening in his stomach, and tried to will that same sense of confidence he was sorely lacking into his voice for Ed to take strength from. "I'll go talk to him tomorrow, I promise. But I think you might have better luck going now."

That part of it wasn't quite true, actually.

The both of them going to see Roy being a bad idea- that was true. Maes and Ed had tried that yesterday, and they could pretty easily see how horribly that had turned out. That at least one of them needed to talk to him today; that, also, was true. After what they'd learned yesterday- it was just unconscionable for neither one of them to even make an attempt to talk to Roy now.

What Maes wasn't all that sure about was that Ed was the best one to get through to him.

In fact, if this has been before yesterday, he'd have been sure it wasn't.

But now, it wasn't before yesterday, so Maes was sitting here not twelve hours after finding out that everything he'd ever thought he'd known about his so-called best friend had been a complete lie. He didn't even know if Roy was his friend, anymore, because he had no idea if Roy actually thought of him as one.

What the hell did he know about what was best for Roy?

What the hell did he know about anything at all?

In the end, Ed still looked thoroughly miserable, braid lank and heavy and eyes hooded with lack of sleep, but Maes was able to gently reassure him into leaving. Ed clearly didn't really want to go, and really didn't believe in going alone, but he knew as well as Maes did that it just wouldn't be right to leave Roy alone today. If Maes knew anything about him at all, if, then there'd be no better way to tell him he had no support than to stay away, today of all days.

Yeah, Maes thought morosely.

Big if.

But alongside that misery on Ed's face was also a solid assuredness. That even if he did not want to go alone, he knew one of them had to, and Maes knew he could trust Ed to do it.

After all, he didn't really have any justification to pretend he knew Roy any better than Ed did, anymore.

He didn't have any room to pretend he knew Roy at all.

But that wasn't why he wanted Ed to go, today.

That day when they had found Roy huddled on the floor of that military lab, so many weeks ago, that day when they had searched through a blood-stained and dark room of broken cages and the so-called scientists that Roy had torn apart, Maes had also found a file, stashed away in secret. The file that they hadn't even known for sure referred to Roy at the time, that had talked about dangerous chimeras being put down like rabid dogs, but by the end of the day there had been no way to deny it had been talking about Roy.

Maes had kept that folder.

And until now, he had not been able to open it.

He'd agonized over it, hiding it first in his desk, then wrapped deeps into a bundle of clothes that he'd stuffed into a suitcase the instant it had been safe to come out here. For three weeks straight now, ever since he'd tossed it open flippantly and carelessly in that fucking lab, it had been snapped shut. Knowing in that file was Roy, he just hadn't been able to bring himself to do it. He'd sat there with it in his hands for hours, a sweat broken out over the back of his neck and his skin crawling and rocks in his stomach, and he'd wanted to know, so badly, he'd had the power right there, but he'd never been able to bring himself to do it.

He'd wanted to hear the truth from Roy himself. He'd wanted to give Roy the chance to tell him everything he wanted him to know, and keep secret what he didn't, and leave it at that. Not break his trust and read all about it in this damn file.

Now...

Maes squeezed his eyes shut, fingers brushing tremblingly along the side of his suitcase, and swallowed hard.

Now, he'd stood there and watched as his scaled, fanged best friend had turned his back to show him scars from wings that had been chopped off a decade ago. He'd watched and listened as Roy had faced them and said right to them, I'm not human.

He couldn't stand not knowing, anymore.

He had to do this.

He opened his eyes, and yanked the suitcase back up onto the bed. In a matter of mere seconds, he'd torn through his luggage to find the sickeningly thick file buried deep at the very bottom, and planted it in his lap past the apprehension caught in his throat, and flipped all the way back to the very beginning.

This was it, then. This flimsy collection of papers and reports, all shoved in together into this one terrible file. He weighed it in his hands, listening to the paper crinkle, the folder shift, and above all else, felt just how damn heavy it was.

There had to be dozens upon dozens of reports in here. Hundreds of pages all shuffled together, stacking up over years of inhumane experiments and likely abuse done against his best friend.

It made him sick to his stomach.

This, right here in his hands, was his best friend's existence. Everything that had made Roy who he was was recorded here in this file.

Maes took another deep breath, steeling himself against the trepidation as best he could, and then, he flipped open the file all the way to the very back, and began to read.

The first picture alone was enough to make him regret this entire damn venture.

The earliest, oldest sheet back in the file held a stark, clinical photo, one that intensely reminded Maes of crime scene photos he'd taken in his own job. Cold and impersonal, cataloguing body parts and injuries and human- or not so human- suffering with an almost scientific air, with no regard for the dignity or pain of the people in them. Except this picture was not of a crime scene, and it was most certainly not of any impersonal stranger that he'd snapped a picture of then forcefully compartmentalized and categorized into the back of his mind to make himself not think about at night when he went home to his family.

This was of his friend.

Or... of the creature that had become his friend, at least.

Because the picture did not look like Roy.

A young... boy-like thing... slept on a cold, white floor in the center of the shot. Or, by the looks of him, was not asleep at all but instead out cold. He looked to be older than Elicia, but not by much- maybe nine, maybe ten, but even from this one picture alone it was very plain to see that the figure was very objectively not a normal child. He was not normal, and he was not human. His limbs seemed too loose, too long, like he'd been drawn by someone who didn't quite understand human anatomy, and his skin...

Maes covered his mouth with a shaking hand. He moaned into it, a low, gentle sound that he could not hold back, and the sight clutched so painfully at his heart he nearly choked.

His skin was an intermix of pale flesh and a sickly blue, scaly hide, as if he was half human, half snake. Maes had never seen a dragon before, but he'd seen pictures, and dragon scales did not look like that- but Roy's skin clearly did. He didn't let himself wonder for long what could've caused it, not wanting to ponder on what other animals they might've tried to mix with him or how the chimera transmutation could've just gone flat wrong, because this was wrong enough as it was. His hands and wrists, pale white, snaking up his left arm a sallow blue pattern of scales that climbed like a disease, a similar design up his right leg, patterned across one shoulder, one hip. It was awful. It was inhumane. It was like someone had stuck a human child's face, dusty black hair scattered over ears that tapered into gentle points, right on top of a monster's body.

There were fangs in his mouth. Page after page, Maes turned by, finding more- finding so much worse. Close-up pictures of his face, focusing in on multiple sharp teeth just like the fangs he'd seen only yesterday but this time crowded into a child's face, surrounding a tongue that was just a little too thin, just a little too long.

There were wings. Small, translucent, azure wings, curled protectively around his even smaller body except when the fragile things were pinned down for a picture.

There was a tail. A dark blue, thick, curled tail. Perhaps two feet long or even more, grossly huge and heavy that dwarfed the rest of him just like his wings, sometimes held down for pictures, other times left free to wrap around a leg or a scaled stomach.

There was a collar.

A stark black, metal collar, snapped around a pale throat like a brand, so abrasive and brazen it nearly made him vomit.

Maes put a hand to his already dizzy head, swaying pathetically even while sitting down, and for a moment was so lightheaded he almost passed out.

The last time he'd tried asking Roy about where he'd grown up, the colonel had blown him off with a careless laugh that was just so like him, and said wherever he'd grown up, it was obviously better than the barn Maes had, because at least he had the manners to not barge into his office unannounced and uninvited. Then, because Havoc had a terrible and half-dead instinct for self-preservation, the lieutenant had squished at Roy's face and announced that he'd never grown up, because he still had a baby face right there to be pinched.

Havoc had barely made it out of the room unburnt, after that, and Roy had spent the last thirty minutes in a stubborn and hilarious sulk.

It had been hilarious at the time, anyway.

Now, the thought of it alone left him sick at heart and mind, and so intensely apologetic he wanted to scream.

He could see his best friend as a child, right here. Curled up loose and limp, not in sleep but from a blow to the head or something even worse, skin spiraled blue and white and unhealthy all the way around with one huge wing half neglected and crushed underneath his side, a tail half as big as he was clutched loosely to his chest like a stuffed animal.

He didn't just look not human. That-

That was sick and wrong. He looked like he was cobbled together from a bunch of spare parts to make some sort of spectacle, a dammed horror show. It was so bad it hurt just to look at him.

That was Roy.

The real one.

Out of all the times that his best friend had called himself a monster, he had never figured he'd meant it quite so literally.

There was a date underneath the picture. That horrible, disgusting, wrong picture, that Maes wanted more than anything to just stop existing and never be seen by him or anyone else, ever again. Shaking worse, now, trembling to the very tips of his fingers, Maes smoothed the file more firmly down against the bed, and squinted at the faded print to make out the year.

1895.

Oh, no.

Roy had been ten years old, when this picture was taken.

Maes moaned aloud. Desperate, sick horror swelled in his throat, and then he just couldn't help it; he moaned again, and his hands shook so badly he nearly ripped the horrid thing straight in two.

When he'd been ten, he'd been starting a new middle school. His greatest struggle had been when he'd broken his arm that summer, climbing trees way too tall for him like an idiot, and had had to stumble back home looking for his mom, trying desperately not to cry.

He could not even imagine what this could've been like to live.

And this is only the very beginning.

Taking a deep breath, Maes steeled himself again, fighting back against the horror and disbelief and disgust that had all possessed him from head to toe. That was right. This was only the beginning, and if he wanted to get through this, if he wanted to actually understand Roy, he was going to have to get through more than just his first day as a human chimera.

He had to go on.

The file wasn't just pictures. There comments on each page, notes made by the researchers and scientists, paragraphs upon paragraphs detailing all that had been done to Roy. Maes tried to focus on them, at first, but it took only a sickening moment for him to just shake his head, desperately looking away. He had no interest in reading the comments about how proud these Frankenstein scientists were of their experiments. How successful they thought the transmutation had been, their comments about their good and healthy little lab rat, what they thought of their specimen.

He was infuriated enough as it was.

So, he turned on.

The next few pages were more close up pictures of further modifications, ones that made his stomach tighten again but, ultimately, were easy enough to pass by. He'd seen the end product already in his best friend- now he was just seeing just exactly how Roy had come to be. Close-up pictures of his ears, once pointed, now smoothed down into rounded tips under a perverse doctor's knife. Similar pictures of dental work, showing fangs shaved down and crowned into human teeth, others taken out entirely with notations to 'fix' those, too, when the adult teeth came in. The before and after shot of the site for his... tail.

It had been hacked off without care or regard whatsoever. Notations made they were going to tear it apart and sell the parts to collectors for exorbitant sums.

They'd taken a child's body parts and sold them.

And his wings...

Maes had already seen those scars on his friend, as sick and horrifying as they were. He'd known he was going to find them eventually. Perhaps not this soon, perhaps not on a Roy so young and frail, but he'd known he was going to find the origin of those scars, and he'd known he was going to have to get through it.

But nothing could've prepared him for this.

There were before and after pictures again, this time with scientists' hands in view. Multiple researchers knelt just inside the frame, pinning delicate wings in place for the camera to get a better look at where thin, gossamer tissue turned into sinewy muscle and skin, but the wings themselves- oh, god. They were beautiful. They were huge, bigger than Roy himself and spanning perhaps ten feet across his tiny back. For a heartbroken moment, nearly stricken with amazement, he couldn't help but wonder if Roy could've flown with them after all. The things were huge, and that poor child was so small and weak underneath them, surely they were strong enough, surely he could've been able to fly...

But that was a question that would never have an answer, because the next page turn brought him to another close up, after picture.

Of two massive, raw, stitched scars, curving delicately across his back, and no wings in site.

Maes closed his eyes tightly again. He breathed in hard through gritted teeth, hands trembling, and just nearly ripped the page straight from the folder.

None of it, of course, was a surprise. He knew Roy, so he'd known when he'd seen that first picture of a chimera, barely half-human thing, that there were going to have to be changes. His best friend obviously did not have a tail or wings, so they'd have to go. His best friend did not have pointed ears, so they'd have to go, too. Hell, Maes had even noticed himself, over the years; he'd realized Roy had a very... unusual... amount of crowns for someone of his age, but he'd just never thought to ask.

Even if he had, there was no doubt that Roy, again, would've lied to him.

Just blown it right off just like everything else about his past and stand there smirking and careless like always, and treat it all like nothing more than a dammed joke.

It was infuriating.

Maes slowly ran a hand down the edge of the old page again, fingers trailing over the decades old picture to curl at the corner. He looked at that ramshackle, cobbled together figure that still looked more dragon than human, more victim than soldier.

More broken than not.

He'd been wrong, to look at that half-dragon, half-human child from before and think he looked like a monster. Oh, there had been monsters there, all right- but they weren't that boy.

The next few pictures turned his stomach again, but like a devastating train crash, Maes could just not stop himself from watching. There were quite a few of healing wound sites, with mentions of the subject having been sedated, which Maes flipped past quite quickly, not interested in the dry science of it if Roy hadn't been awake to suffer through it. More stitches, more blood-stained bandages, more slow healing...

And then: new injuries.

Maes' hopeless searching wrenched to a halt, his heart skipping a beat at pictures now of not healing wounds, but bruises. Burns. God, the burns, so many burns- picture after picture of shiny, raw red skin, deep bruises, bleeding, torn cuts- Maes gasped and his mind swam with hot anger, because they'd hurt Roy-

Until he blinked, and realized the picture were not, actually, of Roy.

The pictures were of humans. Full blooded and bodied and adults. Injured adults.

When Maes realized they were cataloguing, not Roy's injuries, but injuries that Roy had done to them, his chest warmed with such strong spark of pride he very nearly couldn't help but smile.

Atta boy, Roy.

There were notations again, little segments underneath the close-ups of injuries explaining just what had happened, and confirming that he was right: Roy had done this to them. Roy had fought back, and Roy, even while still hurt, still healing, still a child, had fought back and won.

Maybe it was wrong. He didn't care.

He was still so proud of Roy that he could burst.

The researchers wrote on. Explaining that the subject was both feral and uncontrollable, that he'd hurt not only research staff but himself, and Maes glowered in abject disgust. Feral? He was a young child who'd been kidnapped from his home and woken up with the monsters who'd stolen him and in the wrong fucking body. He'd woken up chained and with his wings and tail severed like he was some kind of brutish canvas to be decimated instead of a living, feeling being.

Feral? He'd been terrified.

But it was abundantly clear that the scientists there had been equipped to only deal with a feral, wild animal.

No one there had had any interest, or any ability, in helping a frightened, hurt boy.

The next little note from the scientists, underneath a picture of what looked like a tiny but deep bite mark into someone's arm, said that this reaction was standard with chimeras. That they were just used to dealing with wild, dangerous animals lashing out, the younger they were, the worse it was, and they were going to use the standard punishment protocol to render him docile and obedient. Maes' vision went red again, anger pulsing in his head as he stared sickly at the next paragraph detailing just what they were going to do to Roy; he couldn't focus enough to read it at all but words popped out all the same; isolation, restrained, burns, and he couldn't do it. He had to know what had been done to Roy, but this- how they'd... broken him...

He couldn't do it.

He couldn't do it, and more than that, he did not need to know.

If Roy wanted to tell him some day, if Roy even remembered it for himself, he would listen. But he would not learn it from this file.

Maes, breathing hard still through clenched teeth, tamp forcibly down on the rage swept through his mind, and for several moments didn't let himself do anything at all but just breathe.

When he could think again, he blindly swept past the next couple of pages, and read on.

The next picture of the young, pale chimera had him on the floor of a padded cell, that ugly collar still around his throat and this time with an equally ugly chain of an iron leash hanging from it, the end bolted down to a lock in the floor clearly made for just that purpose and restricting him to little more than a six foot radius. Then, even uglier, was a terrible leather muzzle strapped around his jaw and head as if he was a wild dog, clamping his mouth shut and obscuring most of his face from view.

For a sick heartbeat, Maes was almost glad for it, because he could see bruises on the rest of Roy's body, and did not want to see if they were on his face, as well.

From the black scorch marks that already laced the padded walls, he didn't have to wonder why they had gone to such lengths to shut him up.

Maes had seen a human muzzle like that be used before, just once. Long ago, back during Barry the Chopper's rather swift trial; that cannibalistic serial killer that Ed had taken down what felt like a lifetime ago. It had been Maes' case until it hadn't, and he'd handed it off to the legal office for prosecution, so he been lucky enough to not even experience it himself but he'd heard the stories, all right.

The stories of how, even handcuffed to the damn table, the monster had tried, and sometimes even succeeded, to bite chunks of skin right out of his interrogator's arm.

Maes hadn't been the only one uncomfortable to see him muzzled at trial, but the evidence had been staring them right there in the face that it was necessary. That Barry the Chopper was insane and maybe Maes had tried to avoid looking at him but they'd had no other options and been dealing with a grown man who'd terrorized all of Central for months.

This was against a terrified child.

He wanted to fucking kill them.

Disgusted and heartbroken, Maes just didn't want to look at it anymore, but even so couldn't help but wonder why Roy hadn't just taken the damn thing off himself. His hands, curiously, had been left free. He might've been just a child here, and he might look almost nothing like his friend, but the Roy he knew never would've stood for that. He supposed they might've just scared him so badly before, trying to convince him that fighting against their rules and restraints wouldn't be worth it, but something about it just didn't sit right with him...

Then, he blinked, and actually looked closer.

The boy was curled on his side, batting at the leash with his feet and hands like an oversized cat trying to grasp a toy, obviously trying to yank it off. As heartbreaking as the sight was, though, it was even more bewildering, and only started to make sense when he actually looked closer at his hands. He hadn't really looked at them before now, because unlike the rest of him, his hands were actually human, all ten fingers and all human skin and no scales or claws or scars, but somehow, they still seemed... off.

Limp and awkward, as if they were asleep or completely numb. Thumping against the chain of the leash as brute-force clubs instead of delicate tools, fingers not working at all...

Maes' eyes widened in shock.

He didn't know how to use his hands.

Dragons didn't have fingers. They certainly didn't have opposable thumbs. They didn't even have proper hands to begin with.

So, Roy, this ten year old dragon who'd woken up in this cobbled together mess of a human body, had no idea how to use them.

For him to try and actually work the hard buckles clamping his jaw shut, buckles that he couldn't even see-

It was impossible.

They hadn't bound his hands, because it hadn't mattered.

This time, Maes had to stop for a few brief minutes, breathing unsteadily into his hands and trying not to fall apart, before he went on again.

Soon the pictures changed again, taking the chimera from a padded cell to a cold, even more impersonal cage, just big enough for a ten year old, which meant it was disgustingly small. The leash and muzzle left, while the collar stayed. It reminded him just like the first room he and Ed had found in the labs, with scientists dead on the ground and a broken cage in the corner with half-melted bars, but this time, there weren't going to be any dead scientists.

This time, Roy wasn't a trained soldier and full-grown man with the strength to protect himself.

This time, there wasn't going to be any happy ending.

The pictures started changing faster, now, morphing from daily check-ins to weekly updates. Maes was only able to tell from the dates scrawled down off to the side, because even now after dozens of pages, he still didn't recognize this half-human child well enough to see him aging, see him changing. But the dates told him he was, and with that, Maes at last started to see what his best friend's childhood really had been like.

Restraints shifted in and out of the pictures; it seemed that Roy had somehow gained enough trust to be left untethered in his cage, but whenever he was let out of it the leash and muzzle came back. The first time Maes saw it, turning the page to find a snapshot of his best friend, still healing, still just a child, struggling on all fours like a leashed dog out for a walk he nearly hurled the fucking thing across the room. What, they'd turned him into a human but still treated him like a wild animal? They wouldn't even let him stand on his own, still had to treat him like a dumb beast with every chance they got?!

And then, once again, he turned the page, and understood.

The next picture was of Roy, upright at last- but not at all on his own two feet.

Lab-coated researchers ringed him on all sides, not to hurt him, but to help him. There were hands under his arms and at his sides, propping him clumsily upright but it was obvious even from the still picture that Roy was severely unbalanced, and if it hadn't been for all the support would've toppled over. Maes swallowed hard, desperately not wanting to look closer, but somehow, he made himself do it again, first at Roy but then to those surrounding him, and...

And he was almost positive that one of the scientists behind Roy, one hand at the small of his scarred back, the other holding his arm, was a much younger, much colder, Marcoh.

Maes' eyes narrowed.

There he was. Just as Ed had accused him of, and just as Marcoh had admitted without hesitation, pleading guilty to the both of them like a man bowing his head before a judge. Back all the way in the very beginning, Roy nothing more than a little kid who in that picture alone was confused and scared who didn't understand what was happening to him or why, and there was Marcoh, standing right behind his already abused best friend to prop him upright like a used doll.

Because he couldn't use his legs, either.

Dragons weren't bipedal, and humans were.

Roy hadn't known how to walk.

He hadn't, Maes realized as he turned the pages, known how to do a lot of things.

He hadn't understood Amestrian, so they'd had to teach it to him. A specialist who understood the dragon's written language had appeared, teaching a chimera who could barely read how to listen. A speech therapist had taught him how to speak, because, as the pages turned, he'd realized Roy had been all but mute for years, because he just hadn't known how to talk.

Even as he learned how to talk, the muzzle stayed in other snapshots, even those with the physical therapists who taught him first to stand, then to walk, then to write, then to run. There was a picture of an older Roy, perhaps a young teenager, now, stumbling on a treadmill at what looked like a slow jog, muzzle still locking his jaw shut and leash bound nearby so stop him from running anywhere but right under his own feet.

They were teaching him how to pass as a human.

And knowing the Roy that he knew now...

They had succeeded.

Maes had never once looked at Roy in the ten years that he'd known him, and seen any of this. They had taken a scared, young dragon, and broken him like a domesticated mule, then built him back up under the skin of a human- and Maes had somehow been too blind to look at his own best friend, and realize something was not right about him.

He'd known the military he belonged to was wrong, and responsible for so many horrible things, and had to be remade from the top down, but this...

This was inhumane. This was sick and horrifying. He'd spent years elbow-deep in the worst criminal cases Central had to offer, and reading this file now, it wasn't even a contest; this was the worst he'd ever seen, ever read, ever even imagined. This was his best friend's entire life emblazoned down in cold black and white, of suffering and abuse that he'd never had so much as a friend through or support against, and even when he'd somehow gotten a life outside of the military labs Maes had never once been smart enough to look past all his fabrications and lies to realize he'd been this hurt.

How had he, just... never had any sort of idea...?

"I'm... I'm sorry, Roy." He dropped his head into his hands, vision whiting out as he searched for any respite at all from that terrible file, his heart squeezing almost into two and hurting so badly he almost choked. "I'm so sorry..."

But apologizing wouldn't help Roy. Apologizing, and Maes sitting here feeling so horribly about himself and pitying his best friend, and wishing he could change every moment of the last ten years that he could, weren't going to help anything.

All he could do now, was keep reading.

So, when he'd finally managed to collect himself again, through the grief collected around his heart and making his stomach sink like a stone, Maes took a trembling, deep breath.

Then he read on.

The file took him from the earliest months to years on. Roy got older, bigger, more recognizable, something approaching human. Instead of being taught the alphabet he was now being tutored through Amestrian history and military strategy, a school of one and where the punishment for getting an answer wrong was much, much worse than a bad grade. Instead of standing with the support of a whole team of researchers he was set loose in a specialized training area, learning to breathe fire just the way the military wanted from him.

As Roy aged and the pictures changed, however, the injuries did not.

There continued to be bruises and burns catalogued, sometimes from what Roy had done to the researchers, but more often than not, what they had done to him. Not always with explanation, but just the vivid purple and red swelling from a beating or a hard fall no one had caught him for, and Maes never had the heart to try and understand it any more than that. Along with pictures of injury and abuse, there continued to be mentions of punishments in the file, as well- not always with pictures, anymore, but little notations all the same.

Subject intentionally burned his instructor. Subject was reminded that the use of his mouth is a privilege, not a right, and will be left muzzled for a period of no less than thirty days before we consider restoring that privilege. Subject was burned in the same fashion as his instructor.

Subject refused to participate in day's exercise regimen. Subject will be left in the punishment box for three days.

Subject has failed to progress in his lessons as expected. Subject was informed for every day of rudimentary progress, he will not be given an evening meal.

Subject struck an instructor. The instructor broke the subject's leg in retaliation. The instructor has been dismissed for delaying the subject's training. As is standard for this subject, he will be transferred towards punishment accommodations C until he has healed enough to re-enter training.

Subject failed to comply...

The notes just went on and on. Punishment after punishment, page after page, year after year, the detailed abuse notated down no matter how far Maes turned, because the file went on and on. Because this was not just an experiment, this was not just a few weeks of suffering and mistreatment, this had been Roy's entire childhood. This file, right here, was everything that Roy had ever known as a child.

If it could even be called that.

Maes wasn't so sure he'd go even that far.

He'd been there for every day of Elicia's childhood. The worst she'd ever screwed up, the worst they'd ever had to be with her, was when she'd pushed a boy at school for saying her dress looked ugly. They'd grounded her for the weekend, and told her that just because someone was mean to her did not mean she could ever hit them.

Roy had hit at the monsters who'd completely destroyed his life and deserved a hell of a lot more than a fucking punch. Had lashed out just to protect himself, to save himself from something he was terrified of, from things that were actively hurting him.

They'd beaten him for it and locked him in a box for weeks.

He wasn't sure what that was- if there were even words to describe it at all.

It was not, however, a childhood.

The file continued. Roy grew older, got bigger- more human. In the earlier pictures he'd seemed more like a human puppet, awkward even in the still pictures and now that he knew what he was looking at it, it was very easy to see it that it was not anything human controlling that body. But as the years passed, that slowly changed. As a boy turned into a teenager, his steps began to find purchase. His hands began to grip and coordinate and work.

Even underneath blue, leathery scales, the scars of amputated wings and a severed tail, the leash that still dangled and the muzzle that still neutered his powerful mouth, he now looked like a human. A deformed, imprisoned, broken human.

Slow, stubborn tears had formed in his eyes at some point long ago, and they slipped down his cheeks now, unbidden and unheeded. Maes sniffed slightly, not even trying to clear his throat but willing the painful lump back all the same, and turned another page.

He stopped dead.

Roy stared back up at him.

Not the chimera- but Roy.

It was that teenager again, obviously years younger than the Roy he knew now and had to be the same one from the page before, but if Maes hadn't known they were one and the same he didn't know if he'd ever had recognized it. Because instead of a clinical folder on a lab floor or a cold cage of a bare, beaten chimera, this was a picture he had seen staged a hundred times before, and seen on his friend's person even more than that.

Roy's military ID.

There he was. Standing there in full uniform, or at least his upper half, because that was all that he could see. The high collar and long sleeves hid every bit of his inhumanity, his true identity, and like that he looked no different than the dozens of officers graduated from the Academy every year. He truly did look like a human, now, like his friend, when just one page and one day before it he'd been a lab experiment locked in a cage with a black eye and split lip. God, his previously unkempt, tangled mess of hair had even been cut short, trimmed close to his head under military standards in a way that was perversely similar to his clipped wings.

That disgusting collar, locked around his throat that had branded him so many years as nothing more than a stupid, wild animal, for the very first time, was gone.

It was also such a sudden, wholly startling change from just the page before, it didn't make sense at all.

Sure, Maes had known that at some point, this file would change from a beaten, frightened child into a soldier. His best friend was a soldier, this file was Roy's life, so at some point, that chimera was going to have to grow up into a soldier, but he'd not expected it like this. He'd... well, he didn't know what he'd expected, but something more than this. Frowning, Maes turned a page back, for a moment hopeful that he had missed something, but no matter how hopefully he turned between those two pages it did not magically create another picture to make sense of it. There was no other picture.

Someone had just looked at that fragile, unstable, unhealthy, broken chimera, barely more than a child, and thought they could dress him up as a soldier, give him a gun and some fake gloves, and send him marching out on a battlefield.

His heart in his throat, and rage collecting right there around it, Maes turned his eyes to the paragraph besides the picture, and began to read.

Fuhrer Bradley, against our recommendations, has ordered that the subject be drafted into combat in the Ishvallan War. He will be sent with the State Alchemists under codename Dragon Alchemist. He has been given his orders, and we expect that he will follow of them; however, a team of researchers will accompany him under Dr. Tim Marcoh, to ensure that he does so, and handle the consequences if he does not.

As stated before, the team has serious reservations about drafting the subject into combat this early. He is still two years underage, but, as the Fuhrer insists, the paperwork that will be submitted under his name will edit his date of birth to change that fact. He has not finished his physical training, and would not pass through the Academy's physical testing for cadets. His mental stability is also in question. He is obedient, but we worry the stress of both combat and a new environment could place this in jeopardy. Given the subject's extraordinary ability with fire, this could spell disaster for our troops if he choose to turn on them.

This concludes the first successful phase of Project Mustang.

And, that was that.

That was his best friend's childhood.

That was, in fact, most of his life- all the way down to his very name.

A military experiment.

Maes swallowed waveringly again. He sat back on his bed, head reeling, and for a long while, could not think or say anything at all.

At last, somehow, some little bit of what he'd just read filtered through to him again. His brow furrowing, Maes leaned forward, first checking the date noted by this most recent and jarring picture, then flipped all the way back through the years to find the very first one of a recently transformed child.

Then, he sat back, and he laughed.

The notes were right. Roy had been two years underage, in that last picture. Which meant in that first picture, he had not been ten, but eight. Which meant that right now, Roy was not twenty-nine, but twenty-seven, and had never been one year younger than him, but three. He'd been eight when he was transformed, sixteen when he'd been sent to war, and just eighteen when he'd stepped off the train to Central a semi-free man for the first time in his entire life.

In the days after the war, part of Maes had hated Roy for decompensating into that stressful little ball of depression and madness. Part of Maes had hated dragging himself over to Roy's black hole of an apartment almost every day to haul him up to his feet and make him do something beyond just sit there and hate himself. He'd gone because he'd known he was the only one there to do it, because he'd honestly been afraid that if he didn't go over there, some day he'd wake up and go into work to find the office buzzing about how the war hero Major Mustang had blown his brains out.

So he'd kept on dragging himself back to Roy, no matter how much that part of him had hated him for it. No matter how much, some days, he'd wanted to scream at him I'm just as guilty as you, Roy, wanted to browbeat it into him as he holed himself up in his room and hid in corners and clutched his hands over his ears that Maes couldn't take care of himself and take care of him, too.

Now, sitting there with miserable tears still burning in his eyes, he couldn't help but laugh at himself aloud.

Knowing everything that he now did, it was amazing that Roy had held himself together as much as he had. It was a dammed miracle he'd come out the slightest bit sane, never mind passed as anything beyond an eccentric, traumatized, anti-social hermit, and even with all Maes had done to try and help him then, he honestly didn't know how he had never walked in to find Roy had shot himself after all.

He knew if their positions had been swapped, he couldn't promise the same for himself.

It took some minutes for the brokenhearted laughter in his chest to die away, even if the despair that came with it did not. Maes rubbed absently at his cheeks again, still trying rather desperately not to think. Because if he started thinking, he knew he would start searching past every memory he had of Roy, now for hidden meanings, hidden hurts, now to understand, and he suspected that great analysis was unavoidable regardless, but for now... he just couldn't.

So he sat there, trying not to think, and staring numbly at that damn file until it had narrowed down to become his entire world.

And then, something else filtered its way through.

Maes picked up the file again, slipping a finger over Roy's military picture, then flipped back through a second time. This time, not to the very beginning, but instead to one of the earlier on pictures. After Roy had woken up, after they had broken him in like a bad dog, and he'd given up fighting his captors to submit in defeat instead.

He gazed down at the sobering, terrible picture again.

He flipped back to Roy's military picture.

He flipped back.

His heart sank.

The look on Roy's face was the same in both.

It was hard to see, at first. One was a newborn chimera, blinking up at the camera past a muzzle and the bars of the cage, while the other was a teenage almost-human, decked out and posed like a soldier. They didn't look at all similar and if it hadn't been for the file telling him they were one and the same, he never would've looked closer to compare the two.

But they were the same, and when he looked closer, he saw the exact same look on the boy's face as the soldier's.

A fragile, frightened child, staring to the camera with eyes hollow and empty as caves. The look on his face in both was lost and confused, dazed almost like he'd been drugged. He'd woken up one morning turned into something not quite human, then woken up another morning and been dressed up as a soldier, and Maes wasn't so sure if his friend had even realized the difference at the time. That he hadn't simply interpreted the uniform they'd given him as just another test to navigate, fingers struggling with buttons and tassels they didn't know what to do with, only instead of returning him to his cage afterwards they'd snapped the collar off and set him down on a train to Ishval.

And underneath that soldier's exterior had still been a dazed, frightened child who didn't understand what was going on, and wanted to go home.

Artist: Akarri

Chapter Text

It took way too fucking long, for Ed to stumble his way across the little village back to Marcoh's house.

He hadn't slept much, the night before.

By the tossing and turning in the darkness, coming from the bed right across from his, he was pretty sure Hughes hadn't, either.

He desperately wanted to just be able to call Al. Talk to someone, because Hughes had pretty obviously not been in any shape to have a helpful conversation with, and even if Al wouldn't be able to fix it, he'd at least understand. He'd at least listen and be there for him to talk it through with and tell him to calm the hell down, because even now after a sleepless night and hours to think it through he could barely so much as still still.

There was no Al here, though. There was no even calling him. His brother was still off carrying out what was meant to be his mission, dozens of miles away- it wasn't even safe enough to risk calling him in case the lines were tapped. There was absolutely no way safe way to contact him, and after all he'd found out about the military in just the past twenty four hours, he sure as hell wasn't going to do anything at all that could put them at the slightest risk of their location being found.

Which meant last night, instead of a terrible phone call to Al, he'd tossed and turned all night long, an even more shellshocked and lifeless Hughes doing just the same across from him, and-

Now he was here.

Alone in the middle of his ramshackle, dreadful little town, and glaring up at the door to Marcoh's house with the undeniable will to punch his straight straight through it.

He was lost, confused, and so disoriented it felt like he was drowning in a hole of mud. He barely had any idea at all what was going on and was still half-convinced this whole damn thing was a messy, bewildering nightmare.

But he did know that if they had any other option right now for keeping Mustang healthy, they'd already be gone, and Marcoh would be in desperate need for a doctor himself.

Fucking bastard.

Fucking piece of shit BASTARD.

His fists curled, nails grinding into the skin of his flesh palm while his metal hand shook, anger constricting in his head so violently it ground his patience into dust. He didn't want to have to care if Mustang needed him right now. He didn't care that Al would probably tell him to calm down or that Hughes would tell him to bite his tongue or that Mustang himself would snap at him to grow up and control himself.

He wanted to punch Marcoh in his fucking face.

Those two hideous, foot-long scars on Mustang's back, all that remained of fucking wings...

And he cut them off.

Red rage blinded his vision again and in that moment, if Marcoh had been in front of him, he would've done it. He would've punched his fucking lights out and dragged Mustang somewhere, anywhere safe-

And anywhere away from him.

Except he couldn't do it.

Mustang needed help, and March was the only one who could give it.

It was simple as that.

Breathing in slowly, Ed hunched his shoulders, trembling again right there in the middle of the empty street. Revulsion and disgust swept through him in a toxic wave and for a sick heartbeat, he wanted to just tilt his head back and scream.

He had to do this. He had get himself the hell together, and go in there. Because Hughes, apparently, wasn't going to do it, so that meant it was all down to him. He had to calm his stupid nerves down, yank himself together, and drag himself straight back inside to face him.

Mustang had spent years smirking behind his desk, smug and lofty as fuck, and telling him to act his rank instead of his age. Well, Ed didn't give one single solitary shit about his rank, and now, after what he'd found out about what the military had done, part of him wanted to turn in his resignation this very second then set his watch on fire.

But Mustang was right, about one thing.

He wasn't a little kid.

Right now, that meant holding it together, because Mustang and Hughes evidently couldn't, and doing the right thing.

Cracking his knuckles, Ed squared his shoulders and his back, took another deep breath, and then, strode inside.

The room was just as cluttered and dark as it had been yesterday, such a contrast to the bright glare of the outside that at first he could see nothing at all but indistinct shadow that he had to squint to make clear. It was stifling and silent again, that same oppressive air as the day before, like a forgotten tomb or shut away crypt.

He shuddered miserably again.

When his eyes at last adjusted to the darkness, searching past dust and reluctance, the shadows softened away to reveal Marcoh waiting for him. Silent and withdrawn at his desk, a book settled out before him and papers scattered like a storm had torn through the house. He, too, looked like he had not slept much last night. He, too, looked exhausted, and like he'd rather be anywhere but here.

Black eye and all.

Somehow, Ed couldn't really find much sympathy for him.

With an instant, furious scowl, Ed stepped the rest of the way inside to shove the door shut behind him. Marcoh stiffened subtly again, withdrawing as if expecting to be struck, but Ed merely firmly turned his back to head down the stairs without care. "I'm not here to see you," he snapped over his shoulder, not even turning his head back to look at him. "And trust me, it's best for you if you keep it that way."

"...Edward-"

"Shut up."

For one lucky moment, the so-called doctor actually did. Ed stood there, barely able to see past the bloody-red rage choked into his throat and waited, still trembling, sick at heart, knowing there was more to come and in the same breath wanting nothing more than for him to never speak again.

"...please," Marcoh murmured at last. "If you're going to be angry at somebody, be angry with me."

"Oh, believe me-"

"Just don't be angry with Roy."

Ed stumbled to a halt.

The words were quiet and passive, not the argument or defense Ed had been ready for but instead a meek request and nothing more. It also was perhaps the only thing Marcoh could've said to not drag him on to be even more angry with him, and instead sail straight underneath his every defense to strike at his still wounded core.

The sense of betrayal from yesterday, upon realizing the full and horrible truth and what that meant, lived on- as did the very small part of him that was not upset with Marcoh, but instead, upset with Mustang, for lying to him.

Lying to him and Al, ever since the very first day that they'd met.

His throat tightened again, so much it was painful. It felt as if with those words alone Marcoh had seen straight through him and stripped him bare and flipped this entire meeting around on its head, and he fucking hated it. This wasn't- no. Marcoh could not make him feel like this. He could not. He-

And this was about Mustang, not him.

It certainly wasn't about Marcoh.

Ed squeezed his eyes shut, and once again swiveled around to turn his back to Marcoh, and his focus back down the stairs. He refused to so much as give that man the time of day. Fighting another breath as deep as he could, suffocating the disquiet already collecting around his heart that kept his hands shaking and his stomach sick, Ed kept his back turned, and at last, trudged onwards back down to the basement.

It was time to get his answers, once and for all.

Just like yesterday, the room he crept into was dim and hot. Suffocating in its loneliness, and uncomfortable already just one step inside. The orange glow of the candles was hardly enough by which to see, giving off the smell of smoke and heat that now felt all too fitting.

And there, just like yesterday, was Mustang.

Ed had tried to enter quietly, apprehensive that the colonel might be asleep. But when the door creaked open at last and his eyes landed immediately on him, it was with relief, because Mustang was awake, and undeniably so. Settled in the same tousled, unmade bed as the day before, a book propped open in his lap- and those strange, pale eyes, already watching him.

Ed flinched again.

"...Well," Mustang drawled softly. His voice came out rough and deep, deeper than yesterday; perhaps because now, when Ed listened to him, he wasn't listening for the colonel, but instead staring at him and seeing a beast beneath his skin. "Hello again, Fullmetal." He paused, then, with movements agonizingly precise, shut the book in his lap to set it away. A small smile crossed over his scarred face with an agonizing sense of smug calm.

Even from here, Ed could still see teeth that tapered into gentle points.

"Have you calmed down, yet?" the colonel asked, gaze flickering pointedly over his shoulder. "I didn't hear chaos from upstairs, so I can only assume Marcoh made it through in one piece."

Ed glared back, reflexive irritation tightening in his gut. "I'm not a kid," he muttered under his breath, even as his face started to warm, but something about that pale blue, piercing gaze from that pale blue, scaled face was just too fucking wrong, and when Ed drew a step closer he suddenly found his gaze glued down to his feet, because he couldn't look him in the eye. "I... I know you need his help, right now. I get that, so. I won't do anything to him."

"...I would actually prefer it if you didn't do anything to him regardless of my needing his help, but- I suppose that's a start."

Ed kept his eyes averted, still thoroughly miserable and barely able to stop himself from fidgeting on the spot. The instant his gaze landed on a nearby stool he made for it, relieved to be able to sit down and hide his still trembling hands. He should be in jail, he wanted to mutter, but the injustice of it made his mouth turn sour, and instead he just kept his mouth shut.

He knew that real justice, in this case, was never going to happen.

Jail was for people who broke a country's laws.

Not for someone who'd done exactly as the Fuhrer had ordered.

Hell, Mustang had turned out so well, they'd probably given the man a fucking medal.

Another long moment dragged by in unbearable silence.

Until, at last, Mustang sighed.

"Come here, Ed."

Ed swallowed, hard. It felt like he was all but choking on the shock and reluctance still gathered in his throat and at first, no part of him wanted to move at all. He didn't even want to look at him. Not when he knew the impossible, insane sight that awaited him on Roy Mustang's face.

But the alternative was even worse, wasn't it? Just sitting there, blatantly ignoring him to stare blankly at the floor, instead, confessing without words I can't do it, you look weird, I can't look at you, you're a freak-?

Ed gritted his teeth again, this time with a violent wave of self-loathing and disgust.

He was not here to fall apart.

He could do this.

With another shuddering, almost gasp of a breath, he forced himself to settle for a compromise, and blindly dragged the stool closer. Out of the corner of his eye he saw blue hands and scars and this time, he kept his gaze firmly planted down.

Every part of him, as an alchemist, wanted to see it. Examine this amazing feat of alchemy sitting before him, a work of transmutations that Ed hadn't even realized were possible until just yesterday, never mind as perfected and advanced as the chimera before him. He wanted to lay the puzzle open with his own two eyes and read all its secrets, to understand everything about him, everything about Nina, until every last detail of the arrays made sense and there were no questions left unanswered. He wanted to stare at Mustang until every single circle was burned into his mind so thoroughly he not only understood how Mustang and Nina had been made- but how he could unmake them, too.

And all the rest of him was so sickened by this he could barely stand it.

He wouldn't have been the first, to look at Mustang like nothing more than a fucking lab experiment.

"Look," Mustang ordered quietly, evidently undeterred by his continued refusal to so much as look him in the eye. With an awkward grunt, the colonel shifted a little bit closer but instead of reaching out for Ed, he merely turned the book in his lap, bringing it closer to him with one stiff, still strikingly unnatural hand. "Ever read this before?"

"I- what?" What was he even talking about- a fucking book? Really? A book? Utterly thrown and losing whatever patience he had left, Ed glared awkwardly on at Mustang's stomach, not quite looking at him, not quite staring at his feet anymore, either. "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes," he read, squinting in the dark. A collection of short stories following the life of Detective Sherlock Holmes.

...okay, then...?

Why, exactly, was Mustang showing him a children's novel?

Hell, why was he wasting his time reading it in the first place?

His utter lack of understanding must have shown itself on his face, because after a few moments Mustang pulled the book back to settle it on his lap, gripping it between two long fingers and thumbing at the pages with his other hand. "It's relevant, if you'll bear with me for a few moments to allow me to explain... Dragons don't read Amestrian, Ed. We have our own alphabet, and its not yours. However, a soldier who can't read is a rather badly handicapped one, so the military had to teach me that, too- among almost everything else." Sighing heavily, Mustang settled back in what felt like an almost painfully fake air of enforced calm, still thumbing on restlessly through the book with scaled hands that were all Ed could see, because he just couldn't make himself lift his eyes to his changed face. "I was really only allowed history texts and military strategy, but those aren't quite suited towards a child learning how to read. It was... not easy going, and let's leave it at that."

Ed shuddered, a little seed of cold planting in his stomach and turning his mouth bitter. Yeah. Yeah, after everything that he'd seen so far, he could guess that it wasn't.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could just see a faint pallor come over the colonel's face, new shadows from the memory that was obviously utterly unpleasant. But the moment he started to look up he caught another flash of blue scales and his eyes were sucked right back down to his legs. "...okay," he mumbled at last, weak and uncomfortable. "What does this have to do with that?"

"Well, as much as you may hate him, Ed... Marcoh felt sorry for me. He'd always been nicer to me, than the others, but this was pretty much the first time I really recognized him apart from the others." He shifted the book again, thumping it gently between his hands, then gave another warm laugh that was so out of place it made Ed's stomach churn. "He was the lead alchemist on the team so managed to make it his job, to examine me each night, but all he was really trying to do was help me learn how to read without getting screamed at for forgetting a word. He'd bring in books from home and work with me on them... at first he'd mostly read and I'd follow along, usually children's stories, but as I got older he'd start bringing in anything he could find that he thought I'd like. Detective novels, fantasy, adventure..." He laughed again, tossing the book to the side for it to thump down, forgotten, the distant smile undeniable in his voice alone. "For a few months I was very confused by some sappy romance tripe, after which Marcoh decided that perhaps human romance novels didn't quite work for a dragon, and we abandoned it for some ridiculous explosion-fest instead."

At that, Ed couldn't quite help himself, or maybe just didn't want to, and actually found himself just laughing along with Mustang. He was still barely following along but just the idea of him reading some trashy romance novel- and the colonel just sitting there, sounding so blasé about it all...

It was normal.

It was, at so long last, actually okay.

It was a familiar footing that crumbled instantly away, when he started to lift his gaze up onto Mustang, and instead latched straight onto the leathery line of scales creeping up his neck.

"So, I'm not asking that you become best friends with Marcoh, Ed." Mustang pushed around to sit closer, not touching him, but gaze boring so pointedly into his forehead he could feel it there, burning. "But out of all the people responsible for this, he's the only one who's responsible for the good, too- the only one who's the reason that I'm even still alive, for god's sake. They took away my name because I couldn't say it anymore, and Marcoh named me Roy because he thought it would be something easy for a dragon to say, and when I was old enough to understand, he actually sat down with me to explain everything he knew about my family. You heard him yesterday, right? That I wasn't the only dragon taken, just the only one who survived?"

Ed tensed again, anger whiplashing through him even more violently than before. Yeah, he remembered that, all right. He wasn't sure what kind of defense for Marcoh that was, but he fucking remembered it. "Yeah, so? Great, so the dragons are half extinct specifically because of the military hunting them. Good for fucking them."

"...Actually... Ed..." the colonel sighed, rubbing a hand at his face with an air of great, domineering exasperation. "The military had seven dragons, including myself. They killed the first six, perfecting the chimera transformation. ...those first six were my four sisters, and two brothers."

Ed gasped.

What?

WHAT?!

"And you know what Marcoh did, Ed?" Mustang went on, plowing through the shocked silence with a deep growl of a voice like iron. "He had someone write a note for me, before I could even understand what anyone was saying, to tell me what had happened to them. He managed to salvage a few of their scales, and bury them. He- he told me he was sorry before I even understood the word, and ended up teaching it to me with some picture book just so he could properly apologize. He didn't have to do any of these things, Ed. But he did. So you can hate him, if you want- I certainly can't stop you. But someone in my position... really doesn't have that many people to rely on, Ed. I know if he could take it all back, he would, but he's never treated me as anything less than a person and that's all I can really ask for."

"Anything less than- how can you say that?! He- he-" Ed trailed off helplessly, without words but the injustice of it all tightening in his throat again. "He- you said... he killed your family! He could've killed you; he did this to you! How- just because he said sorry, that doesn't- he's still-" He panted to a nauseated stop, stomach churning and mind wiped blank of anything sentient at all, because all that was left was the sick rage clutching at his heart.

All he could see was Tucker standing over his deformed daughter.

"...Well, for one, Ed? Marcoh is actually able to look at me."

Ed froze.

Oh. He hadn't, actually- oh. Yeah. That. That whole part of it. The looking at Mustang, part. The part that he... hadn't managed to do yet. Right.

The part that had turned Mustang's words from calm to acerbic, and underneath them lived a genuine sense of actual hurt.

If anyone's not treating him as an actual person now, it's you.

The terrible silence extended on. It felt like a lead ball of guilt and dread had settled deep in his stomach, just him and Mustang sitting together, the colonel expectant and unyielding as rock while Ed was left to realize that no matter how many hours he'd spent trying to prepare himself for this, no matter how much he'd told himself Mustang could trust them, that he could handle it- he'd ended up doing just as badly as Mustang had expected him to.

Ed shivered again in his chair, and once again fought to swallow back another wave of guilt.

Then, he forced his eyes back up to Mustang.

The colonel sat there just the same as yesterday. Eyes that weren't the right color, skin that was all wrong. A face that was all wrong, sharp teeth and a poisonous patch of scales on his cheek and features that were just a little too alien to even pass as human.

And still, underneath at all, was the very same colonel who had stalked into the Rockbell's years ago, hauled him up out of his wheelchair, and told him to turn his life around.

Mustang smiled a little, when Ed finally managed to get his eyes to find his. But it came out all wrong, small and restrained like he was well aware how unsettling it was and he was trying to hide his own teeth, and the wrongness of it all stampeded straight over everything else. "You really did say it for yourself, yesterday, Ed. I'm the same person that I always was, in here," Mustang said, tapping at his head with one curled finger. "I'm just not the person you thought I was."

...okay, that one was a fair point.

This time, Ed kept his gaze on him, no matter how uncomfortable it made him. This was who Mustang really was, and pretending it wasn't wouldn't get either of them anywhere. And it was uncomfortable, at first, it made his skin crawl and the back of his neck prickle, but- this was him. He could stare all he wanted, and he was never going to crack and turn into a dead-eyed dog that could barely say her own name.

He was Mustang, through and through, and he was apparently going to just have to get used to it.

Ed swallowed hard, finally finding the words past the discomfort tightening in his throat. "This... this'll go away, then?" he asked, inching forwards a little. "Yesterday, you said-..."

Mustang gave a half-hearted chuckle, but it was weak to its core, and when he ran a twisted hand through his hair, the half-claw of a finger dragged a tangle right out of his head. His strange face twisted a bit, jaw tightening with something unsaid, and once again Ed caught a slight, wounded vulnerability flickering through his eyes- a vulnerability he was almost sure Mustang hadn't wanted him to see. "Is it really that bad?"

He sucked in a breath, wincing and the words that caught in his throat did so like shattered glass. He worked with mouth pathetically, wanting to say something, make that utterly wrong look in Mustang's go away- but nothing helpful came out all. He couldn't find anything to say that would make this better.

Goddammit, he was fucking up right when it really mattered.

The silence stretched on between them, suffocating and thick in the stale heat. A sense of defeat emanated slowly after it, so palpable it made him sick.

"Well... yes, then. It will go away." Mustang's eyes turned away, narrowing down to his lap as his shoulders hunched and his hands curled. With an agonizing sense of precision and care, so careful it was as if one wrong move was all it'd take to shatter, the man started to work himself around, situating himself inch by inch to sit on the edge of the bed, instead. His legs dangled over, loose and limp, and he somehow looked so obviously wrong but in the same breath, so undeniably human, that Ed just couldn't understand it.

Sitting like this, Ed could now see his bare feet for the very first time.

They weren't all that much better than his hands.

Well, at least this time, his stomach didn't lurch.

"I don't really know what it was, that Bradley had them do to me. He only explained just enough so he could... gloat." The colonel splayed his hands in his lap, turning them over and flexing them as if they were as alien to him as they were to Ed, then just sagged with another weak grin.

Ed really didn't know what the hell he was smiling about, because there wasn't anything funny about this at all.

"He told me it was meant to deconstruct the transmutation," Mustang mused on absentmindedly, seeming to be speaking more to himself than to Ed, at this point. Like all of this conversation were things he had wanted to say to somebody for a very long time, and now that there was someone in the room to listen he was just going to say them without sense or any purpose at all. "I'm mostly dragon, believe it or not, and whatever array they used on me this time was meant to turn me back into that. There was just no promise I'd actually live through it. ...pretty sure I wouldn't have." He examined his hands again, this time with another faint scowl. "Thank you for getting me here as fast you did. Marcoh said if I'd been much later, my wings might've broken the skin. I think I speak for all of us when I say I'm glad they didn't."

No matter how hard he tried, Ed couldn't stop himself from shuddering. His own back itched and stung at the very thought of it. That was why Mustang had been so picky about his back, then? Yes, he'd seen the horrible scars before, and he'd known what they were from, but hadn't actually put two and two together- but this whole time... that was why? It had been because- because-

Because he'd been trying to grow wings? Just like that? Just straight out of human tissue and skin and those thick, ugly scars Mustang had showed them just yesterday?!

...no wonder he was in so much pain.

"That kind of alchemy is wrong," Ed hissed, eyes squeezing shut. This time not because he couldn't look at Mustang, but just that he couldn't beat back the images still flickering in his head any other way. "No one should use arrays like that. Not on someone who didn't agree to it and not on a- a fucking kid."

He hadn't felt this disgusted by something since Tucker. But now... Ed shook his head once, a breath sucked in past gritted teeth. It was too much. It was too wrong. It wasn't just Tucker all over again, it was their mother, too- it was him deciding to play god with his brother and pressing their hands to a circle that should never have been drawn, and making something horrible with it that could never be forgiven.

His stomach lurched, and the world around him cracked with it, too.

He wasn't any better than the sick freaks who'd- who'd made Mustang.

"I'm- I'm sorry," and then the words were just tumbling out, a low and sulky mutter that wrenched itself past the lump in his throat. He didn't even know what he was apologizing for but just knew that he was sorry, and more than that couldn't stop it as he ducked his head again, gaze trembling on the ground because he couldn't face him again. "This isn't right. It's- I'm so sorry, Mustang, I-"

Mustang snarled abruptly, a low and guttural noise that made him jump, because, not fucking human, but there wasn't time for him to get over himself because next moment, there was a rough and twisted hand settled right on top of his head.

It wasn't human. It wasn't even animal. It was something weird and unnatural inbetween the two, but it was also just a hand rested on his head no matter how deformed it was and with everything alien and broken around him this, at least, he could understand.

This made sense.

"Ed," Mustang growled again. "The only thing you and your brother have done is keep me alive. You helped me escape. You got me here. ...of all the people in the world who might owe me an apology, you are certainly not one of them."

He shook his head again; just what it was he was denying, he didn't know, but he had to do it. The injustice and wrongness of it at all was just so sickeningly much. "But-"

"Enough." Mustang's hand curled again, still rough against his head but gentle, somehow, a heavy, alien warmth that hesitated, then trailed down to his shoulder. "Enough, Ed. You did nothing wrong. You've done more for me than you can even understand, Ed- there is no but. There is nothing for you to say sorry for." The hand on his shoulder squeezed a little, gripping him into place and it was so reassuring an anchor, it was somehow enough to ground the chaos still spinning around him.

It was reassuring enough for Ed to calm the stuttering breaths caught shallow in his throat, and once again find the strength of will to force his head back up, and keep on looking Mustang back in the eye.

His still pale, unnatural, messed up eyes.

But from everything that he now knew, that was the real Mustang- this was the real him, scales, fangs and all, and he was going to have just get used to it.

The colonel sighed faintly when their gazes at last met again, another small smile coming into play. "I've never understood you alchemists," he muttered, then, bewilderingly, for no reason at all, lifting his hand again up to ruffle his hair fondly. "You always try and take responsibility for everything; take on guilt for things that have not even the slightest bit to do with you. Tell me, Ed; that's not a human thing, is it?" He smiled again, showing neat, pointed teeth. "It's an alchemist thing."

His head swam again, this time nearly tilting him to the side. Great, now he was even more confused than before. "I guess you're not actually an alchemist, are you, huh?" he asked, scratching his head. "This whole time... fucking hell, I can't believe it- do you even know anything about alchemy at all, bastard? Have you just been faking it this whole time?"

Mustang actually looked a little abashed at that one; at least, he thought that was it, the colonel smiling faintly but with an expression that was almost embarrassed. He rubbed at the blue patch of scales on his cheek, pale eyes scattering away, and when he spoke his voice was almost light again- almost familiar. "You are correct. I've tried to learn some of it, a few times, but... really couldn't figure my way through even the basics. I just don't have the arithmetic or scientific educational background to understand it." He hesitated again, half-growl of a voice wavering once more. "...I'm not sure if I'm even physically capable of it at all."

Once again, Ed's weak smile fell.

Just-

Just-

Damn it, Mustang.

It had been funny, to joke with Al that the bastard was a one-trick pony, secretly a useless alchemist who'd lucked his way through the state exam. Or he'd joked around, while Al had begged for him to please just be nice to their superior, please just stop calling him an idiot behind his back- but it had been funny then, a sulky sort of one-sided rivalry Mustang was a smug asshole who needed to be challenged, but of course he was really a good alchemist... of course he was...

Except, he wasn't.

And finding that out really sucked every last bit of amusement right out of it.

"...I could try and teach you something," Ed ventured hopefully, then coughed, clearing his throat. God, he sounded so pathetic. He wasn't helping at all. "At least see if you actually can do it. A simple circle shouldn't be too hard, even for a bastard like you."

Mustang smirked a little at that, and it was easily the most relieving thing about this. He wasn't too far gone to not be provoked by a little insult- he wasn't too far gone to not still be Mustang. Mustang smirked and Ed relaxed, the tense, crushing weight on his chest easing back gently to let him smirk back, too.

Until Mustang's ease faded back into a reluctant frown.

"Thank you for the offer," he sighed, "but I think I'm fine like this, Ed. No matter what talent for alchemy I do or do not have, I think it's clear I'm not ever going to be a genius alchemist. And... and, while I am grateful, Ed, I really a bit tired of dedicating myself to learning to pretend to be something I'm not."

There was a soft sadness underneath those words- something he had never heard from the colonel before, an old injury that hadn't healed. That had maybe always been there, Ed at last understood, but Mustang had hidden it all this time underneath that smug suaveness of his, sitting there smirking behind his desk like that-

And he'd always looked so confident and smug, Ed had never once thought to try and look deeper.

He had never once actually looked past that the arrogant colonel's expression to realize that something underneath wasn't quite right.

Nobody had.

Mustang growled quietly again, the hand still settled on his shoulder giving it another squeeze. "Stop looking like that," he murmured, smile playing underneath his voice, then brought his cold, rough hand around to nudge his face back up. "I told you already, the last thing I need from you is an apology, Ed. I'm alive because of you! What more could you and your brother have possibly done for me that you haven't already?" He groaned suddenly, a new pallor coming over him as he yanked away to jerk his hand back, rubbing it over the worn exhaustion on his face but there was suddenly resignation there, too, and it slipped out through the cracks no matter what he did to hide it. "This right here- this is why I never told anyone. This is why I didn't want you or Hughes to know even when you found out I'm a chimera, Ed. It was never about what I looked like; I've looked like a monster since I was eight! But my team was the first people I'd ever had who didn't treat me like one, too, and this was what I wanted to stop. I knew things would change and this is why I wanted to keep my mouth shut."

Mustang looked actually abruptly upset, now the distress out of nowhere and the emotion scattered and shadowed by everything else that the man was; authority, confidence, inner strength, assuredness, but he could see it all the same, see it even when Mustang turned his back to push upright and stalk towards the wall. He paced about once like a caged cat, snarling and staggering, then swiveled back around to him with a look on his face that made Ed feel like he'd just been stabbed.

"If you're really just here to gawk me, Ed, then you can go. Like I said, I'll be back to normal after long enough, so if you want to talk to me and still be able to pretend I'm just like you, you can come back then." His shoulder hit the wall with a loud thump and an equally loud grunt, gaze turned away but eyes still darting and fierce in the shadows, like a wild animal on the run- or even worse, cornered already, and about to be slaughtered. "Everything can go back to normal then."

"That's- that's not fair! You're not even giving us a chance! Mustang-" Ed sank back in his seat, utterly baffled. He didn't know what had even just happened, here. The bastard had been smiling just a moment ago, but now it was like a switch had just been flipped in his head and so much that he'd kept silent was suddenly pouring out, and Ed was the only one there to witness it.

He just stood there, back against the dark wall, and looking so withdrawn and alone that it was too wrong to bear.

It was wrong.

Ed had spent years standing up to Mustang, needling at him, trying to get to him, to make him for once just stop being a smug shit, but part of what had been so annoying about him in the first place was how damn hard it was to get to him. That no matter what he said or what monument got blown up, he always seemed just a little like a parent scolding a mischievous child. Untouchable, lofty, calm, an asshole.

Ed had hated it until now because he hated being put in the role of a child. He hated being the one in the room being looked down on and scolded, because he was not a fucking kid, not anymore. He had earned his way into the military and he deserved to be treated like an adult equal to everybody else in the room- not some stupid child.

But now, everything had been reversed.

Now, Mustang wasn't in control anymore. No matter how he tried to still order him about it was strikingly obvious, plain as day. He could stand there and snap orders all he liked; none of it mattered because instead of being that infuriatingly calm, controlled bastard sitting there smirking behind his desk-

Somehow, Ed had gotten to him.

Well, that just meant it was his responsibility to clean it up.

He closed eyes, biting his curling tongue to yank back every bit of a shouted complaint choking in the back of his throat, and made himself keep still.

"...That's not fair," he repeated finally, forcing his voice as steady and calm as he could make it. Nothing would be achieved here by letting Mustang provoke him. "We're still trying to figure this out, I guess, but we're trying, at least. None of us want to start pretending yesterday didn't happen. You're a- a dra..."

Mustang went unbearably still once again. His head tilted slightly, dark hair shifting, and those neatly pointed ears were left visible once more.

Even like this, even back turned, covered from the neck down, and standing in the dark, he couldn't pretend Mustang was human.

Ed took another deep breath, squaring his shoulders and solidifying his will. You're just going to have to get used to it. "You're a dragon," he said again, this time without wavering or stopping. "Or- half of one, or- I don't know what you call yourself. But what we thought you were before wasn't true, and none of us want to go back to believing a lie."

Mustang's shoulders hunched further and he pulled, still, further away. "Are you quite sure about that?"

"Of course! Of course, I-"

"And are you quite sure Hughes agrees with you?"

Ed choked quiet. His throat tightened, and every last bit of his newfound strength of will wavered like the candles that lit the room around them.

It was apparent now that Mustang had noticed Hughes' absence as acutely as he'd noticed Ed's presence.

"...Hughes is... struggling," he admitted, the words suffocatingly quiet between them. Right. Struggling. That was it.

Sitting there back in that ugly hotel room, shaking his head no matter how much Ed had wanted him to just come with him, affixed right in place without, seemingly, even the slightest bit of desire for visiting the guy he called his friend...

Ed's fists clenched.

Struggling.

Right.

Was it any wonder Mustang was reacting like this, when Hughes, the only person he probably actually wanted to talk to, just hadn't shown up?

Because it was now pretty obvious that Ed wasn't wanted, here.

Well, too fucking bad. Hughes was not here. Hughes was not going to fix anything, because Hughes was too busy sulking. Ed was the one who was here, and that just meant he was going to have to be the one to make this right- and Mustang was just going to have to fucking deal with it.

For a moment, glaring at Mustang's still turned, scarred back, he wanted to shout at him to just trust them. For once, in his stupid bastard life, just trust them. But Ed was starting to realize Mustang might actually have never have trusted any of them at all. Not really. And now, in Hughes failing to show up and Ed failing to say and do the right things, they were both just playing right into what Mustang had convinced himself was going to happen all along- convincing him that he'd been right, to not trust them. Ed's heart clenched again and he had to bite his tongue to stop himself from swearing aloud. Damn it, he wasn't helping at all!

"I... I think think he's mad and upset," he tried again, when Mustang still wouldn't even so much as face him. "And he's- he's still thinking, but... he never seemed like he was mad or upset at you."

Once again the dragon, chimera, half-human, whatever he was, gave an angry toss of his head, sullen and shivering like a put out child. "Right."

"Yeah. Right. Because you're his friend, just like Hawkeye and the team and mine too, you dumb asshole, and you're the same person you've always been. Maybe it'll take us some time to get used to, so if you want to be mad at us for that, go ahead, I guess, but this isn't going away and neither are we."

Mustang scoffed softly again but this time said nothing, hunched back against the wall just like he had been this whole fucking time. Just as stubborn and hidden as he had been since that day in the lab, except now, Ed knew what it was he was hiding, and he knew why he was hiding.

He wasn't hiding his face from him.

He was hiding from the look on Ed's face, because he'd spent so long convincing himself that it wouldn't be anything that he wanted to see.

Well, he was just going to have to stick around until Mustang had gotten it through his thick skull that just because everything had changed didn't mean anything important was gone.

At last, Mustang slumped back around, settling again against the wall only to slip down to his knees. He hit the floor with a heavy sigh, face back in its seemingly permanent scowl, and this time just sat there, deflated and weary. "Has anyone ever told you that you have a... peculiarly unique way with words?"

Tentatively, Ed allowed himself to relax just a little bit himself. At least one hurdle was over with, then. "Yeah. Maybe." He pushed his chair closer, a weak grin softening into place. "If they were trying to be really, really, really polite. ...and probably still lying."

Mustang smirked at that, and it was still startling when bright, pale eyes met his, but he didn't let himself flinch this time and that was the most he could do. "It's true, though. Maes probably would've hit me by now, and I..." he trailed off, scowl already etched into his face deepening, then just sighed and tilted his head back.

Then, for the first time, Ed saw him spit fire.

It wasn't the uncontrolled, smokey snorts of flame he'd seen when hauling him all the way here, sick and half-conscious and near out of his mind with fever. It certainly wasn't his usual flashy display of fake alchemy, a dramatic snap of a gloved hand near his face and then a flare of fire and Ed had always thought he was just being a show-offy asshole when he made the fire come from his mouth...

This was just a calm, bemused breath of fire, a little plume that burst yellow and orange and burning bright in to dark basement. An ephemeral glow of flames that exploded to life and lit up Mustang's pale face, flickering as it faded with perfect control, and looked to be nothing at all more than an instinctual expression of amusement.

Holy shit, the guy really was a dragon.

"I meant what I said before, as well," Mustang continued calmly, as if nothing noteworthy had happened at all. To him, nothing had. "You and your brother have already done a great deal for me, and I don't just mean in helping me get to Marcoh. I know it's not quite the same, but, watching you and Al, these past few years- it has been... incredibly liberating, for me."

"...Liberating?"

The colonel gave a small smirk, leaning his head back more comfortably against the wall to nod. "Yes. I recognized something about you two when we first met... you were both just as different as I was. Al, especially- you'd never be able to hide it, like I can, but in the end that doesn't really matter. Anyone can look at you and see you're different, but you'll never be able to be honest about why. Neither of you will ever be able to actually live openly with the truth of who you are. That you're not..."

After a few moments, he just sighed and shook his head, trailing off into silence with little more than a fond smile. He breathed out another little swell of fire with the ease as if he was just smoking a cigarette and said nothing.

Once again, the scene was just entirely too unsettling.

Slowly, Ed ventured another few steps closer. He couldn't help but keep himself away from the colonel's dangerous mouth, but if Mustang noticed, he did not seem to care. He looked lost in thought, still, and that was more puzzling than anything else yet. "We're... not the same as you," he said back, and he tried to keep his voice steady, but Al was his weak spot and a little note of warning slipped in under his tongue that he could not hold back. "He may not look it, but my brother is still human, Mustang."

But Mustang was already shaking his head and smiling again, waving the words off without a care in the world. "I didn't mean any such thing, Ed. Of course he is. And- I suppose that is exactly what I'm trying to say. He's human, but only in the ways that matter... in so many other ways, he's not, but that never changed anything for you or anyone else. You never once treated him like he was... different. You, and everyone who knew your secret, acted like he was the same as all of us, just maybe a little bigger and- noisier." He smirked faintly, but there was no malice behind it, and again waved for Ed to join him down on the floor. "Even back when I first met you, I knew I would never be able to live openly and publicly as who I really am, but I'd never really given up hope on some distant future where at least someone would know. Not someone like Marcoh, but Maes or Riza or... it hardly mattered who, but just that someone did. That there be someone who I didn't have to lie to. I..."

He trailed off once again, words dwindling into silence as his face clouded and the look in his eyes turned pained and indescribable. It looked like he just didn't have the words for a few moments, and when he finally landed on them again it was with a heavy exhale as if a great weight was at last being lifted off his shoulders after years of it pulling him down. "If you'll forgive the melodrama, Ed, because as someone raised on wild fantasy novels I think I was doomed to be half ambition and half melodrama for life- I think you and your brother gave me hope. That is more than anyone has ever done for me, and more than I can ever repay."

There was a long, heavy moment of silence between them. Mustang still smiling faintly, while Ed abruptly found his face growing warmer and warmer, and his throat abruptly too tight to speak at all.

Then, Mustang smiled broader, confident and steady in all the ways Ed was not, and he shifted closer himself to rest another abnormally warm hand on his head. "My knack for flowery and sensationalist speeches was also inherited from Marcoh's book collection. If you're really intent on sticking around, Ed, you might as well get used to it."

Ed's face warmed again, flush burning from his ears down. Mustang was right; he did have a knack for this- a stupid one, because the words came out so sincere it was just embarrassing. He ducked his head again, face still burning, and found himself caught so firmly between rage and disgust and sorrow that he could barely think. Fuck. Fuck.

Mustang really was the exact same. The exact same person that he'd always been, except now he looked a little blue and scaly and animal, but apparently he'd always been a little blue and scaly and animal. He wasn't supposed to sound all painfully genuine and vulnerable and human like that, not because he was a dragon, but because he was Mustang, and that wasn't Mustang, but sitting here with that half-dragon by his side and smiling right now, Ed finally could see what Mustang had wanted this entire time.

He wanted the same thing Ed did: for everything to be the same as it used to be.

Except this time, he didn't want for it to be a lie.

Sitting here like this, Mustang's rough hand still resting on his head and ruffling his hair, Ed was pretty sure he'd be able to pull that off.

"Mustang?" he asked at length, eyes still averted but tension finally fading. Ordinarily he would've thrown the hand off his head a long time ago, but it felt instinctive, somehow; not as if Mustang was patronizing him like he would a small child, but instead was like an oversized cat, searching for contact and pawing about for something to touch. From what Ed had read about dragons, that actually might not have been too far off the mark.

Especially considering how often the bastard seem to nap in the sun while at work...

Mustang hmmed a little questioningly, head tilting to the side. Once again, Ed was reminded of a cat purring- a humongous, fanged, very deep-voiced, deadly cat- and he had to smother back an amused grin.

"I'm not really an expert on chimeras, you know that, but outside of the military, me and Al are probably the best there is for it. And I don't want to make any promises right now. I don't know enough to do that yet, but- Mustang-"

"Ed."

"-if there's a way to fix you... if there's a way to get Al's body back, then there should be a way to get yours back, too. And- and we will. Whatever it is, Mustang, we're going to find it, someday, and then, if you-"

"Stop right there, Ed," Mustang growled.

"But-"

This time the hand on his head ruffled roughly again, mussing his hair into his face and overall being a huge asshole. Ed spluttered once, flushing furiously, and Mustang just looked infuriatingly smug and proud of himself as he smiled again and dropped a hand to his shoulder instead. "Ed, look at me- before you go off making promises you're not so sure you can keep or not in the first place, look at me, now- do I look like someone who needs to be fixed?"

"I..."

Mustang's slim smile broadened again, that strange and unsettling smile that showed off pointed teeth and Ed was half-afraid of finding a forked tongue. Did he look like he needed to be fixed?

He sat there on the floor, skin patterned blue and unhealthy grey in flickering firelight, creeping around his neck and face like a disease. His hands were still gnarled and scarred, and Ed knew it was so much worse underneath his shirt. One virulently blue vein of scales spidered through a pale eye and a starburst on his cheek, and even if those scales were going to recede and Marcoh was going to hack at those pointed teeth and he could go back to passing like before-

Did he look like he needed to be fixed?

Well... yeah.

He wasn't in the right body any more than Al was.

Mustang's smile softened a little, and he squeezed at his shoulder again. "Ed, I appreciate it. Truly, I do. But I have been in this body for many times longer than I was in my first one for- and a great portion of that time was me learning just how to be human. I'm almost thirty, now. ...I really don't have it in me to have to learn how to be something new a second time."

"But-" Ed shook his head, then huffed and shook it again, trying to shake that annoying, patronizing hand off his shoulder. "But it's not- fair! You just said, you were tired of living a lie, and-"

"And what, Ed?' the colonel laughed hoarsely. "You want to transform me into something I haven't been since I was a child? And then what happens? I'll be sitting around big as a house and no longer able to hide from the military or anyone else, so my only choice will be to find a dragon pack willing to take a displaced alpha in. A dragon pack who I have literally no idea on how to locate better than you. Who for some reason wants to take in an adult dragon who doesn't know how to fly, or hunt, or read, or even talk, anymore. And then what?" He laughed again but it came out hollow and lonely, pale eyes glimmering like fire in the dark. "Even if I could find a dragon pack willing to accept me, do you realize what that means, Ed?"

"I- apparently not, but-"

"I'd never seen any of you ever again," Mustang said flatly.

Ed jerked backwards away from him, eyes narrowing. What? "Of course you would, haven't you been listening this whole time? Just because you look different-"

"Dragons don't live anywhere it'd be easy for you to get to, Ed. And I imagine they're even less friendly with you than they were when I was a child. You..." With a heavy sigh, Mustang finally pulled his hand back to himself again, rubbing it slow and careful over his face like a curtain between himself and the world. A curtain that fell to shroud self-doubt and and an old loneliness, disguising him as merely sardonic but Ed knew him well enough to see straight through it, and recognize him as anything but. "I spent a long time believing I'd never have any sort of friend or family ever again, Ed. I also spent a long time being conditioned how to be human, in ways that were entirely unpleasant. I just... I really don't remember it, Ed- I don't remember most of my childhood. So, I appreciate the offer, I really do, but this is the closest to happy I've ever had, and I don't want to risk losing that and never getting it back."

Mustang then smiled faintly again, and whatever loneliness there was in his eyes was overpowered by it. Just that slight but sincere turn at his mouth that no matter what he'd said thus far.

He looked just like he'd said:

Happy.

Ed's heart skipped a beat, catching hard and fast in his throat, and the wrongness of it at all clenched around it tighter and tighter and tighter until every little breath hurt. Sitting there like that, looking at him like that, he actually really did look happy.

More genuinely openly content, in fact, than Ed had ever seen him before.

Combined with the fact that he was just sitting there, smiling on, and telling him no, it's good enough-

He was half human, could never live openly as anything but a lie, and had just gone on a long speech on how he'd spent so much of his life miserable he'd be content with the first little bit of normalcy he'd been able to find.

That was supposed to convince Ed this was okay?

His hands shook in his lap, all but vibrating with suppressed rage that had squeezed into his throat, and in that moment Ed wanted to rip something part.

Seeing that look, on someone like Mustang's face, was wrong.

"You-" he choked out, then coughed, fumbling down into silence. His eyes burned again and he squeezed them shut, favoring a vigorous shake of his head to will away the tightness wavering in his voice. "You shouldn't have to settle. You're the one who told me that, remember? Told us that!"

Because once, he'd been half a person, too. Once, he'd been crippled and utterly without hope, and his brother had been trapped and half-dead and it was all his fault and he'd been going to settle, too. The path before him to make things had right had been insurmountable and sitting there in that wheelchair, ten years old and no parents, half his limbs, and a brother who's life he'd destroyed- he'd been going to settle. He hadn't been going to give up, he had already given up.

Then, this chimera next to him, apparently, had just invited himself in, and told him to get up and keep going.

It made no fucking sense that Mustang had been able to look at his self-induced flaming trainwreck of a life and gotten him to haul himself out of it, but could look at everything he himself had now, and say it was too much and too hard.

But once again- Mustang did not look like someone who needed to be convinced.

He still looked happy.

"Ed," the colonel said lightly, that dumb, stupid little grin still prominent on his face. The hand went back to his shoulder and squeezed again and no matter how awful it was or how it made his heart shudder, that look on his face stayed. "When I first met you two, I saw two kids who still had a shot. You were still so young, and yes, you'd made mistakes, but you still had it in you to try and make things right again. You and Al haven't wasted ten years contenting yourself with what you had, you and Al still had that chance and could be better, you-"

"What are you trying to say?! That it's too late for you?!" Ed slammed his hand down on the floor to stop himself from hitting him, despair tearing through him like a physical blow. "It'd never be too late for Al or me, so it's not too late for you! You stupid- since when are you the kind of person who just gives up?!"

"...I didn't give up, Ed. I moved on."

Ed stopped dead.

And Mustang, still, continued to give that small, weak little smile.

"I had to make that choice, Ed," he went on quietly, folding his hands in his lap. "At some point I had to make the choice to live with what I had instead of pining for what I didn't, and I made it. I moved on, Ed, and made as much of a life for myself as the military would let me- I don't want my old body back. I wouldn't be happy if you gave it to me. I helped you two because it wasn't too late for you, because I'd already moved on but you hadn't. You still wanted to fight, you weren't okay with how things were at all and I realized that I was in a position where I could help you fight to be something you were happy as. But I'm... okay like this, Ed. I'm not ever going to get my old life back anymore than either of you two are, and- I'm okay just the way things are, for me." He laughed again, beaming with a breath that gave off just the slightest hint of smoke, and reached out to give him another pat on the head. "Really. I promise."

He looked happy.

He actually, really did.

And Ed...

Well, he didn't think he liked it.

In fact, he was pretty damn sure that he didn't.

But he also finally understood.

Mustang was right, in a way. They were going to get their bodies back, in the end of this; somehow, some way, no matter what, his brother was going to be able to feel and taste and actually smile again, no matter how impossible the array that did it was to find or the cost it would make them pay.

But even when Al was back in his real, right body, not that hunk of fucking metal, they still wouldn't have their lives back. They would never be able to go back to the two dumb kids they'd used to be; there was no erasing all of Ed's scars and new nightmares and there was no wiping away the years and years his brother had had to suffer as a suit of cold, unfeeling armor.

And even if he could snap his fingers right now and turn Mustang into a full-bodied dragon, he would never be able to get back the years stolen from him, either.

He'd still be that exact same chimera sitting across from him, smiling sadly, and promising him that this was who he wanted to be. Who'd lived decades as a chimera and made a life as a chimera, a life that he wouldn't be able to have if Ed somehow could magically make him fully human or fully dragon.

Who was sitting right here, smiling at him, and saying that he didn't want to be turned back into something that he wasn't.

Again.

Ed took a deep, wavering breath. It caught and hurt in his throat, swelling until it ached to swallow, and instead left him sitting there as ineffectual as a useless lump and so stupidly helpless he felt like he was ten years old again. He looked back at the colonel and saw his brother, trapped in a suit of armor; he saw Nina, condemned to be slaughtered like nothing more than an animal. He saw all the people he hadn't been able to help in the past, the failures and mistakes and people he'd let down.

And he couldn't relive and try to fix those mistakes through Mustang, because Mustang didn't want him to.

It wasn't fair-

It was awful, it was wrong; his face burned and he saw infuriating red, blinding in his eyes and making his head pound. He wanted to tear the military apart with his own two hands, wanted to throw his watch across the room and never touch it again. He wanted to make this right, to get that awful look off Mustang's face and help him just like the colonel had once helped them-

It wasn't fucking fair-

Ed choked again and shook, his heart racing desperately in his chest, and knew that just because it wasn't fair, didn't mean it wasn't true.

This was what Mustang wanted.

He breathed in deeply again, willing the violent shivering to be pushed away. He still felt sick at heart and nauseated with solid rage, but after all Mustang had done for them, he could at least manage this much for him. With another shuddering breath, he nodded once, waveringly, not quite able to smile back but at least able to pull off that much, and made himself look back at the scarred chimera waiting across from him. "Okay," he started weakly. "Okay, I..."

He stopped. His gaze searched down for a heartbeat from his face, landing on the smallest hint of a scar by his neck- one of the two that he knew stretched across his entire back.

An idea at last filtered through, and for the the first time in this entire overwhelming, twisted day, he found himself able to smile back.

"Actually?" he said, grinning. "I've got you a counter-offer."

Confusion filtered across the pale, healing face. Mustang raised an eyebrow, but somehow managed to pull it off as sly rather than dumb, just like the smug bastard always did. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah." Ed smirked, trying his best to copy Mustang's own. "Okay- no dragons. If you really don't want us to look into it, we won't. But... I know you've heard about the military's flight division, haven't you? The engineer teams trying to figure out how to fly?"

Mustang gave a pretentious sniff , face twisting like he'd just tasted something positively vile. "Those metal and rubbish contraptions are an embarrassment that won't ever get off the ground. I'm embarrassed for them, and I'm not even on the project."

"And you always say you're embarrassed for me whenever you get the bill for a trashed statue, so I'll take that as a compliment," Ed snickered. "Regardless, that's my counter-offer, Mustang. Maybe you don't want to be a full dragon again, but... what about just getting to fly again? Not as a dragon, but just like this?"

The startled quiet stretched on between them. Mustang blinked several times, wide-eyed and silent, and managed nothing at all beyond a dumb, blank stare.

Ed coughed and flushed again, suddenly embarrassed, and fidgeted to drop his eyes down to his lap. Or not, maybe. Because why would some sort of metal machine even come close to approaching what Mustang was supposed to be able to do naturally? And why in the everlasting fuck would Mustang ever want anything to do with the goddamn military ever again? "I'm sorry," he rushed out, "I know, maybe it's dumb... I know it's not exactly the same, and- and maybe it wouldn't help at all, I don't know, but- I only mean if you want it. If you think it could help. ...the offer's there."

An uncomfortable silence settled between them again, Ed's face still burning and Mustang still frozen across from him, and the longer it dragged, on the worse Ed felt. What the hell had he been thinking? He'd seen the scars from his wings himself... this didn't make up for that. Nothing ever could, but this? It was barely a bad joke. Why would Mustang even ever consider- shaking his head vigorously, Ed bite his tongue and made himself look back up, mouth already open to take the stupid words back.

And then, like sunlight piercing through on a long overcast day, an honest and abject joy spilled across Mustang's entire scarred and scaled face in a vivid smile so bright it shone like a fucking lightbulb.

...oh.

That look, in fact, as insane and impossible as it was, was the exact same thing that Mustang had said Ed had already been giving him this entire time.

It was hope.

And that was all Ed had to see to make up his mind.

Maybe he couldn't give Mustang his wings back. Maybe, to him, none of this seemed even close to enough.

But he could help him fly again, and to Mustang, it seemed like that was enough.

"I'll-" he coughed, face flaming. Fuck, this was embarrassing. Could Mustang just stop looking like that?! "I'll take that as a yes, th- oof!"

Before he knew it, before he could even come close to preparing himself for it or maybe even defend from the crazy move, two burning warm arms smothering around him to knock all the breath out of him in an almost too-tight hug. Amidst another splutter, Mustang lowered his head down on top of his, and then just purred on top of him like a giant cat in the sun.

"This," Mustang said at length, "is how a dragon says thank you."

Then he shut his mouth to purr on over his head, and sitting like that, all Ed could feel was the overpowering, fiery heat in his limbs that rivaled the burning in Ed's face, and his continued smile, so big he could feel it pressed into the top of his head.

Chapter Text

By the time Maes wandered his way back over to Marcoh's street, it was late at night, the moon and stars out and the street lamps on, and he was no less lost than before.

Ed had been gone for hours, now, vanished every since this morning, and Maes wasn't really expecting him back any time soon. He'd looked miserable and reluctant when he'd prodded him out the door earlier today, and Maes had known right then and there it was going to take more than short chat with Roy to get that look off his face. The young alchemist probably wanted to be alone, if he wasn't still either with Roy or with Marcoh, and had sought out something to eat or the library just to be by himself. If Al had been here to talk with him, then perhaps-

Well, Al wasn't here.

It was all Maes.

And Maes didn't have his wits about him enough cajole a prickly, irascible Ed into coming out of his shell today.

God, he wished.

After reading as much of his best friend's file as he could get through, then thoroughly regretting every last bit of it, then processing it enough to get himself out of that stricken stupor, Maes hadn't been able to sit still for any longer, either. He'd choked down an unhappy, queasy meal and quick shot at the hotel bar, knowing he'd had to, then found himself back wandering the streets of that damn town without any sense of purpose or any desire at all except the desperate need to clear his head.

In the end, he wasn't all that surprised when his aimless search about the small town took him back to Marcoh's street, and he wasn't all that surprised that when he realized where he was, he could not bring himself to turn away.

Maes hesitated again. He lingered on still a little way's back, feet numb and uncertain as he stared back up the street towards that same little out-of-the-way, nondescript house they had found yesterday, that house that had changed everything.

The file he'd spent the day reading through, containing essentially all of his best friend's meager childhood, stayed heavy like lead under his arm.

Then, with a heavy, aching sigh, and the nerves that had been building ever since Roy had looked them in the eye and said I'm not human, Maes started back up the street.

If Ed was still there, talking with Roy, then Maes could perhaps gently nudge him into going to get something to eat. Of if Ed was too stubborn for that, then-

His stomach knotted in virulent, unbearable disgust.

Ed would certainly still have plenty to talk to Marcoh about.

Pictures of a young, teenage Roy, bruised and grappling for support, that scientist behind him helping him to stand... that scientist who looked a hell of a lot like a much younger Marcoh...

Maes' teeth gritted so hard his face hurt.

Oh, yes, he and Marcoh would certainly have plenty to talk about.

Folder still securely grasped under his arm, fists clenched so tightly he could feel the nails digging into the palms of his hand, Maes took a deep gasp of a breath. He squared his shoulders, willed his heart to calm, and when that didn't work, clenched his fists, instead, to at least stop the tremors working through him from head to toe, and set off forwards again.

Except...

There, on the roof... was that...?

It was a little hard to see, in both the dark and the distance away. But once the shadow had caught his eye and he'd looked closer, there was no longer any questioning what it was.

There, sitting up on the roof, leaning against the shadow of the chimney and pale as the chipping white paint in the moonlight, was Roy.

Maes drew to a surprised halt, and for several moments, couldn't manage anything at all except staring up at his friend.

His immediate instinct was worry, but it didn't take long for him to forcibly smother that into quiet. The roof was plenty big and not that steep, and even from here, he could see Roy was in no danger of falling. Even if he had been, unless he somehow took an upside-down tumble and cracked his head open, the worst he'd get was a sprained ankle or bruised face. Besides, no matter how unsteady Roy had been on his feet before, he obviously felt well enough to climb his way up onto the roof now- if he was steady enough to climb up there, surely he was steady enough not to fall.

Sitting up there like that, back to the street and face upturned, leaning to the chimney as if trying to hide himself in its shadow-

Guilt swept through him, and once again, Maes' footsteps faltered.

Knowing Roy, he probably just wanted to be alone.

Except... you don't know him, do you.

Not really.

A second waver of guilt tightened in his throat, and Maes' feet again went numb underneath him. For a heartbeat, every last bit of certainty fled away to crumble like ash, and continuing to approach that house would've felt like climbing a mountain.

He did not know how well he really knew Roy, anymore. He didn't know how much of what Roy had told him over the years had been fabrications, either stories he'd been ordered to say or outright lies that he'd made up on the spot. He didn't know how much of what he thought his best friend was just wasn't true.

If he was being totally honest with himself, standing down there on the street and looking up at Roy, all but miles away-

If he really was honest about it, Maes did not know if Roy actually cared about him at all.

Thought of him as anything beyond a useless nuisance who'd somehow spent ten years shoving his way into his office and pictures in his face, but had never once managed to not be so self-absorbed that he couldn't look beyond the surface to realize that the man he called his best friend wasn't a man at all.

Standing down there, shivering in the dark and staring up at his withdrawn, cold friend, Maes felt so abruptly sick with himself he wanted to scream.

Roy probably didn't want anything to do with him at all.

Roy probably couldn't stand him.

Had never been able to stand him.

Maes sucked in another gasp, guilt tightening around his heart until it cracked. Six weeks spent hunting for Roy as hard as he could but now that'd he finally found him, now that he could see him right up there alone and waiting and stepped on-

Now that his friend was finally there, right within arm's reach, Maes didn't know if he could face him.

But he also knew that backing away now would do more harm than facing him ever could.

Tucking the folder more securely under his arm, Maes jogged back up the dusty street, keeping his head down and his hands still buried into his civilian jacket's pockets. There was a garden lattice nearby, surely what Roy had used to climb up himself, and Maes cast it only a cursory shudder of a glance before just gritting his teeth and grabbing for it. The wood was frail and half-rotten, crumbling with splinters and disuse just like the whole rest of the house, and putting his weight on it seemed to be just asking for trouble- or a broken neck- but if it had been able to hold Roy...

Maes hitched a leg up, holding his breath. Then, grabbing as gingerly as he could, he hitched up another. The flimsy wood groaned underneath him, so thin that he felt it strain with every step he took. He gulped.

Roy, if I break my neck for you, I swear...

Somehow, Maes doubted it was luck because none of them had been anything approaching lucky, lately, he clambered his way up to join his friend on the roof without hitting the ground. From the creaking, clamorous cacophony, each additional groan of the wood horribly loud in the quiet night, there was no way on earth Roy hadn't heard him coming.

But no matter what noise he'd made, Roy had never turned around to greet him.

He still just sat up there on the roof, silent and utterly still. Propped up against the chimney, in an exhausted slump with hair as dark as the sky and badly in need of a trim spilling over the back of his scarred neck, and head tilted back towards the sky.

From here, behind him, where Maes could only see the back of his best friend's head, it finally looked like Roy again.

Except, that wasn't who Roy was.

It never had been.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up," Roy murmured.

Maes winced again.

I'm sorry, he wanted to say. I should've realized, he was a splitsecond away from gasping. This never should've happened to you. I'm so sorry it did, and I'm so, so sorry that I never saw it for myself or that you felt you couldn't trust me enough to tell me.

His throat was so suffocatingly dry, nothing came out but a pathetic, tiny little cough that made his face burn and his heart clench.

Roy laughed, very small, very quiet, very careless. "If you're wondering, I got tired of being locked up in that stuffy basement, and since I didn't need to hide from the two of you anymore, I came out here for some fresh air." He paused and tilted his head back, just a little, just enough for one pale blue eye to meet his. "You've also probably noticed I make a habit of hanging out on empty rooftops, so... you found me. ...I suppose it's immaterial now, but- oof!"

Whatever Roy had been trying to say, Maes was probably never going to find out, but that didn't matter, because whatever he was trying to blow off as unimportant now was far less crucial than this:

Throwing his arms around Roy, and pulling him into the tightest hug that he could.

He felt his friend stiffen in immediate surprise, going utterly still and alarmed in his arms, and Maes might've regretted making him flinch but it was honestly just a too late for that. If Roy tried to fight him off, he'd let him go, but for now, he just couldn't stop himself.

He needed to feel Roy was alive, Roy was okay, Roy was not that shattered chimera he'd spent all day reading about.

That Roy was the same Roy he'd known for so long, no matter how much about him he now understood was a lie, because he was still Roy.

He had to be.

"...Maes?"

His breath caught in his throat again, and for a heartbeat his voice was too thick to get out at all. Trembling, Maes buried his head down against Roy's infectiously warm shoulder, breathing in several times and clutching him in sheer, broken anguish.

"Y-yeah, Roy?"

Roy was quiet for another moment, remaining almost unerringly still. But then, against his shoulder, he felt just the faintest impression of a smile. "While I appreciate the sentiment- I think- is it too much to ask that you at least be careful, and don't try tackling me again until we're both on solid ground?"

A wet chuckle struggled past the lump in his throat, pathetic even to his own ears, but still, somehow, he managed a nod. It was, somehow, just so Roy, that it was enough. Oh, yes, Maes was still completely lost and left reeling, dizzy as if on a flimsy piece of driftwood in the middle of a hurricane- but it was Roy. Scarred and physically changed to hell and back, almost unrecognizable as his friend, even his voice too low to be right, to even be fully human, those few words were all he needed to hear.

This was still Roy.

"Deal," Maes rasped weakly, swallowing the lump in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, burying his head deeper against the hot shoulder, and then at last made himself unlatch his arms, and pull away.

Roy tilted his head to look back at him, eerily pale in the moonlight and eyes utterly unfathomable. For several moments he was too silent and unreadable to bear, just sitting there wordlessly in the darkness as he watched him like a predator evaluating a threat.

Then, he simply turned away again to stare back up at the sky, and with one great, heavy sigh, relaxed.

"In answer to the question I know you have," Roy started, "no, nobody else knows. Hawkeye got the closest, but... she did not find out, either, Maes." He smirked faintly again, exhaling another sigh, but the sigh was so hot Maes could feel it even from a foot away. "She approached me, after Ishval. Pulled a gun on me, actually- she's lucky she did it that early on. I'd report anyone who did that to me now."

"S-she-" Maes shook his head, even more hopelessly lost than before. "Hawkeye did what?"

Shrugging aimlessly, Roy shifted himself back a little more against the chimney, leaning his head against the cold bricks to glance at Maes just out of the corner of his eye. "Flame alchemy is apparently the Hawkeye family business. She was very insistent on figuring out just where I'd learned my alchemy from, and at that point in her life I don't think she really cared if she got arrested for threatening to execute a so-called war hero in his office. It took quite an amount of convincing for her to believe I hadn't robbed her father's grave, but in the end, I swayed her without telling her the full truth. Believe it or not, I actually interpreted it as a test, at the time... thought she'd been sent from the scientists to ensure I would not spill my backstory at the first opportunity." He paused again, a tiny, restrained smile working its way across his face. "No one else has ever gotten that close to getting it out of me."

It took Maes several moments to be able to keep his head on, after that one. He rubbed a hand over his face in stricken disbelief, then just sagged back onto his hands to roll his eyes up at the sky.

He remembered, very easily, being stunned to find out Roy had suddenly taken on an adjutant at work- even more stunned to find out that it had been the famed and terrifying Hawk's Eye. That had been still long ago, way back during his... bad days. When Roy hadn't done pretty much anything more than just exist and scare the hell out of Maes with every opportunity, and certainly not been in any shape to be taking on assistants- or, hell, being a functioning human being who didn't self-destruct if left alone for too long.

Then, one day, he'd just turned up with one Riza Hawkeye assigned as his adjutant.

At the time, when Maes had asked him about it, Roy had just gone dead silent. Sat there on the cold floor of his cheap apartment and kept his mouth firmly shut, and refused to say even a single word until Maes had given up, and at last changed the subject.

Roy had done that a lot, back then, actually... just clammed up whenever something came up that he clearly did not want to answer.

That, Maes now understood, he couldn't answer- not truthfully.

After spending all day reading that terrible file, Maes no longer had to wonder why his best friend had used to just shut down, whenever confronted with something that wasn't safe or he didn't know how to answer.

And speaking of that file...

"Roy?" Maes asked again, swallowing tentatively. Anxiety squirmed in his chest, and he swiftly silenced it as best he could. This was a conversation that they were just going to have to get through, no matter how uncomfortable it made him or how much he never wanted to think about that file ever again. He sat there in silence, waiting until Roy had finally turned just enough to acknowledge him again, and then, with a deep breath, Maes tugged the folder out from under his arm, and held it out to him. "I think you should be able to decide what happens to this."

Roy narrowed his eyes, for a moment saying nothing, and Maes couldn't help but shudder and wish that whatever Marcoh was doing to help him would hurry up, because that look on Roy's face, when his face looked like that, was nothing short of unnerving. But the worst thing he could do now would be to flinch away because of what Roy looked like, so he kept himself calm as Roy first looked him over, and then, searched pale eyes down to the folder in his outstretched hand.

For several moments, his face remained utterly impassive. A withdrawn, closed off mask that Maes couldn't read anything from at all, blank and expressionless as he flipped the file open in his lap and slowly began to read.

He made it about five long, anguishing seconds into the thick file before his face contorted with sick realization. He opened his mouth once, eyes shocked wide, then made a small, shocked noise in the back of his throat, and slammed the horrible file back shut.

He looked stricken, almost physically winded. Actually hurt, for just that moment, gutted by nothing more than words and pictures on a page. Maes had never seen that look on Roy's face before, and that was all it took for him to know that he never wanted to see it again.

"Y-you've-" He choked, voice thick and wavering, then stopped to shake his head, eyes squeezed shut and hands fisted and shaking. "So. I... I guess you've already read all of this, then?"

Maes flinched, equal parts shame and apology burning in his eyes. That look was all he needed to regret every last bit of it, to wish he'd never even opened it, to wish that file had never even existed in the first place, but after all that had happened, he simply could not lie to him. "I'm sorry," he whispered, unable to face him. "I shouldn't have read it, I know, Roy. I'm so sorry, I... I had to, and I already had the file, I couldn't just get rid of it! I... wanted to know, and I- couldn't-"

"It's fine."

"-I had t-to... what?"

"It's," Roy said again, "fine." He gave a cold, dispassionate shrug, as detached as his voice was flat, and the faint smile he turned onto him was so insincerely fragile it made his heart crack. "Considering the circumstances, I would've been curious, too. ...Thank you for returning it to me, all the same." Roy flipped silently through the file, the pages flickering through his fingers even while his gaze stayed turned away- turning so fast that even if it hadn't been dark, even if Roy had been trying to look, he would've found nothing but a blur. "So?"

So? That was all Roy had to say about it? So?! Shivering violently, Maes hugged himself in the dark, warring with his own sense of disbelief and guilt and hurt that fought so thickly in his throat he could barely get any words out. "So... what, Roy?"

"What do you want to know?" Smirking coldly again, Roy shifted about a bit to cross his legs, balancing himself so he was looking at Maes straight on instead of up to the sky. Despite all appearances, he actually did not seem all that annoyed with Maes, or upset that he had read that file. In fact, by the look on his face, the only one Roy was really all that annoyed with here was himself. "I'm sure you have questions, Maes. Well, go ahead and get them out now. I'm here. I'm listening." He pushed his hair back, the messy black strands ruffling in the cold breeze, and that unsettling, expectant smile stayed in place all the while. "I would really rather get this over with sooner rather than later, Maes, so by all means- ask away."

The words stayed disturbingly calm, all the way through, and so did that chillingly detached look on his face. Everything about it was just too at ease to be anything but downright wrong.

But Roy was sitting there, waiting in silence with all expectations on him- and for the first time in six weeks, Maes found himself face to face with his best friend, and free to get all the answers in the world.

Problem with that was, they were far past the point where this was something that could just be talked out.

"Why..." Maes coughed, swallowing shakily. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't will his voice or his heart steady. "Why didn't you ever tell us? Any of us, Roy?"

Did you really not trust me?

All this time, have you really never once trusted me?

The look on Roy's face darkened again, that fragile pale and scaled skin clouding over once more in his usual withdrawn, detached mask- the mask that Maes had spent years watching Roy wear against the rest of the world, and he'd thought he'd understood, but was only now finally realizing just how little he'd ever really known. "Do you remember how we first met? In Ishval?"

If this had been before tonight, that question would've taken a moment or two to think on. But after yesterday's bombshell, Maes had spent every waking moment combing through everything he knew about Roy- that, of course, included the day that they'd met. "Of course," he said, nodding. His voice caught a little in his throat again and he coughed dryly, still cold and shaken, inside and out. Now wasn't the time for him to crumble apart. "There wasn't anything special about it at the time... one night we ended up passing time around the same campfire. There was a whole group of us at first, but somehow it ended up just being the two of us. Then the next day, we wound up on the same mission, and... the rest is history, I suppose."

It was a memory Maes had used to look fondly upon.

Now, it tasted bitter and sour, just like everything else about their friendship.

At the time, Maes had recognized the pale, pseudo-alchemist sitting blankly on the other side of the fire, staring with glassy eyes and only answering about half the time with just monosyllabic grunts, nodding in all the wrong places and staring at him in befuddlement. The Dragon Alchemist had been a figure of increasing fame known all around the encampment, always startling quiet and staring, and that night, Maes remembered thinking the man had been in some sort of shellshock.

As it turned out, he probably had been.

But that night, Maes had not known any of what he'd known now. That night, Maes had only known the famous, silent alchemist sitting across from him didn't seem to have a single friend on the face of the planet, and had looked stricken, lonely, and scared.

Maes hadn't really expected to wind up being Roy's friend, that night.

But he had figured that Roy had really looked like he could use one.

And looking at him sitting there across from him now, eyes averted, shoulders hunched, arms stiffly folded around himself in the cold and the dark, he didn't look all that different now.

"Right," the colonel sighed heavily, and his eyes flickered shut. "You spent about an hour talking about your girlfriend back home, and trying to guess if I had one. That night, after you finally gave up, I asked Marcoh what I had done wrong."

"Done... wrong?"

Roy nodded once, his features still distant. "Yes. I thought you were another one of the scientists, there to keep me in line. They'd tested me, a few times before, making sure I wouldn't let anything slip if Marcoh wasn't there to stop me... I couldn't fathom why else anyone would sit down and talk to me like that." His mouth twitched again, tightening down into a thin line that seemed to restrain vague amusement, or even a little laugh. "He had to explain it to me that you had nothing to do with the program... that you were just being friendly. I still didn't get it. It took him ten minutes to get me to understand what that was, and even then it was only because he called you the Dr. Watson to my Sherlock Holmes. My only conception of what friendly was was from the books he'd read to me at night- I didn't have the first idea what it looked like in the real world until I met you."

Maes didn't completely follow, but, after all that he'd read today, he wasn't totally sure he even wanted to. The calm, almost sickeningly amused look on Roy's face right now was more than enough for him to never want to understand, ever again.

Even back then, Roy hadn't trusted him.

Roy had thought he was one of them, from the very instant that they'd met. Maes had only wanted to just give him a little bit of company that miserable night, and all he'd done manage to make him feel even worse.

He was so, so sorry...

"And the day after that-" Roy continued on, still blithe and calm, still so infuriatingly calm. "Remember? We had a mission together."

"I... yes." It hadn't been his first mission, with the Dragon Alchemist, but it had been his first after actually meeting him and talking with him- or at him. From what Maes remembered, it had simply been a mission like any other.

Roy's eyes flickered back open again like the wings of a jarred moth, gazing at him half-lidded and forcibly detached, as if he was looking down on the situation from far, far away. Perhaps that was the only way he could look at a past this painful at all. "I was escorting you and your squad into enemy territory. I'd been that way before, so I knew that we'd be going through a warehouse filled with gunpowder- I'd known I'd be escorting you through there for days beforehand. No one told me anything officially, but... Marcoh tried to keep me informed."

This was going nowhere. And, as much as Maes didn't want to push his friend, he was still hopelessly lost. "All right," he started, trying to be gentle, but- god, Roy was not making this easy. "I'm sorry, I guess I just don't see-"

"Gunpowder explodes if you ignite it, Maes."

What on earth was Roy going on about? "Yes,Roy, it does, but-"

"Maes." Roy smiled dryly again, licking his lips, his fangs, looking entirely too at ease for every last bit of this conversation. "You're all really slow on the uptake, aren't you? I've told you everything, but you don't want to hear the answer."

Oh, god damn it, Roy. "Buddy-" Maes started, trying to be gentle with it, but hell was his friend not making it easy-

"I was going to kill us, Maes."

Maes blinked back dumbly.

Huh?

His friend sighed heavily, leaning his head back again in his continued mission to apparently never once risk looking him in the eyes again. "Marcoh knew. I'm not sure how, but he knew I was planning on turning that mission into suicide. He could've reported it, but he didn't. The night before he told me he was trying to make things better, that he was talking to our superiors to try and give me a chance, but the morning we left he didn't even try to talk me out of it. He just told me that he was proud of me, and that he hoped he'd see me soon." He smirked a little, eyes still averted, and gave one cold, heartless shake of his head. "He looked so fucking miserable when he said that it made me want to do it even more."

Roy had been...

On that mission-?

"But-" Maes choked, head swimming. He thought back desperately, combing through the memory in rising alarm. But he had been on that mission, with Roy. Not just him; ten other soldiers under him, Maes leading the mission while Roy had been assigned under his command as a weapon for him to direct. He didn't even remember it now; Roy had been pale and twitchy and silent as ever, pale, twitchy, silent, but effective, and the mission had gone as smoothly as any other...

Roy had been planning to kill them?

Oh my god...

Then again, after what he'd read in that sickening file-

Could he even blame him?

But, Roy obviously hadn't done anything, Roy was here, with him, both alive, so- so-

"I was going to kill us," Roy said gently again. "I was going to kill myself, and I was going to do it in a way they could never blame on me or do anything to me ever again. I didn't care that that meant killing all of you with me... I'd already murdered a hundred people; what was a few more?" He spat out a soft, cruel attempt at a laugh, cruel and heartless and stuffed with so much self-loathing it took Maes' breath away. "But when I left that morning, and realized you were on the mission with us, I couldn't do it."

With an unerring sense of calmness, Roy tilted his head back further back, exhaling a warm breath that was more smoke and heat than flame. Fire or not, it still expanded between them, a little warm heartbeat against the cold of the night.

Somehow, it only served to make Maes shudder a second time.

"You were the first person to ever just treat me like a normal person, Maes. Others in the camp had talked to me before but you were the first one who did it to treat me like a person, not a... a malfunctioning, mentally ill weapon." Roy gave a loose shrug, breathing out warmly again. "I'd never wanted to hurt anyone- not anyone besides myself. But no matter how much I wanted to I couldn't make myself hurt you."

Not for the first time, Maes' head swam. He had to grapple for the rough tiling on the roof to keep himself even halfway steady, so shocked and reeling he quite nearly toppled straight down onto the floor.

He'd talked to Roy that night as barely more than an afterthought. He'd been exhausted and hot, but not willing to sleep just yet after whatever horrible day he'd had, and Roy had been there so Maes had just turned his attention on him. If it had been any other day, any other mission, any other damn campfire-

Neither one of them would be here today.

Despair swelled up in his chest, potent and toxic, and Maes found himself grateful for the darkness around them to disguise the burning in his eyes.

He hated Marcoh. He hated Bradley. He hated the Ishvallan war; he hated the entire dammed military.

Somehow, even while sitting here listening to Roy tell him about his plan to murder him and his entire team in a blaze of fire, he could not hate him.

"...Roy?" he mumbled at length, voice wavering and thick. With a violent shudder, Maes wiped his eyes, then forced himself to look back across at his friend.

Roy chuckled once again, hand waving back and forth like an absentminded wind chime. "If you're going to hug me again, please wait until we're on solid ground."

"You..." Maes sagged backwards, a warm, almost liquifying affection squeezing around his heart so tightly it hurt to breathe. "How transparent am I?"

"Transparent enough." Shaking his head, Roy continued to breathe faint clouds of smoke and abject heat, staring almost dreamily up to the sky and with a faint smirk that was so much Roy it made everything right and everything hopelessly wrong in the same heartbeat.

His smile slowly faded, creasing back into a thin, flat line in his scarred face, and Maes' own temporary rise of spirits fell with it.

"Marcoh left, not long after that. You kept hanging around, and I think when he realized I didn't need him to keep me halfway sane, he realized he had no reason to stay." Roy shrugged heavily, his shoulders scraping back against the rough bricks and his mouth twitching once again. "He fought for me, with Bradley. He was the first one to try and argue that they should give me a chance, when the war ended. He knew he couldn't get the military to let go of me so he fought for me to just get a little bit more freedom instead, and when he'd gotten it, he told me that if I ever needed help, I could find him here in Kiel. ...then, he left."

The words came out sedate and calm, detached just like the rest of him. But underneath them was a cold, familiar loneliness, too. A loneliness that Maes had seen in Roy before, but never before recognized the origin of it.

If Maes had been closer to him, he might hugged him around the shoulders, or nudged his arm, or at least done something to get that awful look off his face. As it was, a good few feet away and trapped in an almost enforced silence, Maes found himself helpless and quiet, unable to do anything at all to make this right.

Roy stayed entirely too quiet, and entirely too unbothered.

"Um, Roy?" he asked after a few seconds, leaning forward just a bit closer. He thought about trying to touch him, but one look at the slowly fading, twisted blue scales on his hand made him think otherwise. "I was wondering about that, too, actually. How did you end up, this... a colonel? An officer at all?" Scratching his head, Maes glanced down once to the shut, waiting file, biting the inside of his cheek through a shudder of sheer revulsion. "I get why they used you in Ishval, but everything that happened after it, just... I don't get it, Roy."

But Roy just gave him a wane smile once again, rolling his eyes skyward to emanate an air of carelessness so thick and strong it was suffocating. "I think you're right about what their original intentions were. But by this point, from their perspective, they had sunk thousands of man hours and millions of cenz into me, turning me into the perfect soldier. Ishval was my final exam, and I passed it with flying colors. From their view, why stick me back in a lab at all? If I didn't snap on the battlefield, I wasn't going to snap doing paperwork." He barked out another cold chuckles, eyes gleaming in the pale light. "It wasn't as if they had a choice to begin with. I'd succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, so much so that the Hero of Ishval was already in the papers back in the city. Soldiers recognized me, knew who I was. The public knew my name. They couldn't exactly just vanish me back into a lab to never be seen again... so they stuck me in their second best cage instead."

"...as an officer," Maes breathed.

Roy nodded once.

And now, Maes understood.

Roy was right. He wasn't sure how much of it was details that his friend had pieced together years later, because he sincerely doubted those bastard had told him anything at the time, or ever, in his entire life, but- he was right. The Dragon Alchemist had become a nationwide phenomenon at the time, half the country celebrating him as the hero who'd finally ended the civil war while the other half reviled him as a murderer, but all of the country had known his name.

Known his face, and been waiting for him to come home.

Unless Bradley had wanted to kill him off in a freak 'accident', Roy wouldn't have even been able to just disappear, back then. He was a public figure, and public figures didn't vanish into military labs in the middle of the night to never be seen again.

So they'd made him an officer, instead.

Stuck right in military HQ, eight, ten hours a day. Under constant supervision, given orders to follow and nothing at all beyond it. Even could get a few promotions, if he was an obedient enough dog, but surely wouldn't have ever gotten any higher than colonel. Because his job- his orders- had been to sit obediently and do what he was told, and unlike Maes, unlike Riza, unlike Ed, those had not been orders that he could ever refuse.

And that was how, then, Roy had ended up in Central with him.

He could understand it all, now. At last, every last horrible detail of those agonizing long days after Ishval made sense. Now it made sense, that day the war had been declared officially over, why Roy had been one of the only ones not to celebrate and instead had just sat there, reading his transfer orders with an agonizing slowness over and over again, tracing and mouthing the words and half-dead. It made sense why, after Maes had finally stepped back home to hug Gracia and all but melt down with the relief of it- Roy had been greeted by no one, and instead had simply smoothed his uniform down, then followed two stone-faced soldiers all the way out of the station.

Why Roy had calmly shown up in perfect uniform for all the parades and commendations and ceremonies for weeks after, yet after each and every one, Maes would have to take him home, because the one time he hadn't Roy just shut down, and not gone anywhere at all. A corporal had found him sitting on the steps the next morning, silent and shellshocked, waiting in a blank-eyed stupor for his next order.

Everything about his friend, after ten years of just thinking him a little odd, a little strange, eccentric, and weird, now made perfect and horrifying sense.

The lump in his throat caught and swelled, and for several moments it hurt so badly he could barely even breathe.

"...Roy?" he finally asked again, only when he's somehow managed to clear his head just enough to at last pathetically grasp himself down to the edge of coherency again. He swallowed dryly, trying to think, then refocused back on his pale friend. "That day when you said... when you told me you wanted to become Fuhrer..."

Maes didn't know how to go on- couldn't put it into words himself. That, well... Roy could not become Fuhrer, had never been able to become Fuhrer, and that as new as this revelation was to Maes, Roy had to have known this ever since he'd said the words himself.

Luckily, by the newly grave look on Roy's face, he did not have to explain.

It had taken months, after Ishval, for him to finally be able to sit down with Roy and have that discussion with him. Maes had been at his wit's end, the then-major functioning as a perfect soldier during work hours only to decompensate helplessly when his duties were done. At that point, Hawkeye had been assigned as Roy's adjutant and had helped him as much as she could, but nothing they'd done had changed the fact that Roy was so bad off it had been terrifying. He'd barely slept. He'd barely ate. He'd carried out whatever mission was assigned to him with a mechanical skill and meanwhile, Maes had been pretty sure if his best friend had had the option to just stop existing, back then, he would've taken it in a heartbeat.

At the time, when he'd been able to sit down with Roy and get him to commit himself to something in the future, just see himself as something worthy of even having a future, it had been such a huge, dizzying relief he could've burst into song.

Now, understanding it had all been a lie...

Like nearly everything else that had happened, these past few weeks, he just didn't know what to think.

"You're right," Roy muttered after a long pause, folding his arms to frown away into the cold night. He glanced over the other roofs with distant eyes, focus leaving Maes again as if he just couldn't meet his gaze. "Being Fuhrer was never an actual option for me. To be quite honest, I was stunned when I was even promoted this far. But I knew I was only being given as much freedom as a master could afford to give an especially obedient dog... you might take a leash off a well-behaved pet, but no matter how well he sits still, you're never going to give him the run of the house, are you?"

Maes flinched.

Roy was smiling as he said it, not quite genuine but sincerely amused, all the same, sardonic and cruel. He glanced back at Maes, half-expectant, and his smile broadened just a little more.

Maes badly wished that he'd stop.

When Maes did not reply, Roy just shook his head and turned away again, smirking into the chilling silence. "Well. Yes. I was never deluded into believing I could actually become Fuhrer, one day. But, to me... the end goal was never really important, Maes. Just what I could accomplish along the way."

Maes breathed in deeply, forcing himself to keep still. "And?" he asked, the word coming out stiff and almost cold.

Seeing his best friend sitting there like that, hugging himself and painfully, undeniably alone, was more than enough for Maes to want to end this conversation right now. To forget about all of it and move onto something that didn't hurt either one of them to remember, to just fall back into everything that they had used to have, and just get that damn look off his face.

But that wouldn't help.

That wouldn't help Roy at all, and that wouldn't make this go away.

They had to get through this now.

"I wanted to try and- not make up for what I did in Ishval, because I can't. But at least try and help those that had survived. That part was true. I also hoped I could maybe stop another Ishval from happening again; at least, while I was still alive. That was true, too." He scrubbed a hand through his hair, seemingly exhausted from the inside out. "I also hoped I could stop another me from happening again."

Maes' eyes burned. Somehow, through some miracle of the thing, he said nothing.

He badly wanted to.

He wanted to tell Roy what he's told him for years, now; Ishval was not solely his fault or responsibility- now that he Maes knew just how his friend had ended up in that sand-crusted and blood-soaked hell, he wasn't so sure he could say it was his fault at all. But Roy had never listened to him before, and somehow, he wasn't all that confident he would listen to him now.

"And..." his friend went on heavily, eyes still turned away and distant, "I wanted to protect everyone, too. Really, Maes, nothing that I told you was a lie, so much as just... double-speak, I suppose." He glanced at him, then exhaled another ring of smoke with a smirk. "I don't know how much you're aware of, concerning dragon biology, but we've got more of a pack mind, than humans. My dad was our pack's alpha. Since my older siblings all died, and no one ever successfully challenged me for it... I'm, technically, an alpha, Maes. The only human alpha in existence, probably."

Not for the first time- god, not for the first time at all- Maes couldn't manage a single thing more than just sit there, utterly dumbfounded, and stare at his best friend.

Roy was a human alpha.

Okay, then.

That was a thing.

"At the time," Roy said, "when I said that, I mean- I was a human alpha without a pack Being Fuhrer is, quite literally, in my blood. I knew I could never be Fuhrer, but I couldn't just exist there without looking at the chair at the top, and if I didn't have a choice but to be in the military..." He trailed off into another distant and morose shrug, but there was a smile on his face again; a fragile smile that Maes didn't know what to do with. "All I know is how to be a good soldier. I couldn't keep going down the path I was; even I could see that, I was miserable. The only way I could continue to earn my freedom was by being the best soldier I knew how to be. ...telling you I was going to strive to the alpha's uniform was as honest as I could be."

Maes paused, considering this. This conversation felt like it'd be more at home in the closest thing this town has to a bar, over a shared, extremely stiff drink... Roy had never been the biggest drinker- now, Maes wasn't so sure Roy could even physically get drunk in the first place- but Maes could really use the mind-numbing buzz. However, there was no moving from this roof, and he knew he really wanted the distraction more than anything else, and a distraction wasn't going to help either of them through this.

"At the time, you said," Maes went on at last. "So what's different, now, then?" He raised an eyebrow, trying to keep Roy looking at him instead of staring back down anywhere else again.

"At the time... ah. Yes." Roy gave another faint smirk, rolling his eyes. "Like I said. Back then, I was a somewhat human alpha without a pack. ...now, I believe, I have spent the last ten years collecting humans into a pack of my own."

Maes blinked.

His friend fidgeted after a few moments, giving him another weak smile that came across as insecure, somehow, which felt wrong, because Roy was everything but insecure, but- there it still was. "I mean that as loosely as I can, of course. Not- I know real humans have... different feelings about pack ownership, Maes. Not that I own any of you," he rushed to say, "I know it's not the same, but it's always helped to think it, and I- just-"

"Roy," Maes silenced. It was late, and he was entirely overwhelmed, and everything about this was wrong in too many ways to count, so right now, all Maes knew was that he wanted to get that dammed look off his best friend's face as soon as possible, because it did not belong. "Shut up, and get over here so I can give you another hug, damn it."

His startled friend spluttered into quiet, face warming even underneath the scales and the shadows. He worked his mouth and tried to speak once, even, then twice.

Then, with a frail, resigned smile of his own, Roy accepted his outstretched hand, and allowed himself to be tugged carefully back across the roof to settle against Maes' side in another hug.

Maybe they could never have normal again, because the normal Maes had believed in for so long had never really existed in the first place.

But, he considered, feeling the burning warmth and new roughness but still the same Roy sitting next to him as ever before, they could at least have this.

Or...

Maes swallowed. His hopes struggled, then crumpled in his chest, manifesting as a bitterness in his mouth and defeat in his throat.

Or they could've had this.

If Roy hadn't just had every last bit of his life destroyed, and given no way to go back to it.

Maes shut his eyes, and for several moments, wanted so badly not to face it, he couldn't speak at all.

"So... Roy." He left his eyes shut, instead only to feel the steady, unnatural warmth of his best friend under his arm. "You-. I..."

Roy chuckled, giving his side a faint push with a hand that still didn't even feel quite right. "Spit it out, Maes."

His friend really was entirely too okay with this.

This-

Having his life taken and decimated, over and over again; having everything he'd worked for destroyed, having everything that he had taken away from him, being left sitting on top this lonely house with nothing at all-

All of it.

Tears still burned in Maes' eyes, and he just didn't even have it in him to wipe them away.

"What are you going to do now?" he asked quietly. Unable to help himself, the arm around Roy's shoulders tightened, pulling the figure next to him closer to his side as if, that way, he just maybe could be able to protect his best friend from the entire rest of the world; protection that he'd never had before and badly needed now.

He could keep Roy safe.

No matter the sacrifice it took, Maes knew, here and now, that he would do whatever he had to for it. He would keep Roy safe, for perhaps the first time in his entire life.

The military was never getting its hands on him again.

However, Roy's safety was not the answer to the question what now?

For several long moments, his best friend was quiet. Head still tilted back to the sky, unerringly bliss and calm. The look on his face alone was enough to answer Maes' question and then some, but he still kept quiet to way for him to say it on his own terms.

"I... don't know, Maes. ...I really don't."

Anger tightened in Maes' throat again- not at Roy; Maes wasn't sure if he could ever be angry at Roy again- and it took just about all of his self-control to keep it restrained back firmly into his throat. Coming out swinging and yelling with a still skittish, badly hurt best friend next to his side was probably a historically awful idea. "You don't have to," he said, the words grinding out past clenched teeth. "You don't have to decide that now. Right now all that's important is you getting somewhere safe; everything else, I'll take care of it. I promise, Roy, I'll-"

"Maes." Roy caught his hand before he could get any further than that, squeezing absently with fingers that were too hot and a smile that was too sure. "Before you follow Ed's example, and make a promise you're not so sure that you can keep- you're not doing anything except turning yourself back around, at going back to Central."

"Roy!" he gasped, aghast, but Roy's little smile did not even waver.

"Think, Maes- think like you should've been doing even when you decided to trek out here after me in the first place." The now former soldier shrugged a little, worming Maes' arm down just enough for him to turn to face him. "You have a wife, a daughter. You have a career, a-"

"A career?" Maes spat. "I don't want- if that's- if you're what the military does, I don't want-"

"You have a family and therefore require a means to support them. You have a career where you help people, no matter what other branches of the military may or may not do. You have friends who are not me, and yes, Maes, you have a wife and very young daughter who I rather think you should talk to before you decide to uproot them, and put yourself at risk of being arrested for desertion for the rest of your life- or worse. Maes-" Still with that small, half-miserable, half-dead, but all the way through genuine smile, Roy guided his hand back down to the roof.

It was only then, that Maes realized it was shaking.

"Listen to me," Roy ordered, because as he'd said himself, being a commander was in his blood whether he wore the uniform or not, whether Maes was his subordinate or not. "You are going to go back home, pretend that you had a nice vacation, and be a good and quiet soldier from here on into the foreseeable future. Ed and Al are still going to need support from the military, and Riza will do what she can but they'll need all the help they can get. There's no good to be accomplished by any of you abandoning everything for me, Maes; do you understand that?"

"And you still didn't answer my question, Roy!"

"Because I don't have an answer!"

Maes tightened his jaw, almost trembling there next to his pale, abruptly distressed friend, and once again found himself fighting as hard as he could to keep himself restrained. "I don't have the answer you want from me, Maes," he gritted out, impatience biting into his voice at last. "I have never once actually had to answer the question, what do I want to do. I've never had that choice, and believe it or not, I've never exactly spent the time to wonder about something I believed I would never have. Now that it's here-" He cursed once under his breath, shaking his head back and forth like a wet dog, then spat out a weak, almost hysterical bark of laughter. "God, Maes, I don't know. There's no leash round my neck for the first time in my entire life and it turns out I really don't know what to do without it. I- I mean-"

With a gruff, aggravated breath, the chimera let go of Maes' hand at last only to drag it through his messy hair instead, tilting his head back once again to gaze to the sky. He was still smiling wildly, as if he'd lost his grip a little sometime a long the way and even now was scrabbling miserably to get it back as it fell further and further out of reach. "You know one of the first things I did, when they turned me loose in Central? Fuck, I know you do, Maes- they gave me an apartment; I'd never had a space that large all to my own and had no idea what to do with it, I couldn't stand it, so I went to the roof instead. I've never flown before, did you know that? Dragons can't fly straight away, and they took my wings before I was old enough. I'm half-dragon, Maes, and the closest I've come to flying is staring up at the sky like- like some lovesick school girl-"

And then, Roy was just laughing again, shaking his head to himself, and Maes was too stunned to help him. "You were-" He blinked dazedly, putting a hand to his head. All those years ago... "That's what you were doing, up there?!"

"Yes," Roy laughed again, his voice weak. "What? Did you think I was planning on throwing myself off the roof instead?"

"I- yes!"

Roy glowered for a heartbeat, looking silently wounded at first, then just caved and held up his hands in defeat, as if to admit, that's fair. It wasn't fair, not really, but his friend had already turned away again with a mournful shake of his head, and Maes got the sense that he wasn't interested in any more apologies tonight, so he bit his tongue instead, and waited silently again.

"...I don't know," Roy repeated at last, his voice sagging quieter with something akin to defeat. "Marcoh's already told me he'll try and help me do anything at all that I want. It's apparent I'll have your help, too, as much as I'll consider safe to allow. But as to what I'll do with it all- I don't have any idea how to exist as anything but a soldier."

Maes hesitated again, something undefinable in his throat. He wanted to say something, anything, but even if he'd had the slightest idea as to what to do, which he did not... this was Roy's choice. It had to be. He'd never had one even once before, and Maes could not even think of taking this one away now- even with something as simple as a suggestion.

There were no words to fix this, because he could not be the one to fix any of this at all.

Roy was going to have to do this one on his own.

"You're right," Maes said at length, trying to will his voice to be warm. With as deep a breath as he could, he held his hand out again, hopefully to float the suggestion without words that they at least climb down, now, before it got any colder or darker. "We may not be able to do much, but... you're right. Whatever we can do to help, we will. And don't- Roy-" He'd have grabbed his face if he thought he could get away with it, and instead had to settle for just squeezing his hand, trying to force the point past his walls so brutally that it tore them down. "Don't disappear."

His friend raised an eyebrow, his smile still a bit weak but hell, at least a little bit calmer now, too. "I'm afraid that might be a bit dangerous, considering I'm now technically a fugitive..."

God, could Roy be anything but difficult as all hell? "Yes, but..." Maes groaned. "I mean don't disappear from us, you dolt."

Roy blinked again, surprise flickering through his eyes for a beat, only for them to soften back into calm. Maes hoped his eyes darkened to their usual black soon, because he was not ever going to get used to Roy looking at him with pale blue eyes from a scaled face- but he was going to have to get used to some part of this, at least, and that was the point.

Roy was right, that he couldn't afford to drop everything that he had to come babysit his new fugitive of a best friend. He hated it, but he was right. If it had been just him on his own, perhaps, but he had Gracia and Elicia. He couldn't do that to them. He didn't even want to do that to them.

However, Maes had also meant it when he told Roy he wasn't going to disappear, because they weren't going to stand for it.

Not just him. Ed and Al, too; he knew that without even asking them, because if they'd come with Roy this far, there was no question they'd keep going even farther. Marcoh would... though Maes still had his poisonous doubts about he much he really wanted that alchemist to have anything to do with his friend in the foreseeable future, no matter if Roy claimed to have forgiven him or not. Riza, of course, and the rest of his team- it was going to require extreme caution and care to get the truth to them, but he would, eventually, and when he did he had no doubt that they would promise to lend everything they had to Roy, too. They'd thrown their loyalty behind him when it had concerned treason. There was no earthly reason why that would be acceptable, but this, all that the military had done to him, would be too much.

All of them were going to do everything they could to help him. He still didn't know what that would be, because Roy himself didn't know, but if he knew Roy...

Yes. Maes nodded to himself once, banishing away the rest of those black clouds of doubt by sheer force of will alone. He did know Roy. He might not have known the whole truth about him, but what did that matter? He'd never been best friends with Roy, the human; he'd never been best friends with Roy, the alchemist, Roy, the well-adjusted smug bastard who didn't talk about his past but someday was going to be Fuhrer.

He was best friends with just Roy.

And that was the only way he had to actually help, right now.

Stay friends with the person he'd been friends with for ten years already.

Looking at the Roy sitting next to him now, still smirking a little and head tilted back, eyes bright with the same confidence and inner will he'd accidentally cultivated out of him years ago...

Well, Maes thought, smiling, I'm pretty sure I can do at least that much.

"Come on," he said, sticking a hand out. "If we stick around up here all that much longer, we're gonna attract attention."

Roy smirked faintly again, but there was only amusement behind it, nothing more. With a slight shake of his head, Roy accepted his outstretched grip, and pulled himself up to his feet.

Coincidentally, that was also when Maes learned just how strong Roy actually was, and if he hadn't already braced himself against the chimney to begin with, he might well have been overbalanced and toppled straight to the ground.

Roy brushed his hair back with his free hand, loose and relaxed and utterly, almost infuriatingly, at ease. He glanced back at Maes through the corner of his eye, pulling his hand back to himself, and- once again- smirked.

Hell.

"You're can be a real piece of shit sometimes, you know that, buddy?"

Roy rolled his eyes as he paced ahead, kneeling to get a better grip on the same flimsy garden lattice that Maes had climbed his way up on, not all that long ago. "Insulting me already?" He shook his head up at Maes and tsked quietly, even inch of him radiating an insincerity as thick as syrup. "And here I thought that I was going to have to bear you coddling me, for at least another few- ah!"

"Roy!"

And with an earsplitting crack and crumble, the already failing wooden lattice snapped, and Roy dropped out of sight to fall all the rest of the way to the ground with a solid thump.

Maes was there in an instant. Too many weeks had gone by with his protective instincts on edge, and as shocked and panicked as he was, he was already on the way, his heart pounding in his ears but feet moving as he launched himself to the ground, right by Roy's side. His ankles and feet stung badly from the jump, aching pain lancing through his back and he gasped, but the instant his head stopped ringing his hands had already shot forwards to his friend's prone form. Roy had landed flat on his back and lay there even now, face utterly shocked instead of pained in the low light; for several seconds, he didn't manage anything at all but a stunned blink. When he finally did move, it was with a breathy cough and shake of his head, seeming utterly winded but by the shaking waves of his hand, still, somehow, in one piece.

"Dammit, Roy," Maes gasped, hands already fluttering half-uselessly, checking for broken bones or worse, "I told you to be careful!", which was categorically untrue, actually, but he'd meant it, at least- "You stupid- are you okay? Roy?"

"I'm-" he coughed, rasping, "I'm- Maes-"

His name came out utterly exasperated; nothing else did, because after it he was overcome by another round of coughs, but that had been enough. The fall really hadn't been that far, not even ten feet, and Roy had landed flat on his back instead of anywhere more delicate like his face or neck. By the way he was fidgeting around, he could tell nothing important in his back had broken, either, and the only crucial thing about him that had been bruised was his pride.

Not that that quite stopped his heart from beating so hard and fast it nearly lurched out of his chest...

"Well..." Maes sighed, sitting back on his trembling heels with a grin so weak and exhausted it felt like he just might pass out. His friend sagged back shakily on the ground, draping an arm over his still stunned face, and this time did not try to push off the hand Maes left down on his shoulder. "How's that for your first flight, then?"

Roy went still, with little more than a spluttering gasp. His eyes went wide and his shocked tremors went still, and for a beat, Maes' heart went cold, and he couldn't help but fear that he had gone too far.

Then, with a great, weary sigh, his friend slumped back into the ground with a smile as big as the wings that were gone. "I think I'm going to have to tell Ed I might be more at home on the ground."