Chapter Text
Roy closes his eyes, places the pen back down on the desk and breathes in as deep as the dull ache in his back will allow for. He should really stop hunching over the desk for multiple hours a day without stretching regularly.
The saturation of the colours around him has been steadily increasing over the past hour, which is the only certain sign that Ed is making his way back to Central, since Ed never seems to send updates by letter or phone. Roy knows that it’s because Ed always gets so caught up in whatever he’s doing. It’s usually Alphonse that gives them any information at all: letters written in a gentle cursive with small ink droplets and inconsistencies giving away that they’ve been written on a train. That, or the occasional five-minute phone call disclosing their location, an update about train times or a vague update on how the actual mission is going.
But sometimes, the only indication Roy gets its the gradual change from a world in greyscale slowly turning to vibrant colours. It’s when he can clearly tell apart the different shades his wooden desk is made up of that he knows that the Elric brothers will be back.
It’s been almost four years since he had first encountered the two broken boys, just a year and some months after the end of the Ishvalan War, back when he had been doing anything to rise in the ranks. Even if, in the end, it had meant offering an eleven-year-old boy a place in the military, letting the boy have a choice of giving up the chance of ever having a normal childhood.
He had gained intelligence of two talented alchemists living in Resembool — some people with the last name Elric. They hadn’t been hard to find. Roy had only had to ask one of the shopkeepers down at the marketplace and he and Riza had been guided to a small bridge and up the hill to a single white house with a large tree outside.
Roy had knocked on the door once, twice, three times. When nobody had come, he had tried the handle and found the door unlocked.
Hesitantly, he had opened it and called out, “Hello? Is anybody here?”
No reply had come and so they had taken to exploring the house, starting with the main floor where they had looked for any signs of life. After that, they had split up, Riza taking the upper floor while Roy had made his way down the old basement steps. He had only made it to the foot of the staircase, only gotten a glimpse of heavy, oak bookshelves and two unfinished suits of armour when he had caught a glimpse of the floor and frozen.
“Lieutenant Colonel, I checked upstairs, but there aren't any signs of any— what is this?”
Riza had come up behind him and he had clenched his teeth, restraining himself from hitting the wall with his fist. It hadn’t been hard to recognise the circle in the middle of the floor, a large pool of blood obscuring most of the middle. He had studied this exact topic not long ago, as a way to cope with the hundreds of lives he had taken during the war.
“Where are they?” He had demanded angrily. “Where are the Elric brothers?! I want them found!”
It hadn’t taken long to find them; they had already been informed by the shopkeep of another place where the brothers could be. An automail shop only a few minutes walk from the Elric residence.
Roy had been fuming with anger the entire time they had speed-walked to the Rockbell automail workshop, thoughts flickering through the memories of his delve into the same dark, forbidden alchemy that was human transmutation.
The knock at the green front door had sounded impatient, and only a second after he had heard a dog barking and the sound of a woman telling the pet off before opening the door to greet them.
The moment he had been able, he had stormed past her into the house, facing a small boy in a wheelchair with a tall suit of armour standing behind the chair, holding the handles.
His mind had paused for another moment. The report had said to look for two brothers aged 30 and 31 and here was a child and— something. One of the brothers, but trapped in a suit of armour (how was that even possible?).
Roy had stormed over and grabbed the boy by the shirt collar, too busy controlling his anger to a more manageable level to notice the sharp change of the surrounds. What had previously been shades of grey turned to sharp, vibrant colours. “We went to your house. We saw the floor. What was that? What did you do?!”
“Sir?”
Roy looks up to see lieutenant Hawkeye, sunlight from the window bleaching her already blonde hair white. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” he says automatically, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to ease the persisting pain. “Was there anything you needed, lieutenant?”
“The Elric brothers are back, sir. Edward seemed to want to talk to you about something,” she says, as professionally as ever, though her eyes betray her; she’s like an open book at times, fully knowing that he had been aware of their arrival the last few hours.
He had been far too accurate in determining their approximate arrival time many times before and while he hadn’t said anything this time, he was certain she knew that Edward was his soulmate and that was why he knew, rather than his spies and information from Alphonse letting him calculate the time himself.
“Send them in, lieutenant.”
He hadn’t said anything at that time because he had been scared; the most important things in his life had never been of the romantic kind and never mattered so much. His aunt, Madame Christmas, certainly mattered a lot to him— she had brought him up after all and had been the biggest influence on his life. Riza had been with him for a long time too. Roy had watched her grow up while he was studying under her father’s guidance. Later, after master Hawkeye’s funeral, Roy had lost track of her, only to find her again in the middle of the Ishvalan desert, right by the Daliha district. She meant the world to him, as one of his two best friends.
Edward Elric had made the world both a million times harder and easier. Whenever he was near, the world was, ironically, bright and alive and it calmed his overactive brain knowing that the younger alchemist was safe and sound in Central. But in turn, the facts on the table, that Ed was his soulmate, distressed him greatly.
“And so, we decided that, ‘oh something is up with that, we should probably check it out’,” Ed says and Roy looks at him, forcing the thoughts that didn’t seem to leave him alone today away. “And guess what we find? The exact thing we’ve been looking for, happening right in front of us. She pretends to stumble and fall right in front of some gentleman in the city, right, and when they offer a hand to help her up, she’ll take it and activate two arrays, which is for your information, old man, super hard to do unless you’re like me or Al. Anyways— two arrays. One cuts all kinds of fabric, because there had been reports of several materials being severed, and she had used alchemy to do that. And so— she activates an array I’ve never even heard of before and it seems to attract whatever valuable possessions they have on them, usually metals of some kind, like gold or coins in someone’s wallet. Then she gets up and runs off. The entire fucking thing, from when she slipped till she was out of sight behind some corner couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, tops .”
Roy weaves his fingers together and rests his chin on top of them, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side. “You managed to catch her, then?”
Ed scoffs. “‘Course we did. Used alchemy to get up on the roof while Al ran after her. Once we figured out where she was going, we made an alchemic trap she wouldn't be able to escape from while getting hold of an officer. They removed the arrays from her hands almost immediately; she can’t have been doing it for long, the circles weren’t durable at all— drawn with waterproof eyeliner if you can believe it. If she had been doing it longer than the month it’s been an issue, they’d be tattooed. Which I don’t understand either, tattooing and removing tattoos alchemically isn’t that hard. With the skill level she’s at, she’d be able to do it, no issue.”
“It’s unusual for you to talk in so much detail about the person you were trying to catch,” Roy says, smirking so slightly. “Saw anything you liked about her, Fullmetal?”
Ed glares. “Fuck you, Mustang.”
“Considering that I’m your superior officer and besides fifteen years ol—”
“Fuck you!” With a dozen angry stomps and the slam of his office door, Edward is gone.
He sighs and looks down at the report he hasn’t yet managed to fill out because he’s been too preoccupied inside his own mind. Seeing the world in colour is a special kind of blessing Roy had never thought he’d be able to witness. After all, he’s a sinner with no chance of redemption, no matter how hard he tries to pay his dues.
And the fact that the person who brings this vibrancy into his life is younger— not yet of age, not yet ready to enter the dating scene, not yet ready to think about serious commitments like starting a household and find a romantic mate to spend his time with —is his fifteen-year-old subordinate, triggers the guilt chewing on his tattered, burnt soul.
Roy curses himself for not appreciating the world in colour while he had still been able.
He’s always been more reliant that his vision than any of his other senses— had required it to perform flame alchemy, to help his aunt in the bar on busy nights when he should have been asleep, but business had been more important.
And now— all he has left is the remaining four senses that do little for him. The only thing he can still see is a faint trace— just a flicker of red and gold behind his eyelids just as he passes on into the troubled realm of sleep.
“Sir?”
He still recognises the most important voices to him. The past week— since he had gotten admitted to the Central Military Infirmary —everyone close to him had to visit at least once. Even general Grumman, who still seemed to be of the opinion that he was going to marry his granddaughter, had come by and declared his condolences for his loss of sight and how it was unlikely they would ever be able to play chess together again.
The only one who hadn’t been by had been Edward.
“Yes, lieutenant?”
Roy sits up with only minor difficulty as the pain flares back to life in his palms, right where Wrath had stabbed him. He turns his head to where he thinks Riza might be. One footstep sounds. Then another and she’s close to the bed. He doesn’t reach out because he doesn’t need to confirm that she’s there, not anymore. It’s been a week, he can deal.
“How is everyone?” He finds himself asking. “Has everyone recovered sufficiently from their injuries?”
“Everyone is fine,” she says at once. “Doctor Marcoh did as you asked and used the Philosopher’s Stone on Havoc, which healed the severed nerves in his back. The doctors are working on a physical therapy plan to help him start walking again. According to one of them, he should be fit to return to full, active duty in approximately six months, depending on how well it goes.”
“That’s good to hear,” Roy says. “And the Philosopher’s Stone—?”
“It broke, sir,” Riza’s voice says, now with a hint of carefulness.
It had originally been him who had been offered the healing powers of the Stone, but he had stood firmly by that he would only accept it if Marcoh had first used to it to help Jean regain the use of his legs.
“Alright,” he says. “It’s good that we at least managed to help Havoc.”
Riza sits down at the side of the bed and sighs. “Are you upset, sir?”
He hasn’t really had the time to think about the possibility of not gaining his eyesight back.
“Not particularly,” he says after a while, fiddling with the corner of the bedsheet. “There are always ways around it. I’ll learn to read Braille, show everyone that a blind person can still do great things.”
He stops talking, breathes and turns towards the window where the heat of the sunlight warms his face. “Tell me, lieutenant, do you know who your soulmate is?”
“Yes,” she says instantly. “It’s Jean.”
It doesn’t surprise him as much as it probably should have. Riza and Jean had always had great chemistry, whether it had been in a professional setting or at their bi-monthly outings to the nearest bar to Roy’s apartment.
“I’m happy for you,” he says earnestly. “You two fit each other well.”
“What about you, sir?” Riza asks, and the room seems to turn colder. He hadn’t asked a single question about Edward, hadn't made any indication of ever knowing that there was something special between them.
“Oi!” A voice says from the other end of the room. There are a few uneven steps and then Edward’s voice sounds. “Hey. I’ve been talking to Havoc since Al’s in physical therapy right now. Havoc told me to go see you. Said something about you being a lonely-ass hermit crab confined to your room. C’mon, being blind has never stopped anyone from taking a walk.”
Riza had moved out of the way when Edward had started talking and Roy doesn’t manage to voice his protest before a warm, calloused hand grips his.
Then, in the fraction of a second, the world explodes into a bright blur of colour.