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Alphonse has taken to sitting out on the roof, on nice days when everything's done around the house. This early in the spring, the warmth of the late morning sun on a clear day reaches him through the current of the breeze that plays in his hair, tickles the back of his neck and sends tendrils of chill down the collar and back of his shirt.
Up here, alone-but-not-quite, he can hear Winry tinkering in her workshop when she's home and Granny in the downstairs workshop or the kitchen. If a sheep bleats in one of the pastures out across the nearby hills, Alphonse hears it here, on a clear day. The chickens gossiping in the yard, a farmer turning off the main road in a sputtering truck, Den's jingling collar, the whistle blast of a train pulling into the station — he hears it all. Almost a year now, and he can't get his fill.
Today he's the first person who sees them: two figures in military blue climbing down from one of those sputtering trucks, coming up the road to the house.
When Alphonse slides down from the roof and slips into the house by the side door, thrilling at the tingling in his scraped palms from the too-fast descent, the big kitchen is a hubbub. Den is barking with excitement, made spry in spite of her old bones by a newcomer Alphonse is sure she can't remember. She jumps and barks at Roy, doubles back to circle around Winry, and gets underfoot of both Jerso and Zampano in short notice.
"Down!" Winry says, and Zampano steps over Den and curses without fire, and "— to impose, Mrs. Rockbell, but we won't stay long, the lieutenant is only — hello, Alphonse, looking well," Colonel Mustang says to Granny and Alphonse in starts. Alphonse shakes the Colonel's hand, catches Den gently by the collar, and takes her out back to calm her down.
In the back Den discovers another intruder and sets off into another flurry of troubled-old-dog barking. Alphonse circles the corner of the house as the barking dies down to find Lieutenant Hawkeye crouched by the wall, tousling Den's ears.
"Hello, Alphonse," she says without turning to see him. With a final pat for Den she stands and looks at him with that near-smile of hers, and shakes his hand.
"Hello, Lieutenant Hawkeye," he says.
They stand with the house at their backs looking over the green hills of Resembool in spring. Den weaves between their legs, her automail creaking gently, desperate for more petting which Alphonse and the Lieutenant give to her in turns.
A duck waddles through the corner of the yard with purpose toward the pond down the hill, a flock of ducklings stringing out behind her in groups of ones and twos. They're fuzzy with newness, soft and fragile like a dandelion Alphonse could puff away in one breath. The fur goes up along Den's back and she growls at the new interlopers.
Ed and Winry brought Alphonse a box of new ducklings from the pond last spring, when he was just beginning to get used to feeling — as if he could ever get used to feeling. His fingers twitch at the memory of how delicately they rested in his upturned hands, their tiny warmth.
When the ducks are gone, Lieutenant Hawkeye is still gazing off across the countryside.
"As always," the lieutenant says, "it's his paperwork again."
After the lieutenant outlines the mission at hand, Alphonse goes with her to retrace the route back to the train station, leaving an indignant Den behind so as not to aggravate her automail in her old age.
"He's missing his briefcase?" Alphonse asks, scanning his side of the road.
" A briefcase. Nothing important, he says." When Alphonse glances at her Lieutenant Hawkeye's brow is furrowed, but her mouth quirks up in a smile.
"Was he carrying it with him?"
"Not if he could help it." Someone less familiar with the lieutenant than Alphonse might have missed the undercurrent of amusement in her voice.
In town they ask around the train station and can record no sightings of a brown briefcase. With the ease of a practiced administrator Lieutenant Hawkeye delegates the trackside region to Alphonse to search, and assigns herself streetside. He goes diligently to hunt through the grass and stones around the platforms and the rails, and all the nearby benches.
At the base of the railroad embankment, some distance away from the station, Alphonse sees a white sheet of paper flapping in the breeze. He goes to it quickly before the wild spring can tear it free of the stones it's caught between. Picking it up and examining the neatly typed header, Alphonse discovers with an odd mixture of feelings that he is holding page 51 of Confidential - Report Regarding the Illegal Purchase and Transport of the Common Gerbil Across International Lines .
"I found one piece of paper," he reports to the lieutenant when they meet at the corner of the station to confer, "but I don't think it's what you're looking for."
Her hands are empty. When he passes her the paper she gives it a cursory overview, and nods. "That's it. Well done, Alphonse. Where was it?"
They leave the station proper and go around toward the embankment, but before they've taken more than a few steps off the dirt road that runs parallel to the traintrack, Alphonse has discovered pages 11 and 34 of the Confidential Report caught in a patch of unmowed wildflowers. The lieutenant's sharp eyes catch another sheet tumbling down the road up ahead. Alphonse runs to retrieve page 106.
"It seems they will continue down the road," the lieutenant observes, pointing out a white scrap being worried by the wind against a fence in the distance.
They do continue, but no further past the fence. Alphonse finds the battered brown briefcase there in the pen enclosed by the fence, being eaten with interest by a flock of sheep waiting to be sheared. It lies torn open and half-covered by mud, the fate of the papers evident. Lieutenant Hawkeye crouches down to look more closely and comes face to face with a stolid Resembool sheep, solemnly chewing the last page of the Confidential Report .