Chapter Text
Roy stood in the center of the windowless lab with his arms folded, fingers tensely curling into his sleeves, somberly watching the forensic officers do their jobs. He watched as the a man's entire life's work was reduced down to cold statistics and impassive notes.
Everything Shou Tucker researched and studied and accomplished sat in that room, never to be used again.
When an alchemist died, Roy would occasionally consider the coded research material they all had and would mourn for them; for the ciphered information would never again see the light of day like a lost relic-- lost knowledge.
But he felt no such sympathy for the work of the Sewing-Life Alchemist.
The overhead light had burnt out before they arrived, forcing the soldiers to depend solely on the hallway light casting in through the open door, and the few flashlights they brought along for the sake of shifting through any remaining evidence.
The room itself was dark and depressing and stunk of torture. Cages of various sizes ran along the wall, stacked on top of each other. They had been emptied earlier, with the chimera experiments either brought to a military lab or euthanized.
His gaze traveled over a dusty bookshelf against the nearest wall; it held a number of books, some appearing to be ancient while others looked brand new. But more noticeably, besides them sat a large, airtight jar that was filled with an oily liquid and what appeared to be some kind of fetus.
Roy grimaced slightly. He wondered how Tucker was ever able to live with himself-- how he could have ever held hands with his daughter, knowing they were drenched in the blood of his actions. How could he have ever smiled at her or even look in the mirror without being struck with self-disgust?
Roy knew his hands were no less stained, but at least he had the shame to acknowledge it. At least he knew to keep his bloody past from further tainting his future-- or to at least try. The demons that constantly howled in the back of his mind, restrained by nothing more than a chain-link fence, were a constant reminder of that. Being in that room caused the fence to shake and rattle, jarringly loud in his head, adding to his overall discomfort. But as always, he would fight the demons off until they quieted.
Seeing cases such as Tucker served as examples of what Roy could become, or how his life could derail so easily; how fragile it all was. At the very least, it served to create a sense of thankfulness for where he was now, despite all of his rotten luck.
Roy repressed a shudder and averted his attention back to the soldiers who wandered around, placing down numbered markers next to whatever counted as evidence and taking photos. Bright flashes would occasionally fill the room for a brief instant as they slowly recorded bits and pieces of what would one day be nothing but another piece of unfortunate history.
A few rooms ahead, harrowing tape outlines had marked the floorboards over dried blood splatters to further set the foreboding mood. Roy had not gone up there. He had no need to.
In all honesty, Roy was not entirely sure why he came along. They didn’t need a colonel present to gather up the remaining evidence and belongings. He claimed he would oversee the process, and then mumbled something about keeping an eye out for Scar, should he return. Thankfully, no one bothered to announce how unlikely that was.
He mostly just wanted to avoid the Elrics.
While he doubted the two kids had any intentions of leaving their dorm that day, still reeling from sorrow and shock, the possibility of running into them was enough to chase Roy away-- though he’d never admit it.
They had to accept that the path they chose was gritty and uncaring; that terrible things happened, and there was nothing to do about it besides push forward. He had essentially told Fullmetal that already as they stood in the rain only one day ago. Even so, he knew it would take time.
Furthermore, he did not want to risk Edward learning about the team's trip to Tucker’s house, and choose to follow along for some ungodly reason. He doubted the kid would want to step near the place for the rest of his life, but considering the older Elric managed to surprise him on a weekly basis, he would take no chances.
Soldiers had been scurrying around the large house for hours by then; the alarm that Tucker and that thing he turned his daughter into had been killed did not come in until late last night. The process to ensure the surrounding area was secure, do a sweep for the suspected killer, then beginning to search every room for additional evidence all added up to be a lengthy process.
All things considered, Roy and the team arrived only to catch the tail end of it.
Hawkeye appeared from the hall and approached, not sparing the lab much of a glance. “Looks like they’re about done, Sir.”
He hummed in indifferent agreement.
“The evidence collection truck should arrive shortly.”
Roy did not reply right away, keeping his eyes down on his immediate surroundings as the quiet mulling of nearby forensic officers filled the silence. “Let’s go,” he said after a moment, and turned around towards the hall with Hawkeye following behind.
The large doors pushed out heavily and Roy stepped out into the cold late-morning rain, and down the steps. The storm from the day before persisted, causing him to pull his coat a little tighter around his torso as he made his way down back to street level.
A long line of military vehicles were parked across the driveway, vacant and quiet, all being battered with the heavy rainfall. Among then, a much larger truck had pulled up near the front, with a number of forensic personnel mulling about, rearranging items in the back, and pulling out large boxes for storing evidence and research materials. The Amestris insignia plastered on the side of the exterior drew the eye, but Roy willed his attention away to find his own car instead.
As he neared it, he grumbled on about not having an umbrella as Hawkeye went around to the drivers side, surely repressing an eye-roll. Had the situation been less somber, he might had even gotten a comment out of her in response; but as things were, no one was quite in the mood.
Nearby guards saluted as he and Hawkeye moved towards their car, not speaking another word until they closed the doors behind them. Situating himself in the back seat, Roy leaned back, his head lolling to the side to gaze out at the old manor. With the dark rainy sky as it’s backdrop, the pealing paint job and unruly vines creeping up along the sides made him wonder how he hadn’t seen it all sooner.
Hell, he had recommended Tucker to Fullmetal. While hindsight was indeed much clearer, he struggled not to scold himself for not realizing what kind of horrible pitfall he was sending his subordinate into. After everything he said to the kid the day before, he couldn’t just dismiss it all by allowing any amount of pity or sympathy to obscure his judgement now.
He told the kid that these things happened; it was the nature of their profession. Not as dogs of the military, but as alchemists.
It was gut-wrenching to see, but Edward could not allow himself to get held up by such roadblocks. He had to push through them, or he and his brother would never succeed.
The short walk between the dorms and the main building proved to be a miserable one.
Edward tended to prefer cutting across what East Command called a grass field to get around as quickly as possible, but with how much it had rained the past two days, Alphonse nearly sunk right into the mud, and immediately began to worry about tracking it into the military cafeteria.
Lacking the energy to make a persuasive argument about something so trivial, Ed moved to the sidewalk and they took the long way around the building.
Besides, it wasn't like he had anywhere else to be.
Mustang had thankfully not bothered to call him into the office just yet. He assumed the colonel was busy doing whatever paperwork typically followed when a State Alchemist preformed inhuman experiments on children, getting placed under house arrest, and then promptly murdered. And Edward was perfectly happy with having absolutely nothing to do with it.
He was still struggling to come to terms with the event-- the failure. He and Alphonse had agreed that nothing would slow down their search to restore their bodies, but this marked the first time where something truly challenged their willpower in such a way.
They didn't lose any of their motivation in general, but the mourning and the loss that weighed the brothers down had them tacitly agreeing that moping around the dorm for at least a day felt much more ideal.
They both needed time to process it all-- to figure out the best way to move on. Because no matter what, they would always keep pushing forward.
Edward intended to busy himself in his research until the wound mended, though he knew there was no avoiding the scar that would remain. And he was okay with that; that's what he told himself. It would be a reminder that all of the resources, power, and knowledge in the world meant nothing if they couldn't even save a little girl.
Realistically, he couldn't hope for much more.
At least no one would be able to see the scar. As long as he could continue to put on a brave face, that was all that mattered.
Ed and Al rounded the corner, nearing the closest entrance into the building, but their paces slowed somewhat as a couple of uniformed figures hurried out of the front door, heedless of the rain that battered down.
There was a sense of concern and urgency in their comportments that caused the two to pause and watch as the soldiers spoke amongst themselves, gesturing, just as the front gates into the compound opened. Out from the street came a truck; a tow truck, Edward noticed a second later through the hazy rainfall.
The tow truck slowly pulled up the driveway, carrying another vehicle behind it. Edward was only able to make out remnants of the Amestrian insignia around the large, gaping hole that breached it's side. It looked as if someone had clawed their way inside like the heavy metal material was nothing more than cheap tinfoil.
The sight caused him to pause with a mild jolt as his mind raced through any possibly explanations. He reluctantly settled on it being an elaborate and unlikely crash, though the rest of the truck looked like it had only been dented at best.
The group of soldiers followed along the tow truck, guiding it alongside the building, then disappearing around the far corner.
Edward and Alphonse shared an equally confused glance, then turned back towards the main entrance to get out of the rain.
While curious and admittedly concerning, as far as the Elrics were aware, it had nothing to do with them.