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Fort Briggs is a behemoth.
Roy’s never come here before, though he imagines that like any other first-timer, it’s not his favorite place in the whole world. Its furthest reaches seem to bend with the world when you’re by the entrance, locked by mountains on either side. The actual flesh of the beast is dark-grey and unforgiving. He’s not going to wax poetry about Eastern Command and its dry, beige walls, with the green flag hanging from its rooftops, but it is at least better than Briggs.
But Ed is here.
He hasn’t come for Ed, of course. Roy’s been newly promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and he needs stronger connections to survive in East City, and the strongest connection he can make is here with Brigadier General Olivier Armstrong. Ed is a bonus. Getting to talk to him again will be interesting. It’s been two years since they last spoke, hasn’t it?
Roy wonders if that burning look Ed gave him back in Ishval helps keep him warm at Briggs.
///
This place is a labyrinth. First Lieutenant Buccaneer abandoned Roy mere moments ago to let him become acquainted with the territory, but it’s still nightmarishly large. At the very least he has his wits about himself and knows how to look for maps and any single forgiving-looking officer who can aid him in traversing in the belly of the beast.
And he’ll likely be able to find the cafeteria when it came time through sheer force of will and echolocation if he has to.
“Roy Mustang?” A voice behind him asks, and when Roy forces himself to turn slowly, with precise control, he’s rewarded by the face of Edward Elric. He looks much the same as he did when he was eighteen, the only difference being was that he looks warmer now instead of drowning in sweat like they all were back in Ishval. There’s a strange insignia Roy doesn’t recognize on his right breast pocket that seems to be hand-embroidered, if the shakiness of the lines has anything to say about it.
He looks just as surprised to see Roy as he feels about seeing Ed, though he’d never let himself show that. “They told me you were coming, but I didn’t believe it. You didn’t strike me as the icy type, given your whole…” Ed gestures vaguely with his right hand, pretending to be snap. “Your thing.”
“Major Elric,” Roy says lightly with a smile he lets come out. Ed relaxes at the sight of it, though Roy can’t fathom a reason why Ed would be nervous among the two of them. Much like Alex Armstrong, Ed ran from Ishval. No—he left. He slammed his watch on the ground and made sure Roy saw him leave. Ed defected. Alex was sent home.
They’re two different experiences.
“Nothing to say to me back?” Ed says, and then he laughs breathily, barely more than an exhale. “Figures. You lost?”
“Only a little,” Roy admits, making sure to say it in a way that comes off as joking. But Ed’s perceptive, and he sees straight through him regardless of what he says. Ed merely tilts his head to the side and looks at Roy a bit longer with a thoughtful expression, and then shrugs.
“It’ll be a hard, cold walk around the Fort if you are, so let’s not play any political mind games and admit our shortcomings,” Ed says in such a piercingly, honest way that it almost makes Roy grimace. But, fine—he can play an honest board, even if he won’t show his hand. He can do that. “You lost?”
“Yes. Completely,” Roy says with more certainty. This brings out a lovely little smile onto Ed’s face, like he’s happy Roy came to the right conclusion eventually.
“I’ve spent the last one point five years here, so luckily, I know my way around. Let’s go to the balconies if you’re well and truly bundled, and we’ll talk there.”
“What a kind and endearing offer, Major. Let’s do that.”
“You keep saying my title,” Ed says, looking at Roy piercingly once again. Though, he supposes, if every time Ed looks at him and it’s piercing, then that’s just how Ed’s eyes are when they land on Roy. Ed’s always trying to see through him. “Did you get a promotion?”
He wasn’t fishing for compliments on his promotion, but it does make Roy stand a little straighter. “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Mustang now,” he says, the title still unfamiliar to his mouth. He’ll grow used to it. Ed smiles at him again.
“I’m working on that myself, but the Fort’s tough. Proud of you, man.” Ed looks uncomfortable after the nickname left his mouth—like he didn’t like the space it forces between them. Or, perhaps, Roy was looking too closely for secrets that don’t exist. “Really am, Roy,” Ed says again, which makes Roy’s heart cinch, like suturing a wound.
“Where is this balcony?” Roy asks when he makes it close to Ed, nearly bumping shoulders with him. For such a sturdy soldier, Ed’s prettier than he is lean, soft features and rosy cheeks. His hair is braided impeccably. “And thank you, Ed. It means a lot to me.”
Ed searches him, but doesn’t find anything that his face betrays him for. “Just this way, tiger.”
///
“Did you know that East calls you that?” Roy asks when they reach the ever-stretching balconies of the Fort, Ed tilting his head this way and that as he listens.
“Calls me what?” Ed asks. “Tiger?” Against the snow and the icicles of Briggs’ ever-punishing snow and blizzards, Ed is a sight. All light colors equivalent to morning sun beams, and that ever-thoughtful expression on his face, like he’s halfway between solving a puzzle and being drowned by the clues.
“The Tiger of the North, so they say. You’re the only one of us to be transferred to Briggs and then maintain some modicum of personality,” Roy explains. He keeps his ignition gloves on outside out of habit, and they are useful as gloves, too. A little thin. It won’t kill him.
“Do they now?” Ed asks with a soft laugh. Roy wishes so badly that he understood him. “That’s pretty fuckin’ funny—that is not what anyone in the Fort calls me.”
Roy has to know. “Then, what? You can’t leave me hanging like this, Ed.”
“I’m the Fort’s rabbit,” Ed says in a lamented tone, sighing. He stretches out his back in a way that makes Roy be totally unable to focus. There’s not a lot that Roy misses about Ishval, but the one person he does miss from those days is next to him. “They say my hair is reminiscent of a rabbit that hasn’t shed its summer coat.”
When Ed’s done stretching, he leans against the railing with his elbows, balancing his head in his palms. Roy wonders if he still doesn’t kill, or if the Fort’s trained that out of him yet? “I kinda wanted to talk.”
“Alright, then,” Roy says, situating himself a little closer to Ed so they won’t need to talk very loud at all. It looks a little presumptuous, especially with Roy’s growing reputation of being a playboy, but he doubts the Fort cares much about his adventures. Least of all with someone like Ed, who can take care of himself. “What do you want to talk about?”
Ishval, Roy’s sure. That ghost will likely follow them the rest of their lives.
“I just worry a lot that I… made it worse,” Ed confesses quietly. Roy nods in a tiny way. He wonders if Ed had any other friends back then, someone who might understand what he’s going through up here in the North. Maes hooked Ed easily just as he had Roy, but they never saw Ed talking with anyone else. Ed continues, saying: “That I prolonged their suffering, you know? I didn’t help anything. I didn’t save anyone. So many people were… hunted because of me.”
“I’m not entirely sure that it would be your fault, given that you tried to save them,” Roy says, hoping to say more but not knowing what, “it was… our fault,” he finishes, but realizes he didn’t want to say that. That feels self-aggrandizing, uniquely pathetic. That isn’t what he means to say.
“No,” Ed says simply, which doesn’t feel like that good of a rebuttal. “It’s because of…” he tilts his head to his left hand, points to the sky, and then rests his head on both hands again. “Y’know, that guy, up there in our military. It’s his fault.”
Roy nods. He understands Ed’s hesitance to say the Fuhrer’s name. There’s something much larger than them burying itself into the soil here, waiting for a chance. A predator Roy doesn’t have a name for, yet.
“You threw away your pocket watch,” Roy notes, feeling more curious than he’d like to admit, “how did you end up here in Briggs after that?”
Ed’s face scrunches with momentary disgust, making him look all the younger, and then it’s gone, wiped away by an invisible hand. For a man who often is so honest to the point of it being physically painful, he has gotten significantly better at handling himself and his emotions.
“Fuhrer Bradley convinced me to come back,” Ed says after a long moment. His voice has this faraway quality, like he’s trying to convince himself to talk louder than a whisper.
“What did he tell you?” Roy asks, leaning closer to hear him should he need to speak quietly.
Ed reorients himself like he’s going to draw up a big speech. He still balances his elbows on the railing, but now has his forearms go beyond, with an endless slate of white below him. He just opens his palms like he’s going to explain, but his mouth doesn’t move, merely twitches, and his hands fall limp. Whatever he was going to say dies in his mouth. “He just showed me something. Can’t replicate it. I don’t know.”
“No?” Roy asks.
“No,” Ed says again. He looks bashful; a twitching, not-quite frown on his face, his eyes distant. The emotions continue to twist on his face. “No, it’s not… it’s not something I can talk about.” But he turns to Roy, looks him in the eyes, and then turns away. “Yet,” he murmurs. Like it’s a promise he intends to keep—one day, he’ll tell Roy.
Roy wants to understand him so badly. He wishes Ed would tell him now and they could figure it out. But politics is full of strange, cruel games, ones Roy knows all too well. So, all he can say is: “Of course.”
“Do you want to talk about Ishval?” Ed asks. He’s trying to be kind.
Roy laughs something humorless in spite of that kindness. “No.”
///
Ed helps him back to the cafeteria and tries his damndest to explain the makeup of this place. When he realizes Roy isn’t going to get it fast enough to not make a fool of himself, he hands him a pocket-sized map with major lanes of traffic outlined in various colors, with a legend in the corner.
It looks to be hand-drawn, with some of the lines smudged, and the lead changed in colors after drawing it with alchemy. It’s very cute in that way. “No, it’s yours,” Ed says when Roy is finished inspecting it and goes to give it back. “I made that my first week here. Consider it an Elric special.”
“Oh, aren’t you sweet on me?” Roy asks, but dutifully puts it in his inner jacket pocket. Ed rolls his eyes.
“If helping you is being sweet to you, Roy, then I might as well put a cherry on you to top it off.” Ed flicks his temple with his finger and thumb, and then carries on. Roy supposes he deserves that, even though the skin stings. “Let’s go, tiger. The Fort likes her inhabitants orderly and on time, and we’re on eating duty.”
“Am I going to have to thank Brigadier General Armstrong for you being my docent today?” Roy asks, though he genuinely means it. He wonders if Ed talks about him any to anyone at Briggs.
“What? No,” Ed says, looking at Roy like he’s grown a second head. “Definitely not. The General didn’t put me on any duty; she knew I knew how to be useful anyway. Turns out babysitting you is my use. And, by the way? Just the General. We don’t add Brigadier to it.”
“But that’s her title,” Roy says, confused.
“Doesn’t matter,” Ed says, shrugging. “She’s just the General.”
Roy doesn’t get that, but sure. “Understood,” he says cordially, “thank you for the information, Ed.” When he switches up his tone, Ed immediately looks at him strangely, like he’s trying to figure him out. Then Ed huffs and turns away from him—bound to be a mystery forever unsolved, Roy supposes.
Ed shows him how the cafeteria works and though Ed can vouch for him today, he’ll have to do some errand duty as well as what he came here for. The Fort’s constantly under duress with the cold and the amount of people she harbors, Ed explains, so Roy can’t sit on his ass and play politics all day.
“And that’s not how you’d win the General’s favor, anyway. She’s nothing like Alex,” Ed stresses when they sit down. “She likes action, Roy. Real, tangible action, and proving yourself is the best way to do it, so don’t slack. Don’t play politics.” He levels eye contact with Roy. “If you need allies, just say it.”
“You don’t appear to have a great opinion of me, Major,” Roy says despite his better judgment, “any particular reason as to why you’re helping me as much as you are?”
“This is me liking you,” Ed says, and if Roy were more delusional, he might say Ed sounds hurt. “I’m telling you how it is so you can do what you need to do.”
“What I need to do?”
“Get allies,” Ed says, gesticulating with his fork. “Make connections. Play politics. I know you want to climb up the ranks, so do it. I’m telling you how you should play nice with the General, since your usual tactics probably won’t work. Word does get here, Roy, we’re not totally secluded. I didn’t hear about your promotion, but I heard about some shit you were doing. The fact that you were progressing past Ishval, doing your own thing. You’re no longer just the Flame Alchemist.”
Roy feels touched, in spite of himself. Ed’s like that—just doing things for other people with no expectations of a return, here or ever. It’s charming. It’s kind of scary how honest and forthcoming he can be.
“So you support me in making Briggs to be an ally?” Roy asks. “You don’t think it’s presumptuous of me to do so this early in my career?”
“No.” Ed shrugs. “They say the hunter who waits for the perfect moment starves. So don’t wait, Lieutenant Colonel Mustang; if you want it, you should grab what’s in front of you.”
“I have an additional proposition, in that case,” Roy says. “But it can wait until tomorrow.”
Ed looks at him questioningly, and then nods. “Whatever you say, Roy.”
///
The declaration, and request, of allyship to General Olivier Armstrong was undeniably benefited by the fact that Roy knew her title as her men know it. She also seemed to appreciate Roy’s certainty.
A confirmation of allyship is never decided at the time of the request. Roy well and truly knows that, so he isn’t surprised when she dismisses him without giving him an answer. But given just the nature of the way she sat when he spoke, he thinks he could have her as an ally without much concern.
It’s the best news he’s had all week.
Ed is already waiting for him when Roy leaves her office. He’s just down the hall—far enough to not be accused of eavesdropping, but close enough to be seen easily. “I thought the Fort needed all of its ants in working order,” Roy says when he catches up to where Ed’s waiting.
“Making sure this firefly doesn’t get caught up in the gears? This is working order, Lieutenant Colonel.”
“You just want to spend time with me, don’t you?” Roy teases as Ed gets to walking down the hall. “You missed me.”
“I don’t believe I’ve told you otherwise,” Ed says, which makes Roy’s heart hammer but his steps don’t fail him at the same time. He wonders if his heart is beating loud enough that Ed can hear it.
“I don’t mean to make so many jokes that I sound insincere, Ed,” Roy says despite himself. “I missed you, too. I think about you during those days frequently.”
“Do you?” Ed asks. “Must not be good memories. I don’t know if I even want to know how you perceived me then.”
“Nothing like that at all,” Roy says. He notices that Ed’s slowing to a halt, so he pauses to inspect where they are as well. Ed’s stopped them over the real heart and soul of the Fort, on one of the catwalks above the main boiler rooms. Busy enough that no one will pay them any real attention, but one of the warmer places inside of Briggs. He wonders if Ed’s been worrying that Roy’s freezing up here. It’s a sweet thought.
“Really, Ed, you were a wonderful companion. I was… disappointed, when you left,” scared, too, but he won’t admit that, “however, I understood you. Truly, I thought that’d be the last time we ever saw one another.” A lull finds them as Ed thinks while Roy tries to manage his own facial expressions, keeping himself calm and impassive throughout the silence. “I could hardly blame you, after…”
The smell of burning dust and skin was especially pungent then. Ed froze when they made eye contact, after having watched the flames consume another pile of bodies. Roy froze, too, like being caught doing something he shouldn’t have. He knew what he was doing back then. But, even with that in mind, he didn’t stop.
Ed’s face haunts him from back then. His golden eyes were alight with such incandescent hatred. When Ed broke the belt chain off of his pocket watch to slam it into the ground, Roy thought they were going to get into a physical altercation. Roy remembers what he said then with disturbing clarity as Ed slammed their shoulders together: You’re better than what they make of you.
He truly isn’t, though, is he? Ed was wrong about him.
“After what you saw,” Roy decides finally.
Ed’s face is unreadable as he watches Roy. Then, after a while of no one saying anything, Ed explains himself with: “You make my heart hurt.”
“Why?” Roy asks, a humorless laugh escaping him. The truth reveals itself in Ed’s presence whether Roy wants it to or not: “Because you hate what I did?”
“You’re so stupid,” Ed says immediately, as if he expected it. His words carry no bite, none of the fire Roy would’ve expected years ago in Ishval. He looks worn in comparison to the Ed in that memory, like he’s merely wearing that man’s features through coincidence alone. “I don’t hate any of you. I don’t even blame any of you.”
“That’s very kind, Ed, but you looked at me with so much—” Roy tries to gesture his way out of it but it dies halfway. The knot in his chest feels more tangible than it ever has. “So much vitriol. I can’t ignore that look.”
“That’s what you saw?” Ed asks. He averts his eyes then, but they crawl right back to face Roy when he says: “Roy, I—that’s such shit, man. I wanted to save you.”
Roy doesn’t speak in fear that he might choke. He goes very still.
“I wanted to save you so badly it overtook me,” Ed admits. “That’s why I looked like that, okay? Fuck.” He runs a hand over his braid with such ferocity that he appears to barely avoid taking it out entirely. “You changed so much, and you looked so—dead. You looked like a ghost in blue. I’d been trying to come up with ways to make us both leave, but I knew you’d never leave Maes, you…”
A hysterical laugh bubbles out of Ed’s chest, sounding like he’s in disbelief. Roy watches as he tries to control himself, and sees him succeed after a few tries of rubbing his hands up and down his face. Control appears to be something Ed struggles with around Roy, whether it be from indignation about Roy’s past actions and or a want for a better life for him, he can’t tell.
“You’re such a soldier, you know that? You really must believe in this country, Roy, you really must want something good for it. In a way I just can’t… I can’t believe,” Ed says after he gets control of himself. “Don’t know what you plan to do with it even if you get it.”
Roy knows in his bones this is because of Bradley, but he just can’t fathom a good way to ask. Ed punctures his thoughts as he continues: “But I can’t… blame you for that, either. I don’t want to blame you for that. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? You want to change things for the better.”
“I believe that.. whatever is wrong here is not permanent,” Roy says after a moment’s hesitation. “That we, as people, and Amestrian citizens, can rescue it from its current rotted state. I believe that with everything in me, Ed.”
Ed searches his face and Roy lets him; if anything’s true and deep-seated in Roy’s heart, it’s this—this belief of change, of hope. Ed deflates from the tension leaving him.
“I wanted you to leave with me so badly,” he says. “Resembool wasn’t far from Ishval. It was actually really, really close. That’s where all our injured went, you know? I saw those lines of soldiers, dead and alive, from my childhood home. We could’ve—I thought we could have, y’know… we could escape.”
Ed’s face twists, and then it flat-lines again, leaving him with that pained, faraway look. Somewhere past understanding but before reconciliation. “But you needed to see it, didn’t you? You needed to see how it ended. How far the rot went.”
“Yes,” Roy says. He doesn’t yet know why he followed those orders back then, why he didn’t have the wherewithal to stop. A soldier follows orders, but a good soldier—good men—don’t follow unjust orders. Roy won’t pretend he’s that kind of man.
An exhausted, agonized sound leaves Ed’s mouth, almost like a sob by itself, pained and dry. Roy knows he’s not making it up that time when he notices fear has bled into Ed’s voice: “And Bradley found me anyway, so—whatever. The rot finds you, anyway, right? Even if you hide? Fuck me.”
“Do you… are you hiding this from me out of necessity, Ed? Or do you need to tell me, because you could. I can keep this safe for you,” Roy tries, leaning forward to touch Ed’s shoulder as comfortingly as he can make it.
“Go fuck yourself,” Ed hisses. It’s such an obvious tone of distaste that Roy flinches back in response to it. Ed exhales sharply in-between his teeth, like he’s forcing himself to calm down. Roy can recognize shell shock in himself, of course, but this is a more present fear within Ed. A stay calm or get shot for it fear.
“If you listened, you’d know I’m not telling you to protect you. I just want to save you. It’s not fair how everyone has to die or suffer or—that I have to watch…God, it’s not. It’s not fair,” Ed says behind grit teeth. “How the fuck do I protect you? How do I protect anyone? I don’t want to be a living weapon. I don’t…”
“You could come to East with me,” Roy says quickly, and Ed’s eyes go very wide. “If you get transferred to East to serve alongside me, you could protect me there.” But it’d be closer to Bradley, he thinks.
Responding more to his own interior dialogue than Ed’s external one, he adds: “I could protect you, too. We could be a team.”
Slowly, Ed nods. “I could ask about getting a transfer,” he says, quietly, almost to himself. “I don’t know if that’ll save us, or me, or… but, if it’s in East, then.. why not, huh?”
“You’ll have to tell me your secrets,” Roy says, possibly at the risk of fucking up this proposition entirely. But he needs to risk it now and not when Ed comes.
“Fuck, no,” Ed says immediately, “you’ll get ‘em when I say you can and not a second before.” He crosses his arms over his chest, then, which makes him look both childlike and like a proper officer at the same time.
“How else will I be able to keep you safe, if I don’t know what you’re in trouble for?”
“It’s not trouble,” Ed says unhelpfully. “It’s not that, it’s… fuck, it’s like that and not like that at all. I’m not at risk, here. I have leverage. It’s just…”
“It’s just?” Roy asks, beckons—he needs to know. But Ed shuts his mouth and doesn’t open it back up. Roy sighs, exasperated. “I want you to come with me, Ed. I think you’re an invaluable resource in any team, and I have missed you. But I don’t see how I can use you effectively if I don’t know what’s going on with you.”
“Then don’t use me,” Ed snips back, “I’m not a chess piece for you to maintain and position. I’m a person. You trust me, with these secrets, and you’ll earn ‘em when I know you can handle ‘em, or you don’t. If you don’t trust me with these, you won’t trust me without them.”
Roy feels himself grow tired of this. He’s frustrated by Ed’s caginess, though it’s not that different from how he used to be in Ishval, but there’s prices to pay to earn a reliable member in his team. Ed watches him debate it without speaking, eyes alight again with that same intensity Roy saw back then.
It’s not hatred, Roy knows that now, but it’s something just as burning. Like he’s waiting for Roy to solve a puzzle he put out for him—to see the truth of some kind.
Roy doesn’t see this truth and he does not get it, but he’s entered other situations blind and found a way to survive then as well. He will do so again.
Roy sticks his right hand out to Ed. “Deal,” he says as confidently as he can muster. Ed pauses, looking at his hand and back to his face, frowning still. “I will trust who you are now. And if you open up in the future, I will consider myself worthy of it then.”
Ed watches him for another few moments, and then shakes his hand with a tight, vice grip, like he’s scared of Roy backing out. “Glad to hear it, boss,” and then he grins, broadly and confidently, and Roy feels a knot in his chest untangle.