Opening Doors by Dib07

Summary:

Post-Fullmetal Alchemist series.

To think that he may never have opened that door.

Warnings:

- Much of this story will contain mature and/or dark content not suitable for younger readers. Do not be frightened by what I write, but I am an adult writer and I do not shy away from what others may otherwise do so. Also, Edward. Yes. Edward.

Dib07: Due to interest in this story I've gone and given it another update! Enjoy!

Chapter Four: Out of Control

It was blindingly sunny, dry and warm. The clouds were sparse and humbly white.

Roy led the escort of a prison van behind him as he drove his own car up Black Cherry Road. Riza Hawkeye sat behind him, with Havoc at the back. Two constables drove the security van in the chance they might meet resistance at this 'alleged home' of Lord Mercy's.

"I don't think Lord Mercy is his real name at all." Riza was saying as Roy found somewhere to park. "But he's confessed to the allegations of the diamonds, so we can at least put him away."

"But with a fake name like that, and no prior identity," Havoc added, "we have no idea of that bastard's history."

Roy was much too tired to join in with their suspicions and thoughts. Upon waking that morning, he had convenienced himself with a tumbler of dark liquor and coffee just to remain upright. He had no enthusiasm – no care. But even so, in this warm daylight he was harbouring the dreams he had suffered the night before. He had dreamed of Edward, as he often did. But instead of looking for him through the dark corridors of his mind, Edward had turned up at his very doorstep, smiling as if no time at all had transpired and that he had never been lost.

He looked so small, but so happy.

Roy had lurched forwards, not caring for formalities, and hugged him desperately hard. He had felt his very bones as if they been real. When they had parted, Edward had stopped smiling. The little alchemist levelled his darkening gaze at him, and had parted his lips to say: "Listen."

Roy had woken up, jolting forward like he did on most occasions, breathing harshly as if he had just stumbled out of a hurricane. He was alone in his dark room, a room that had not yet been touched by the first rays of dawn.

'Listen.'

The words were still clear, still accented in Edward's laboured, husky tones.

But even now, out in the early spring day, with birds flocking overhead, he still remembered it vividly, wildly, even if it did him no good whatsoever. Roy was no serious believer in dreams. So far they had sought to hurt him more than anything, with their taunts of finding Edward, only for him to later wake back into the cold folds of reality.

He opened his car door just as the big black security van was parking up.

Riza was already outside, giving the house a good look-over. Havoc was in no rush. He had squeezed out a cigarette from the pack and was lighting it in exuberance.

Roy too discerned the house with little assiduousness. It was like any other house. Bland, inconspicuous, ordinary. It fitted perfectly with the rest of the row of housing, and Roy would have been hard pressed to pick it out without knowing prior its significance. The front was not exactly immaculate. There were a lot of cigarette butts on the porch, and soda cans and... condoms.

Roy blinked lazily in the daylight at them; half tempted to ask his inferiors if they were seeing the same thing he was.

"Lovely." Riza groaned in disapproval. "I suppose some people have no idea how to dispose of things properly. Lousy idiots."

Havoc, sucking on his cigarette, jerked a thumb towards the side of the house. "Führer, if you don't mind, I'm going round to check the side of the house, and see if the back doors are locked. Can't have any fools escaping now, can we? Once you ring the front door bell and they see our blue uniforms, the might go crazy and scurry like animals who had caught a whiff of fire."

Roy nodded.

Havoc left them at the porch. Riza, unimpressed at Roy's silence, gave him a sombre glance before detaching her gun from her holster and walking up the front porch steps to the door with the gun clenched taut in both hands. She was careful where she trod amongst the ugly debris.

Roy stepped away and looked down the back alley that separated this house from the next. Havoc had already gone down it to reach the rearward entrance.

"Hello? Anyone in there? We have a warrant for this house!" Riza was shouting into the letterbox once her firm knocks had failed to summon anyone within. "Open up at once!"

"Just get on with it, Hawkeye." Roy came up beside her and with a single kick; he broke the lock and sent the door flying into the sidewall, leaving a huge dent. Dust from the ceiling speckled down from the abrupt force above.

Riza and Roy's eyes uneasily met, and then she nodded and went in, gun held out in front of her as if this was a raid.

Roy followed with little interest. He knew he had to perk up and do the job. The job was all that mattered now, it was all that kept him from slipping off the edge of sanity. If Edward were here, he'd be swearing and cussing for Roy to get a move on. To 'wake up' and be a fucking man.

But moving on was so hard.

You're dead, aren't you, Fullmetal? How can I avenge you, when I have no idea what happened to you? Six weeks is a long time, but still, your brother Alphonse won't ever give up until he has found an answer, no matter how small. And a part of me should never give up, either.

"Mustang." Riza whispered sharply. He obviously wasn't concentrating. Jerking awake, he took note of her position, and took out his own gun. Together they proceeded down the hallway, side by side. It was utterly silent.

Inside it was hard to believe that this was the same house they had stepped into. The floor was covered in indiscernible rubbish, old, dry food, cutlery, tissues. Bits of glass. Hypodermic needles. And occasionally in the dirt like ill trinkets were the glimpses of diamond.

The kitchen was a mess. A few chairs were broken and overturned. Some of them were veneered in old blood, as if there had been a fight in here, and quite recently too.

"Check upstairs." Roy whispered. Riza was off in a flash, loyal to the very end. He was grateful right now for her solidarity. He couldn't have got very far in life if it hadn't been for her support, and her counsel.

Havoc had lock-picked the back door and stepped onto the glass littering the kitchen floor. Again some of the glass was veiled red in what could only be more blood.

"Looks like infighting." Havoc murmured quietly.

There was a fridge to their left down a little alcove. It stood open. Inside it was full of bean tins, bottles of water, packed ice, and more hypodermic needles that were full of some lightly tinged blue liquid inside. Roy merely peered at them before moving on again. "Looks like three people living here, easy." He noted. "They must be hiding upstairs."

"Oh, I'd say."

They creaked upstairs.

The bedrooms were an unholy mess too. Bedsheets sprawled across the landing. Some golden locks of hair scattered over the threshold of one of the bedrooms. Riza opened a bathroom door, and almost opened fire. A man had been hiding inside: on the toilet. At once he threw his arms up in surrender. Roy did not recognise him. He was tall, thin, with black curly hair, much like Lord Mercy's had been, but this guy had a long face with droopy eyes.

"Stand up." Riza snapped.

The man did so, still holding his arms up.

"Step away from the fucking toilet!"

He did so, carefully and slowly.

"Now get down, hands on the floor where I can see them!"

As she cuffed him, Roy went into the master bedroom. It was quite plain and quite free from rubbish this time. But the main bedsheets were aghast in cum and blood stains. Almost as if some kind of diabolical orgy went on here.

Roy drew back the curtains, revealing more old bloodstains on the cream-coloured walls. Here he was, hoping to find the last horde of diamonds, only to walk in on some private fucking whore house.

Slowly he knelt down onto the sticky surface of the carpet and peered under the bed.

He thought he saw someone small, hunched in the back, in the shadows. But when he took a second longer to look, he saw that it was just old luggage. He dived in and pulled the cases out, opening them out when he saw that they were unlocked.

His face lit up with the white shine of diamonds. Hundreds and hundreds of them. They glinted back like stars all tugged in one big heap, shining and sparkling without shadows or gloom.

"Bingo." He said without sounding very pleased.

He clasped the two cases closed and picked them up.

Havoc came into the room. "There's no one else in this house, sir. I think we got the only guy." Then he noticed the cases. "What are those?"

"The diamonds. There may be more. Has anyone been up into the attic?"

"This house has no attic, sir."

"Ah, right. In that case, that was a lot easier than I'd anticipated. Well done, Havoc."

Riza was marching the man they had found downstairs. He was cuffed, with his head bowed in defeat. Havoc and Roy double checked the last few rooms, remembering to search under any more beds, behind the curtains and in the wardrobes.

Roy then passed Havoc the two cases full of diamonds. "Take these to Central. We'll need to log them as evidence. As for the suspect we've arrested, we'll provide a nice new cell for him."

Havoc nodded. "Do you think that's the end of the toxic diamonds?"

"I really hope so. To think that all this was done by just two men."

"Yeah. Evil doesn't need much, does it?"

Riza was putting the man into the back of the van under the supervision of the two constables. The man went in quietly, without a fight. It was funny. He didn't seem to have a mark on him, and neither did Lord Mercy. So how come there was so much blood spread about the place?

Roy walked through the rooms one last time before emerging into the gorgeous sunlight through the open main door. His eyes were so accustomed to the darkness within that he had to blink a few times to get used to the daylight. Havoc was lighting up a new cigarette, pleased with a job well done.

Once the man was packed and loaded like cattle into the security van, the constables gave Roy a salute before getting back in and driving off to Central.

Riza and Havoc meandered towards Roy's vehicle under the hot, striking glow of the morning sun. They adopted much more relaxed postures. Their guns were concealed again, and they were talking about paperwork and whose duty was currently the hardest. Havoc was in the habit of bitching and whining.

Roy knew he had to get back to Central. They'd leave the house and its contents to the investigators who would be arriving in as little as twenty minutes once the security van returned safely. Lord Mercy and his friend would be put away for a long time. Perhaps as long as fifty years each.

"It's odd though, isn't it, Mustang?" Riza asked when Roy went to join them.

"What is?"

"This 'Lord Mercy.' Giving the game up, just like that, and telling us where to go. Almost as if he had got tired of hiding."

"Some do." Roy didn't find it particularly enigmatic.

"Fucking druggies." Havoc interjected. "Hypos everywhere. And condoms! Barbaric sons o' bitches! They're prolly dying from their own STDs, so maybe they just stopped caring."

Roy shrugged.

He was back in his dream. With Edward smiling.

'Listen.'

There was a moment of knowing, of reaching out and seeing it all. Then he blinked and the moment passed, and all the magic that came with it.

The sun was pleasant, but he felt lost and dark inside.

Riza had opened the car door and was just about to slip inside when she glanced his way. "Mustang?" She asked unsurely when he just stood there with his head down, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

"You two get in the car." He said without looking at them. "I just need some space."

Havoc glanced at Riza and shrugged. So they both got into their respective seats and closed the car door.

Roy sauntered up the dirty porch steps and then stood in the open doorway of the house. Now that they had infiltrated it, and taken with them the only delinquent, the house seemed sad, and lonely and foreboding. There was darkness in there that no sunlight could touch. And there was coldness everywhere, spread out like shadow. Even after this house had been swept of evidence, and then cleaned and put back on the market, some remnant piece of evil would forever remain, and so haunt the next lot of occupiers.

"All right." He said. He turned back and clambered into the car. They looked at him worriedly, but he said nothing else.

He drove back to Central, thinking only of his dream.

xxx

'Listen.'

Roy had felt that hug as if it had been real. Smelt his hair.

Then the words had brushed through him like leaves scarping across stone. And left their mark.

And so, Roy listened.

The house didn't so much as creak. It seemed to stare back at him, full of deep loathing and hatred. Even with the sun on his back, there was a childish fear that started to grow inside him. There were monsters in there, just beyond the threshold of the next room around the corner where he could not see. They were waiting, holding their breath.

He could hear a clock ticking inside. Probably the grandfather clock he had seen on passing upstairs outside one of the rooms.

There was birdsong behind him, and the humble purr of his car's engine as Riza and Havoc waited outside to be taken back to the station.

No. There was nothing inside to hear.

Just silent bad memories of a bad place better left forgotten.

"Just a stupid dream. What am I doing here?"

He turned to go, heading into the sunlight when he did hear something. He stopped and glanced uneasily over his shoulder into the hallway.

It... It sounded like...

...like a scream...

He turned back around, straining all the harder for a noise. But the sound was not repeated.

Roy could see gulls gliding overhead above the houses opposite. Could it have been them? But the cry had sounded so muted... so faint, like it had been boxed in.

A cat maybe? Had a cat got in?

It would not do well if the investigators got here to find a cat disturbing the evidence.

Roy walked back inside.

"Here kitty, kitty."

But each room turned up as empty as it had before.

"Strange."

It wasn't trapped someplace, was it?

He went down into the parlour, where the sofas were all tussled and gnawed. The carpet was sticky with melted chocolate and assorted rubbish, including beer tankards from a restaurant because it had the logo: 'Beef and All' embossed on the sides.

One part of the wall had a shelving unit against it. Except there was some rather odd things on these shelves. There was a leather studded collar that was ever so small that it would have more likely have fitted a cat more than a dog. Except it too carried the malodorous odour of blood. There were also bolts and screws, and, oddly, a steel plate that reminded Roy terribly of the friend he had suddenly lost all those months ago.

The wall behind it was different too. It looked like it had been cut, and then put back together, as if it contained some hidden store chamber beyond. Such finds were hardly uncommon. Roy suspected that there was more diamonds hidden behind it, and he'd be damned if the investigators found something that he had so blindly missed.

He knocked on the partition, and there was an odd, hollow sound. The wall adjacent to it was solid, and did not so much as echo.

Roy grabbed the shelving and pushed it away, revealing a doorknob and a keyhole under it at the wall. His hopes stirred.

He went to turn the doorknob, but it wouldn't budge.

"Locked!"

He had seen no key and nothing tiny enough to fit into a lock so small. For all he knew, Lord Mercy had it on him still, or it was on his damn cohort who was halfway to Central by now in the security van.

With a flying kick he had shown Riza earlier that morning, he hammered at the partition, not caring much for what he might damage from within.

The partition cracked down the middle, the plaster chipping away in flakes.

"Once more!"

Mustang gave it one more kick and the fake wall split down the middle. One half of it fell inwards, churning up white clouds of dust. The other half closer to the hinge hung on, and swung pensively on its screws.

He wafted away the dust from his face with one gloved hand and peered inside. It was an immeasurably small cubbyhole, all of it painted black. And, strangely, it stank strongly of sweat, blood and urine.

When he looked down, at first he thought he saw a white mannequin on the floor, hunched on one side closest to the far wall, complete with hair coated in plaster and dust. When the dust had cleared a little more, he was convinced he was being deceived – by his own brain, or by some spectating God.

For the mannequin sure as hell looked a lot like... Fullmetal.

"No... no! It... it can't be!" He was speaking without realizing it, panicking without realizing it. His hands were suddenly shaking and he couldn't swallow.

He bent down to observe this trickery a bit closer.

The more he looked, the more he saw.

Roy brought out a quivering hand, about to touch this mirage, and at first his hand wouldn't go far enough forwards. He was afraid. Unbelieving. He just stared, unable even to blink as his mouth fell open as his hand hovered in the air, unable to follow on through. He managed to swallow, and blink, and it brought on thick tears that spilled down his cheeks in smooth rivulets.

He coaxed his fingers forwards a little more, and deftly – shyly - touched the cheek that was turned away from him.

It was no mannequin.

The skin, though cold, was flesh. The hair too, was real. As he brushed the dirt from it, gold started to show through, though it was matted and dull.

"Oh gods!"

What he had mistaken for a white mannequin was merely a human so sickly thin, and so sickly white that he may as well have been made out of plastic.

It was him. It was Edward Elric!

"Oh gods! Oh gods!" It was all he could say: a mantra that danced through his head as much as it did his lips.

He had been here? All this time? Hidden?

"Oh gods Edward!"

He took hold of Edward's shoulder, the one that was gaping with nothing but a metal port, and, sucking in his bravery, pulled him towards Roy.

The little alchemist limply rolled onto his back, exposing his sunken chest and pelvis. There was a dusty blanket that just about covered his legs, but little else.

Some small part of him: sunken, but still there, whispered of his officers and he blundered wildly down the parlour, through the kitchen and into the hallway, screaming: "HAWKEYE! HAVOC! OH GODS! OH GODS!"

It was then he woke.

He catapulted forwards in bed, sheets strangling his sweaty legs as he shouted for his comrades. It took him several, long moments before he realized he wasn't on the bright sunlit porch but in his own bed, calling for officers that weren't even there. He shuddered, blinking torpidly in the near dark as moonlight veiled his furniture in dull gleams. It took even longer for his sweat to cool and for his heart to slow down. But the disappointment was far worse.

It clawed into him like something demonic.

Edward had been there! He had been behind that door! He had found him! Had touched him!

Then, an idea came to him.

Roy tore his bedsheets off his legs and threw on his uniform. The buttons were done up all askew, and he had put his vest on inside-out, but he didn't care. He snatched his gun from the desk drawer and opened the barrel to make sure it was fully loaded.

Before long he was hurtling down the empty, dark road in his car. Back towards the house. Back towards the shadows of a dream.