A Full Metal Alchemist fanfic by L.A. Mason.
Standard disclaimer applies: No copyright infringement intended. No profit being made or sought.
Author's Note: On January 18th, the Tuesday night potluck-let's-watch-some-anime group finished the last four fan-subbed episodes of Full Metal Alchemist. After the inevitable shouts of "No!" "What!" and "I want the movie now!" we had some interesting discussions about where the characters were likely to be going. And, being the most fiction-challenged member of the group, I managed to hold out all the way until the 22nd before I succumbed to temptation and began Rain as a drabble during an Instant Messaging session with my partner, Kelly.
Now, Kelly is used to me drabbling while Y!M-ing her. And, to be honest, she does it right back. Her reaction to being invited to add to Rain, however, was (and I quote) "Nuh, uh, not touching it."
And, dammit, she was right.
Rain has grown from a drabble to a one-shot, and from a one-shot to a one-shot in at least five parts… And there's a Plot Itch that I'm fighting hard to resist. (Knowing my track record, we'll have to see how that goes…) But for now, here's Part One, absolutely loaded with spoilers for the anime. If you find the spellings of names to occasionally be odd, my apologies - I'm used to the subtitled anime, and to the manga.
With grateful thanks to Kelly for beta-ing.
L.A. Mason
Rain. Without a single doubt, it was the most unpleasant expression of weather on the face of the earth. And Roy hadn't reached that conclusion solely because the damp interfered with his control of fire. No, it had more to do with the permeating chill, and the dreary sheeting of water over the pane of glass, distorting everything in the darkness beyond. The alchemist swirled the liquid in his glass, and took a swallow of the straight Bourbon. Mockingly, he raised it in salute to the faint reflection of his own face, and downed the last of the alcohol in a gulp. It burned its way down, leaving a momentary warmth behind, but even that faded quickly.
A gust of wind rattled a bare branch against the wooden siding of the house, breaking the distant gleam of the gas lamps lining the street into weak sparks. He could imagine that they were harbor lights, or lighthouse beacons, but what was the point? He had lost his way too long ago to find safety so easily. The dim outline of his own face twisted into a mocking grin, one dark eye sparkling with bitter humor, while where the other ought to be, there was only a void. How odd, that at night his eye patch should be a hole in his soul, when in daylight, it was a mask... Surely, there was some significance to that insight, but damned if he knew what it was. He was an alchemist, and a soldier... Or, more truthfully, had been a soldier. Now, Roy guessed that all he was, was an unemployed drunk.
Suddenly angry, he turned away from the dark mirror of his window.
It was no one's fault but his own. The clever, driven Flame Alchemist had lost sight of his goals, and had acted rashly. Colonel Mustang - smart, capable Mustang - had committed the grievous sin of choosing haste and immediate results over the long campaign, and had as a result blown every ambition he held out of the water. And damned if he wouldn't make the same choice again. Maas had been right; sometimes, he did think with his heart instead of his head, and that failing would be the death of him.
He had won the battle, and lost the fucking war. But at least Colonel Mustang could still hold his head up high, even if his kingdom had been reduced to a quarter-acre lot, and a neat, two-story pensioner's house. A house that most days he never left any more.
Roy noticed with clinical detachment that he had reached the stage in the evening where his hand was starting to shake when he poured another generous portion into his empty glass. Hmm... It had taken the better part of a bottle to get there, this time. The next swallow of Bourbon was smooth fire, and didn't even elicit a cough.
A hesitant knock from the direction of the front hall finally broke through his bemused contemplation, and surprised, his remaining eye flicked up toward the long case clock hanging on the wall. So late...? How... odd. The evening was edging on toward midnight, well past the time when his few regular visitors tended to turn up. Like Maas, Hawkeye was gone. Not dead, in her case, just discharged for her part in their brief rebellion and retreated to the country where she unexpectedly proved to have a sizable family. Armstrong had gone to some distant outpost, still determined to serve their country. Havoc hadn't survived the northern frontier. And none of the others came around any more; unable to face the silence that greeted their tentative social offers.
He realized that he was still stupidly staring at the hypnotic swing of the clock's pendulum when whoever it was knocked again with a bit more force. He shrugged, and reached for the bottle on the table instead.
The knocking came again, louder this time - and dare he think it? – with an air of urgency about it. In spite of himself, Roy's pulse leapt in answer, setting into a new, quicker rhythm. He smiled bitterly; there was no need. The days when he would be rousted out of bed in the middle of the night by an emergency were long past. Not that he was sleeping, of course. Sleep was proving increasingly hard to capture as the hopelessness of day after day of the same emptiness stretched before him.
His visitor was certainly persistent. Roy shook himself. He might as well answer the damned door. What could it hurt, this one last time? Decision made, he set down the glass of liquor on the edge of a bookcase, ignoring the fact that the dark contents sloshed and a trickle of wet began dripping down from shelf to shelf. He strode a bit unsteadily across the room, and out into the narrow vestibule, intending to yank open the door and tell whoever it was to go away.
He had neglected, once again, to light the gas lamp outside his door, and the feeble illumination from the street lamps at the end of the cottage's front walk was only sufficient to reveal a dark silhouette against the frosted glass of the door. For the barest second, Roy wondered if the government had finally decided that it was time for another of the dwindling number of survivors of the revolt to disappear. It would be almost welcome if they had. But no, there was only a single shape standing on his porch; if it were an official arrest, a squad would have come for him, driving one of the ubiquitous, long black cars. And an assassin would not be pounding on his door. Most likely it was just some poor, drenched, homeless fool.
Although, why someone like that would bother with a house that showed no lights at all when there were others on the quiet lane that blazed with friendly warmth was a puzzle that he didn't care enough to look into.
Growling, he grasped the knob and wrenched the door open, nearly tripping himself in the process. "Just go the Hell a- "
And stopped.
It was an illusion. It had to be. Perhaps the effect of one too many solitary night of drunkenness. The young man glaring up at him didn't – couldn't - have eyes a peculiar shade of liquid gold that Roy had never seen anywhere else. Didn't have a determined jaw, or tightly bunched shoulders under an ill-fitting, soaked black coat.
Didn't falter and turn uncertain when a confused, drunken ex-soldier stumbled backwards, mouth working soundlessly.
It couldn't be Elric. Roy's eyes were playing tricks on him.
"C- Colonel? Sir?" The young man was frozen to the spot, still standing in the dubious shelter of the porch as cold rain gusted into the hall around his legs, bearing a single, sodden leaf.
That voice was deeper than he remembered, Roy reflected, although it still had the softer roundness to the vowels of the Eastern countryside. But he wasn't used to hearing hesitancy where there should be bad temper and insolence, as if the boy who had disappeared without a trace two years earlier was now unsure of his welcome. It crossed Ray's mind that he ought to bid the ghost to enter, or maybe even just say 'hello,' but all that came out was a croaked, "My God, you got taller!"
Well, he reasoned, if he were going to conjure a haunt on such a dismal night, he supposed that his subconscious was entitled to edit a little, and in that light, the added height was entirely reasonable.
Mobile lips thinned angrily and a muscle jumped in the still-beardless jaw, but much to the older man's delight Edward – because, by all that was holy, it was Edward – didn't promptly lose his temper. He hadn't imagined a visit from the elder Elric in months, and it seemed appropriate that the boy had undergone a metamorphosis. Although, a part of Roy mourned it, because if his memories of someone who had been such a constant thorn in his side were fading, then soon he would lose the rest, and there would be nothing left.
And if that happened, then everything would have been in vain.
"I need to talk to you. Sir." the apparition said firmly.
The addition of the courtesy almost as an afterthought brought a humorless grin to the former officer's features. He gestured vaguely to his civilian garb of rumpled white shirt and dark trousers, and muttered, "No need to stand on formality, Full Metal. You know 'm not in the military any more."
Those uncanny golden eyes, like an alchemical reaction themselves, widened in shock. Words came out in a rush, sounding more like the child that Roy remembered, and less like the too solid wraith that loneliness conjured to his porch. "Not in the—Damn it all, Colonel, what the fuck is going on!"
He shook his head vaguely, but didn't bother to argue with the soldierly title; truth be told, it would have been too odd to hear that familiar, argumentative tone and not have it call him 'Colonel.' If he was going to hallucinate, he might as well do it right. Although, it would be nice if his subconscious had spared him the demand for a trip to purgatory, and not asked him what was going on; he didn't particularly want to dwell on everything that had gone wrong in the recent past. It took the numbness of an alcohol-induced stupor to deal with that. Still shaking his head, Roy abandoned the ghost of past regrets, and stumbled into the darkened parlor; he'd left his glass in there, somewhere, and there was the remains of the bottle itself on the table.
The front door shut with a bang that must have rattled its glass in the frame, and rapid footsteps pursued the staggering man. Roy waved his glass in a mocking toast, and tossed back the remainder of the alcohol just as the ghost of Full Metal stormed in. Ed slapped the empty glass out of his hand, shattering it against the base of the nearest bookcase. The blow stung the older man's fingers, but he didn't have a chance to protest before two hands, one cold metal and the other warm flesh and bone, locked into the front of his shirt and slammed him into the shelves. The tall bookcase rocked, starting off an avalanche of books that fluttered and rattled around them.
"You bastard!" the young man hissed furiously. "Don't you walk away on me! Where's my brother!"
Bewildered, a black eye looked down into impossibly lambent gold, and Roy whispered, "You're real?" as discarded papers and books continued their slow rain down around them.
Edward released the stupefied man with a final growl and stalked away. He fumbled with a gas jet on the wall, finally bringing it to softly hissing life, chasing the shadows to the room's dusty corners. Corded muscle stood out along the line of his jaw, and he refused to meet the ex-colonel's stunned gaze, turning instead to examine the abandoned clutter on the scarred wooden table that dominated the middle of the room. Armstrong's sister, whose name escaped Roy entirely, had been the one to bring it by, telling the former officer in her sweet voice that her beloved brother had though that the Flame Alchemist would like a table big enough to actually work at. He hadn't sketched a single array, nor done any research sitting at it since it had appeared. The books flung helter-skelter across its wide top weren't a part of any project, but just things that he no longer cared enough about to put away properly. Mixed in was a jumble of dirty dishes and unopened mail, some of it dated more than a year previously, and he didn't care about that, either. Roy could do nothing but stare as the younger alchemist picked up first one thing, and then another, flinging each back down. Low and determined, Edward repeated his question, "Where is my brother? If anything's happened to him, so help me God- "
Understanding dawned: the human transmutation that had finally, successfully brought back the younger brother had been effected at the cost of the elder – or so all of them had believed – but in reality Ed had not traded away his life. He had disappeared, yes, but had done so without witnessing the results of his Trade.
Edward did not know that Alphone had been restored
Hastily, Roy answered with the first thing that came to mind: "He's in Dublith."
"Fine. Then that's where I'm going." Edward spun on his heel, heading for the door and presumably the South. Roy cursed roundly under his breath; that hadn't come out quite the way that he had intended. Where had his suave ability to think on his feet gone to? Presumably, it had drowned at the bottom of a bottle.
Roy shouted, "Full Metal!" and then, as that had no effect, in desperation, "Edward!"
Vibrating with impatience, the younger man halted. "Don't think you can stop me; you're no longer my commanding officer." he snarled, glaring over his shoulder. Roy struggled to marshal his wits, to return to the patterns of thought that had rusted with disuse.
"You can't go there. There's bound to be a watch kept on Alphonse, and you're a wanted fugitive." That was logic that that the elder Elric could understand, and sure enough, it diverted his attention. Scowling intently, the blond marched back to where Roy slumped against the teetering bookcase, forcing the older man to struggle erect, to use what psychological advantage that he might have through height to counter the fierceness that lit that no-longer childish face.
"What the fuck did you idiots do while I was gone, anyway?" Frighteningly intelligent, those peculiar yellow eyes focused single-mindedly on the former officer, driving the alcoholic fumes from his brain as they reminded him to not underestimate his opponent. Even as a boy still short of his sixteenth birthday, Edward had often given Roy a run for his money, and one thing that his absence had not done was to blunt his intellect. For the first time in months, the Flame Alchemist regretted the nights spent courting oblivion.
Best to cut Edward off at the pass, then.
"You succeeded in restoring your brother." he said bluntly, and waited for the inevitable open mouthed astonishment. When it came, Roy went for the kill, saying, "However, he remembers nothing of the time that his soul spent attached to a suit of armor. In fact, everything from the age of ten on is gone, as is his knowledge of alchemy. It is his intent to find you, and bring you back, and that is why he's gone to train with your master."
It ought to be marked on the calendar as one of the few, rare occasions that the foul-mouthed little imp was completely at a loss for words. Then the stunned blankness gave way to a rapid succession of emotions, like the landscape seen through the windows of a run-away train: disbelieving joy over his success; morphing to worry and distress over Al's loss of their shared past; then relief that the younger boy was spared the memory of the horrible things that the brothers had seen and done; and finally, a soul-wrenching grief. "A- Al is- " Unexpectedly, the beardless jaw trembled. "No. He can't throw away his life, not to try to bring me back. Not after everything we went through."
Roy said nothing.
Anguished pain became the end point of the inward journey as a shudder ran through the hunched shoulders. Not only fiercely intelligent, Edward was brutally honest as well. Even with himself. In a small voice, he asked, "He doesn't need me?"
"As a brother? Yes. To sacrifice yourself for him? No, not any more." Gently, Roy twisted the knife, and watched as the years fell away, returning to him the boy that he had known so well.
Lips moved silently, mouthing the treacherous words until, blind, Edward turned away, and leaned with stiff arms on the cluttered table. The wiry body hunched, tensed against further shocks, and finally he demanded harshly, "The Fuhrer?"
Of course. A reasonable question, assuming that Full Metal had dealt with the other, missing homunculi on his own. It would be like him to ascertain the whereabouts of the final member of that unholy corps. Ed had parted from Roy and Lieutenant Hawkeye, knowing that they had been on their way to the presidential residence. And he had known that the Colonel had been pursuing a desperate plan of action, having thrown away his careful plans in favor of a single throw of the dice. But Ed had not come back from where ever his own, personal battle against the homunculi had taken him, and did not know the outcome of Roy's gamble.
"Dead." Memory came unbidden, bearing with it an echo of that same, flat statement, and he was back again in the sealed courtroom, listening to the charges leveled against him. They had waited through the long months of convalescence, waited until he could again stand and walk albeit with the assistance of a cane, before convening a Board of Inquiry. At the time, Roy had thought it odd that as many men in dark brown wool, or heather tweed suits sat on the panel, as did men in military blue or black. It wasn't until later that he had learned that during his enforced absence from the world of the living, that Parliament had resumed control of the nation. At the time of his court martial, the only words that had meant anything had been the litany of those whose deaths he bore the responsibility of.
In the end, the men in suits had not been able to bring themselves to order his execution for the crime of mutiny. There had been too much evidence that might have become public, and so, Colonel Mustang had ceased to exist and a newly discharged Mister Mustang had been born in his place.
It was ironic, but in a sense, it could almost be said that the Fuhrer had succeeded in killing Mustang, as well.
Edward paled, and Roy considered that perhaps his initial belief that the boy wasn't really there, that he was just a ghost conjured by his tormented mind to force him to relive every thing that he had failed to accomplish, had been correct.
"Lieutenant Hawkeye?" the apparition demanded, hands clenching helplessly with the need to fight, to act.
"Also discharged for her part in the matter. She stayed, for a time, to look after me, but once I was sufficiently healed, I sent her back to her family." Oddly enough, as Full Metal's agitation grew, Roy found a numbing cold settling into his chest. The betrayal in his second's face when he had turned his back on her, and ordered her to leave failed to affect him.
"Lieutenant Ross, and Sergeant Broche?" Edward asked hesitantly. Roy was reminded of the fondness that Maria Ross and her subordinate had developed for the Elric brothers, and that hot-headed Edward had tolerated the woman's mixture of orders and exasperated affection almost as well as he had that of Maas Hughes. A pang of regret tried to surface through the numbness, but ruthlessly, Roy drove it back down.
"Both dead. They were shot and killed as they surrendered following the brush with Archer in the Headquarters building."
"Major Armstrong?"
"Because his family's prominence, he retained his rank, but he's been posted to the frontier with little hope of returning to a command in Central."
"Lieutenant Havoc." There was a tinge of desperation to the questioning now, as name after name proved that they were all gone, his old friends, scattered or dead.
"Also dead." Roy hesitated, then added with considerable formality, "I'm sorry, Full Metal. It was by my command that he went north in my place. He didn't survive the revolt."
Rage turned the gold eyes molten, and a wordless snarl drew the younger alchemist's lips back, exposing a flash of white teeth in the dimly lit room. Roy had a bare second's warning to steel himself against the punch that took him low in the kidneys. He made no effort to stop the blow, even though it dropped him to his hands and knees on the carpet, retching weakly as he tried to suck in a real breath.
I deserved that… he thought through the haze of pain and alcohol.
Roy wheezed. Intellectually, he'd known that getting hit by the senior Elric would be like tangling with an Army mule, but the reality of it was more painful than he'd expected.
The fire of Ed's temper burned out quickly, and he dropped down to sit on his heels in front of the kneeling man, muttering apologetically, "Geez… I didn't think you'd actually let me hit you…" Roy chuckled weakly. It wasn't as if there had been anything in his stomach beside liquor and bile. Still grumbling, the blond grasped him by the elbow and easily pulled him to his feet.
"Damn, you're skinny." Full Metal added thoughtfully. Roy shook off his hand, straightening irritably on his own. It wasn't that he had any illusions concerning his own physical prowess – compared to some of the brawnier officers he'd had under his command (even excluding Armstrong, who was in a class of his own), Roy wasn't really all that big. And he would even admit honestly that his lighter build had made it that much more amusing to tease the Full Metal alchemist. But now, reminded as he was of the dense, corded muscle packed onto the boy's small frame, it irked him. Full Metal trained his body hard, expecting results with the same single-minded impatience that he applied to his study of the alchemical sciences.
Roy had let that go, along with everything else when he had accepted defeat.
Good eye closed, he swayed a little before finally turning and stumbling to the battered old couch that stood at right angles to the cold fireplace. He considered, briefly, lighting a blaze, but it would have meant raking out the heaped ashes, and without his gloves, using kindling and matches to get it going. Surprise, surprise… there was still some pride left within him; with Elric watching, he didn't want to be reduced to fumbling like a common drunk. Roy gave a single bark of laughter and collapsed wearily onto the sagging couch.
Expression tight with the effort to hold back his betrayal and hurt, Edward stood indecisively where Roy had left him. "But… If I can't risk going to Dublith, how will I let Al know that I'm back, that he doesn't have to sacrifice himself to find me?"
"Write a letter to your master." the Flame Alchemist replied promptly. "Even if you use an assumed name, and couch it in terms that will pass as unremarkable to anyone who is watching the mail, she should recognize your hand writing. Then let her tell Alphonse that he need not continue down that path any longer."
Slowly, Edward nodded. "Yeah… that would work. And she's strong enough to make him listen, if I pull the rug out from under him. But then what? If I can't go to him, I probably can't go back to Risenpool, either, because that would endanger Winry, and Granny Pinako. What do I do?"
The last was spoken with such quiet despair that Roy felt his own chest tighten in response. What did one do, when all the reasons for existing were gone? Al was restored. The homunculi were defeated. While the country was not yet completely at peace with its neighbors, there was no longer a need for the Full Metal Alchemist to be a dog of the military. Where ever Edward had been for the past two years, it was unlikely that he would return there after struggling so desperately to reach Central.
Like Roy, Edward had nowhere to go.
A vague sympathy that he had thought long dead wriggled in the dark haired alchemist's heart. Once, he had risked everything to protect those he believed to be his responsibility. Full Metal had resented it, fought it, but that hadn't changed the fact that Roy had shouldered the burden without hesitation. He could do so, again. Softly, Roy spoke his answer to the young man's plea. "You stay. Here, in my house. We'll think of something. I promise."
Startled, Edward reared back. The unexpected response unlocked something, breaking the grip of hopelessness. The younger man had always, firmly, clung to his faith in the power of continuing on, of moving forward, and this situation could not be the exception. Like sunlight breaking through clouds, his gold eyes brightened, and a grin split his face. "Yeah. We'll do it! We'll think of a way."
For the first time in a very long time, optimism fired within Roy. A genuine smile rose to his lips in answer to Full Metal's enthusiasm, and he nodded. "Yes, I do believe we will."
To be continued…