Chapter 6

"It's late." his sister told him. "We should just find a motel to stay at."

"That would cost too much. The next train to Central is in a few hours. We'll catch it." The station was almost deserted, cold and wet; it made the prospect of even the rundown rooms they'd been renting seem inviting.

"Tch." His sister flumped back onto the bench, folding her arms behind her head and scowling. "I'm sick of traveling."

Cheung shrugged. "There's no help for it." He opened up the book in his lap.

His sister sighed, closed her eyes. "Hn." When she opened her eyes again they were hazy, soft in the way that meant she was thinking of all they'd left behind- all they couldn't leave behind, no matter how hard they tried. Sorrow seemed to be the only thing that ever softened her features, and Cheung wished for a time long past when that wasn't so.

"-I know. Bastard. You think I meant to- what? Fuck you!" the furious half-shout of the young man on the payphone a little ways away cut through Cheung's thoughts.

He looked up and over, watched the man clench and unclench his fist. There was a little girl sitting at his feet, humming under her breath and drawing happily in an oversized sketchbook balanced on her knees. She looked completely unperturbed by the man's rising ire.

"-No. No. I'm catching the next train back. Shut up! Why would I miss you, you delusional old man? You're-"

The little girl frowned down at her sketch critically as the argument swelled and shifted above her, from annoyed to exasperated to frustrated. The crude words and best wishes for an eternity spent in a warm climate were ignored happily as the girl traded a red crayon for a blue.

"-tch. Whatever." the young man rolled his eyes, and his lips twitched into an involuntary smile, which he immediately clamped down on, looking mildly annoyed at himself. "Yeah yeah yeah. Goodnight, bastard. I'll call you if we get delayed again." He hung up unceremoniously, scowled at the phone for a minute. "Fucker." he said.

"Lazy bone Generals should be asleep this time of night." the little girl said. There was an accent hanging on the edge of her words that Cheung couldn't place.

The young man looked down, scowl softening. "So should little monsters."

The little girl just grinned up at him, and Cheung had to look away.

"M'takin a nap." his sister said. "Wake me when the train gets here."

"Alright." He stared down at his open book.

…I give you to understand that, unless you take like things in the beginning of the decocting and guide them subtly until they all be made water, till then you have not found out the work…

He was tired, and the words twisted themselves into knots somewhere between the page and his mind. An old, old alchemy book, he had found it in the bookshop they'd browsed through while waiting for the train in the last city they'd been in, and with guilt thick in his gut he'd slipped it into his bag when the pretty girl who had probably been the owner's daughter wasn't looking. It wasn't the first thing he'd stolen but it was the first thing he'd stolen that he didn't need to live.

His stomach growled loudly and he steeled himself to ignore it, forced himself to focus on the passage before him.

But the little girl laughed, and she was just the right age that her laughter made his chest hurt.

"Brother! Brother, look!" Small hands tugging on his sleeve. "Look!"

Precise booted footsteps had Cheung looking up again, and he blinked as two uniformed soldiers made their way across the station to the man lounging on the bench.

They stopped in front of him. Cheung half-expected them to drag the man off the bench. He did look kind of shady, and no one who wore that much black and leather could be anything but trouble, but the soldiers snapped two crisp salutes. "Lieutenant Colonel."

The man sat up straighter, sighed. "Yeah?"

"You're needed at the 12th warehouse."

"Fine." the blond said. He stood, grabbed his bag and a battered suitcase, hefted both easily in his right arm, obviously stronger than his lithe build would have one believe. "I knew I should have tried to catch the earlier train."

The little girl shoved crayons and sketchbook into her own small bag and stood, taking the man's (brother? father?) free hand. They followed the soldiers out of the station.

"Warehouse 12… isn't that where we saw-"

Xue-li cut her brother off, sitting up and swinging her feet to the ground. "Let's follow them."

Cheung tried to protest, but his sister never listened to him, and she was halfway out of the station before he snatched up their bags and ran after her.

"Oh. Gross." Ed squinted down at what had, at one time, been a human being. Probably just one. He was going by the shoes, because that was the only thing in the array that was recognizable.

Anya was outside in the car with the pretty, eager to please female soldier that had followed Ed around like a puppy his whole stay in West City. It was nearly three in the morning. Ed figured that didn't say much for his parenting skills, but he had been trying to get the brat home, before the idiot splattered in front of him had decided to… well, Ed wasn't sure what he had been doing. Because it wasn't what whoever had drawn the array wanted Ed to think he'd been doing. The array, had it went wrong, would have torn the man apart from the outside, but this man had been torn apart from the inside. Not blown apart from the inside, as Scar had done, but torn apart.

It worried him, sometimes, how scenes like this didn't affect him as much as they once had. That corpses, no matter how mangled, had ceased to be terrifying, had become just another part of the job. Admittedly, this was worse than usual. This kind of job made him regret the decision to have Anya travel with him, because she knew that every time she was left outside it meant someone was dead.

Ed went over the room inch by inch, but again the array and the corpse were his only clues. It was the third time he had seen a scene like this. Duren and then, two weeks later, a small border town in the West where the local alchemist had been found in a bloody smear on her kitchen floor. Ed was the current expert on biological transmutations, but he had a feeling that wasn't why he was being assigned this cases.

"Who did you last see, you old bastard?" Ed asked, flipping through a bloodstained journal. Unfamiliar code, but he would break it. Arrays, equations, personal notes. It took Ed less than ten minutes to break down the code enough to see what the alchemist had been working on. Drugs. The man had been making illegal drugs with alchemy. Hallucinogens. Very, very powerful hallucinogens.

Ed took all the man's journals, all his notes, and left the rest for the Investigations Department.

He went out to the car where his daughter was crashed in the back seat under his long black coat. The soldier- Mary? Margret? -stood and saluted, and damn, he wasn't sure he would ever get used to that. "How long has she been out?" Ed asked.

"She fell asleep a few minutes after you went inside, sir."

"Good." Ed watched her for a second. Many people, he knew, would be appalled by the way he dragged his daughter across the country, but Esta would have been thrilled.

"Sir?"

"Lieutenant." He glanced down at the file in his hand, rattled off the alchemist's home address. "You know where that is?"

"Why the hell are we following him? The place is crawling with soldiers. We can't see anything-"

"Shhh!"

Cheung crossed his arms and gave an annoyed huff, hunched down in the alley and ignored his sister. Stubborn, headstrong pain in the ass. Crouched in a wet, filthy alley at three in the morning was not Cheung's idea of fun.

He looked longingly back in the direction of the train station-

-and saw the woman.

Fair hair and expensive clothes. The umbrella she held shadowed the top of her face, but Cheung could make out a smile on her darkly painted lips.

The woman's smile widened, and overcome by curiosity Cheung peeked back out around the corner and saw the man from earlier emerge from the building, a box under one arm and a folder in his hand. He stopped and talked with a female soldier standing next to a military car for a few minutes, then slide into the passenger seat of the car. When the car drove away, Cheung looked back towards the woman only to find she had gone.

"Xue-li, did you see-"

"Shhh!"

Cheung sighed.

"Damn it! What do you think happened? Do you think it had to do with those weirdoes earlier?" His sister hunched down next to him, chewing the corner of her nail.

The night before they had slept in the warehouse, hoping to save money. They had slept in worse places, and winter's chill hadn't crept up on West City yet. They'd been surprised early in the morning by raised voices and breaking glass. A middle-aged, beady-eyed man had been arguing with a group of men in business suits that had held themselves like soldiers. When they had seen the men were armed the siblings had grabbed their bags and beat a hasty retreat. They'd tried to slip out the back, but there were men at either end of the alley, standing guard. They'd ended up slipping up to the roof and leaping the small gap to the next building over.

"Probably." Cheung looked towards the soldiers. "You think… we should tell them we saw something?"

"Are you crazy?! We'll get in trouble! They'll think we were involved somehow." His sister elbowed him. "Besides. That bastard is probably still looking for us."

Cheung shifted. "Maybe… we should head back to the station." He thought of the woman's smile, and decided that whatever was going on, he wanted no part of it.

"Maybe that guy will be there. The Lieutenant Colonel. He didn't seem like a bad sort."

"I don't know." Cheung pictured the man's disinterested slouch, the black leather boots and long black coat. He had looked like a bad sort to him. Cheung snorted. His sister had probably liked the man's boots.

In the end it didn't matter, because they didn't see the Lieutenant Colonel at the station. They debated on waiting until the noon train, but Cheung pointed out that if they did that, they wouldn't get in to Central until almost Midnight. They needed to find work, to find somewhere to stay. They couldn't waste time. They caught the earliest train they could.

Hunched together over their meager belongings, they counted out their money.

"If we're careful, very careful, we have enough to last us a week." Cheung said.

His sister pocketed her half of the money. "We'll have to be careful, then."

Cheung nodded. He looked up and did a quick scan of their car, as was his habit, and froze.

Four seats away, looking out the window with a smug smile on her face was the woman. Across from her was a young man with short, dark hair and fair skin. He was playing with a silver watch, flipping the lid open and closed, his expression bored and slightly sulky. As if sensing Cheung's gaze, he looked up and over, and their eyes met. He smiled slowly, dark eyes crinkling up in amusement, and Cheung felt it crawl up his spine. He looked quickly away.

Whatever the two of them were involved in, Cheung really, really wanted no part in it.

Ed and Anya dragged into town at nearly midnight the next night, Ed literally dragging, Anya fast asleep on his hip and his bag trailing along on the ground behind him, his suitcase feeling ten times heavier than it had when he packed it a week ago. When they got home, he dropped their baggage at the foot of the stairs and hauled them both up to their rooms. He tucked Anya into bed, and then made it down the hall to collapse onto his own bed, where he was out in seconds.

The next thing he knew the mattress dipped and someone tucked his hair behind his ear.

"Edward."

He knew that voice. It made his chest ache. "Go away."

"How rude." Lips brushed against his temple. "I just got here, and already you're telling me to go away." He could feel her breath flutter over his closed eyes, warm and moist.

"You're not really here." he told her. He didn't need to tell her she was dead. He could smell it on her breath.

"Are you sure, Edward?" Cold lips against his. He opened his mouth out of habit, tasted decay and couldn't recoil, because it was Esta, it was Esta. "Maybe I never left."

He opened his eyes to an empty room, sunlight inching across the floor through the gap in the curtains.

Past noon already.

He rolled over so he was facing away from the window but didn't close his eyes again, afraid she would be there waiting. It was the third time he had dreamed of her like that. Each time as vivid as the first. It was the first time he had dreamed of her without being so drunk he could barely stand, though.

I'm tired. Too many corpses and not enough sleep.

He scrubbed his hand over his face and sat up. He didn't have time to sit around going over his nightmares. He had to take Anya shopping, the brat had outgrown most of her clothes, and he needed to write up his report so he could take it in before Friday, maybe stop by the library and get more information on the kind of drugs Breuer had been cooking up. He needed to see if Major Roth had been in West city lately, needed to-

"Are you sure, Edward?"

There were still days when Ed didn't want to get out of bed, everything weighing him down, his father and his wife and-

But he didn't have to want to get out of bed. He just had to need to get out of bed.

He just had to take that first step.

His bedroom door creaked open and Anya poked her head inside. She smiled sleepily when she saw he was awake. "Morning, Papa."

Of course, it helped to have Anya there to nudge him along.

Ed had forgotten just how long clothes shopping for little girls could take. Especially shopping for his little girl, who was developing her own personal sense of style. One that left him unsure whether he should be amused or aggravated.

"What about this?" Anya held up a black sweater that was at least three sizes too big for her.

"That's going to look like a dress on you."

Anya nodded. "Exactly." She held up a pair of white leggings. "That's why I'm going to wear it with these!"

Ed rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighed. "If that's what you want." He mentally ran through all the clothes they had bought so far. "But you're going need something normal, brat. Like… that." he pointed to a cute pink dress, then really looked at it and winced. "Or not that. But you get what I mean."

Anya's attention turned to dresses, and her father's wandered to previous shopping trips, in a different city a world away.

"… Esta. I absolutely refuse to subject our child to the indignity of that outfit." Ed said, staring at the bundle of pink and white ruffles.

At his side, Esta titled her head, eyes narrowed. "That mean you think it ugly too, right?" Her English was worse than her sister's but improving. She shook her head. "What kind of sick person put their baby in this? She'll look like one a those little iced cakes."

"I think it's cute." Irina- don't call her Winry don't call her Winry she's not- defended.

"Yeah, well, I think the Queen of England a shape-shifting vampire from Egypt." Esta shrugged. "Guess everyone crazy in their own way."

The girls degenerated into good-natured bickering, and Ed sighed, shifted his hold on his daughter. "What do you think, baby? You like it?" he asked.

Six months old and busy sucking on the end of her father's ponytail, Anya shifted her attention to the dress her father held up in front of her. She gave it a through once over with bright golden eyes. The three adults watched, waiting for her reaction.

Her little nose wrinkled and her lips pursed the same way they did when she didn't like what she was being fed. "Eeww."

Ed put the dress back, smiled down at his daughter, nuzzled her silky cap of black hair. "That settles that, then."

"Papa, what about this one?"

Ed looked down at Anya as she showed him a simple red dress that would probably not be so simple when she was done accessorizing. He smiled, ruffled her hair. "Looks good. Come on, you still need some shoes."

Later he would look back and wonder if maybe he should have put his foot down about the leather boots.

Roy scanned Ed's report. It was concise and to the point, typed up neatly and even had copies of the crime scene photos and a few of the arrays he'd found, with the missing symbols circled and his own guess at what they had been put in with red ink. A huge change from the reports of his youth, that usually went, "Found the terrorist group. Kicked the leader in the nads. Local law enforcement took over. You owe me a new coat, you bastard." and were often scrawled on the back of train timetables or on hotel stationary and covered in rude doodles.

Thinking about them made Roy smile, and Ed raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Nothing."

Ed shrugged, propped his feet on Roy's desk just to be a pill and kept eating. He had brought Roy lunch along with his report, and Roy had half suspected it was to soften him up for whatever damage he had caused, but he saw now that it had just been Edward being nice. The scary thing was it didn't even surprise him anymore.

Roy set down the report.

Ed slurped up noodles, actually waited until he was done chewing to speak. "It was the same as the last two. Everything from the setup of the lab to the style of the arrays, but this time they got sloppy. Either that or Breuer was expecting them and the other two weren't."

"How so?"

"Well, the other two were torn apart by the rebound. You ever seen someone torn apart by a rebound?"

Roy shook his head.

"Well, it's ugly." Obviously not ugly enough to damage Ed's appetite, as he shoveled in more noodles before continuing. "Tears you apart, but from the outside. Breuer was torn apart from the inside."

"You mean like how Scar used to kill?"

"No. I mean torn apart. There wasn't enough left of him for me to tell how it was done." Ed shrugged. "But I got what I needed. And guess who was in West City the day before? Major Roth."

"Have you looked into his files?"

"Tried. General Marshal refuses to let me see them."

"You could have-"

"Asked you, I know." Ed smiled at him. "But I don't want him to know I suspect anything. So I've just been keeping tabs on his movements, and I'm having Sheska snoop for me."

"You seem to have everything under control."

"Yeah. Sure." Ed sucked absently on his chopsticks, eyes half-lidded and focused on a spot somewhere around Roy's shoulder. After a few seconds, he shook himself out of his thoughts, dropped the chopsticks into the empty cardboard box and tossed it into the bin. He licked his lips, and Roy found himself watching Ed's mouth, snapped his gaze back up to Ed's eyes as the blonde said, "Gracia wanted me to tell you that she expects you for dinner on Friday night. Said it just like that, too, and said that if you try to think of an excuse, then I'm to use any and all methods at my disposal to get you over there." Ed grinned. "God I missed her." He got to his feet. "I'm going to hit the library before I go home. Later, Mustang."

Roy tried to tell himself that he was not disappointed when Edward left. And if he was, it was only because he now had no excuse not to do his paperwork.

"There is someone I want you to watch for me." she said.

"Who?" Lazy and obviously bored, her lunch partner picked at a plate of pasta.

"Edward Elric."

Laziness vanished, replaced by shock and disbelief. "The Fullmetal Alchemist? Are you insane?"

She raised a single brow, mocking. "Don't tell me you buy into all that garbage about him?"

Disbelief faded, replaced by nothing at all. Blank faced, her companion sipped at tea long gone cold. "The rumors must have some truth to them."

"Of course. But they are, I am sure, greatly exaggerated. Besides, it has already been decided. You will watch Fullmetal."

"From afar?"

She nodded. "For now."

Setting the empty cup aside, her companion stood. "Fine."

She stayed, finished her lunch, ordered dessert. She lingered over it and replayed Fullmetal's smiling face in her mind. Confident. Relaxed. Happy. Reaping the benefits of a position, of a fame that should have been hers. But not for long.

Edward opened the door, a beer in his hand and a green-eyed blonde terrorist on his back. His face looked freshly scrubbed and his lips were darker than usual. He was smiling. The warm, friendly smile that he flashed at Roy increasingly often.

"Hey General."

"Hello, Edward."

In a single smooth move, he flipped Elysia off his back, under his arm, and into Roy's. Unfazed by the swift change in position, Elysia crowed happily, "Uncle Roy!"

Roy kissed the girl's cheek and hugged her close. "Hey."

"Uncle Ed said you'd play chess with us!" Elysia said.

Roy raised an eyebrow, looked over the little girl's shoulder at Ed. "He did, did he?"

"Yep."

Anya appeared by her father. "You will, won't you?"

Elysia wiggled out of his arms. Anya stepped up to his side. They both gave Roy their most hopeful looks.

"Well, I suppose-"

"Great!" the girls said, each grabbing one of his arms and pulling him towards the living room.

Neither of them were any good at chess. Elysia hated having to sacrifice any of her pieces and bit her lip sadly when they were taken. Every move she made was to help her pieces escape from Roy's. Anya had no qualms about putting the pieces in harm's way and was disturbingly bloodthirsty, having inherited her father's "just keep bashing away at the enemy until they fold" strategy. Neither of them knew to plan more than one move ahead.

It was the most fun Roy'd had playing chess in years.

Halfway through their second game Ed appeared on his right side and handed him a cold beer, leaned against the arm of his chair. "Going easy on them?" he asked, just soft enough that the girls couldn't hear. His eyes were on the girls and his posture was lazy and relaxed.

When Roy shrugged noncommittally, his shoulder brushed against Ed's hip.

"Uncle Ed. You gotta help us beat him." Elysia pleaded.

Ed laughed. "Are you kidding? The bastard would kick my ass."

Roy didn't show the momentary surprise that flashed through him at Ed's easy admittance. He just let his lips curve into a smug smirk. "You never know." he said. And he meant it. Ed had done nothing but surprise him since his return.

"Yeah. You used to beat Mr. Nakamura all the time." Anya said. The girls turned their pleading looks on Ed.

Who had obviously built up an immunity to them, as he just raised an eyebrow and said, "Dinner in ten minutes." before walking back towards the kitchen.

Anya sighed. "Man. I ain't never seen him lose, neither." She eyed Roy. "We're screwed."

Elysia chewed on her lip thoughtfully. "Hm…" Her eyes slid to Anya's and they grinned. "Time for plan B."

Ed and Gracia both poked their heads into the room when they heard the chair overturn and Roy's surprised "Umph!" as two little girls landed on him, laughing and searching for ticklish spots. Gracia smiled and Ed rolled his eyes, walked over to haul the girls off Roy and into the kitchen. The girls, however, were still a little miffed about him leaving them to their defeat, and had other ideas.

Ed yelped as Elysia grabbed his arm and Anya tugged on his leg, using the weight of his automail to throw him off balance and onto the floor. "Hey-" He rolled out of Elysia's immediate tickling range and tried to stand, tripped over Roy who was doing the same and ended up on his butt between the General's knees, where the girls full-body tackled him, knocking both him and Roy onto their backs. Roy let out his second "Umph" as Edward's shoulders hit Roy's stomach and the combined weight of Edward and the girls knocked the air out of his lungs.

The girls then quickly scrambled off their victims and ran to the kitchen, calling, "Suckers!" over their shoulders and hiding behind the task of setting the table.

Ed pushed himself up, scowled after them and then- he laughed, rubbed his ribs where Elysia had elbowed him and looked over his shoulder at Roy. His ponytail had been knocked askew and he tugged it out with an annoyed huff so he could redo it. Still sitting between Roy's legs, and Roy wasn't sure what he found stranger, that Edward didn't mind Roy being in his personal space or that he was glad Ed didn't mind. Hair re-secured, Ed turned a little, tilted his head, then reached out and straightened Roy's eye patch as casually as he had straightened Roy's collar that morning all those months ago. He stood and offered Roy a hand up.

"Geeze, Mustang." he teased. "All that desk work taking its toll?"

Roy reached out and thumbed at the hint of color under Ed's eyes. "Been playing with Gracia's makeup?"

Ed's cheeks pinked a little, but his teasing smile widened, took on a playful edge. His whole demeanor changed, becoming shy and thrumming with nervous tension. "Like it? According to the little green eyed devil spawn, Sierra Sunset is the perfect color for me." He batted his eyelashes, gave Roy a sweet, girlishly hopeful smile and looked at him from under thick black lashes, bit his lower lip- then the expression crumbled and he laughed again. "Oh. Damn. You should have seen your face just now." Ed straightened, back to being lazy, relaxed. "I lost three games of Go Fish to the girls, so I had to be their lab rat. Evil little shits."

"You let them put makeup on you?"

Ed's smile widened to show off unusually sharp canines. "Yeah?" he said, the tone of his voice saying he would just love for Roy to make some scathing comment so he could put his automail fist in the older man's face.

Roy just shrugged, leaned forward and caught Ed's chin, lifted the startled young man's face to the light and made a show of studying it. "Actually, the color is rather flattering."

He was hoping for a blush but Ed just rolled his eyes and jerked away. "Whatever. Bastard. Come on, let's eat."

All through dinner, he was oddly aware of Edward's presence. He wanted to blame four years of celibacy combined with the way Edward had felt sprawled between his legs. But that didn't explain the way he had watched Ed days before as he licked sauce from his lips, didn't explain the way his eyes would often be drawn to the ripple of golden hair down Ed's back or the way Ed's jeans fit snug to his thighs. He looked farther back, tried to blame Ed's hand in his at Borden's, Ed's casual flirting, Ed's smile across the table, happy, relaxed, and directed at him and only him. But he found he had to think back even farther than that, to Ed strolling into his office and asking for his watch back, putting himself right into Roy's hands and acting as if there was no safer place to be.

(Roy hoped it didn't go back further than that, couldn't stomach the thought that it had started with a teenage Edward snarling and seething, spread out over Roy's couch in a way that, combined with the tight leather pants, left nothing to the imagination.)

After dinner and dessert, there was coffee and conversation in the living room. Office gossip and brief jaunts down memory lane that didn't hurt so much with Elysia and Anya playing cards at their feet and Ed an arms length away. When the girls were drooping with fatigue, they went for their coats and shoes and Roy offered Ed and Anya a ride home. Gracia bid them each goodnight with a kiss on the cheek and exacted from them promises to come to dinner next Sunday night.

The drive was nearly silent, Anya dropping off to sleep almost the moment the car started moving and Edward stroking her hair distractedly and staring out the window, but it was a comfortable, sleepy silence. When they pulled up to Ed's, Ed didn't immediately get out. He looked over at Roy, smiled a little.

"You know, that was kind of nice."

"It was."

Ed chuckled. "Who'd have thought we could actually get along for an entire evening?" He shifted Anya, slid out of the car. "Thanks for the ride. Later."

The next couple of months went by in a procession of cold, wet, gray days. Four times Ed was sent to the edges of the country. Each time he ran into dead alchemists, dead ends, and Major Roth's name. The fucker was either incompetent or covering someone else's ass, and with each town Ed became more determined to figure out which one it was.

He kept a careful eye on Anya, but, bit by bit, she seemed to be coming out of the shell she'd retreated into when Envy had- he still had a hard time thinking about it. Tried not to. He schooled Anya himself in the long hours between one destination and the next, and in the back of his mind, he wondered how much longer their current arrangement was really going to work.

He expected to miss Alphonse more than he did, but it seemed as if ten years in a foreign world had successfully weaned him away from his brother, and he was content with the daily phone calls and occasional visits, his to Resembool to get his automail tuned up, and Al's to Central.

The first time Al had visited, he had said, "I actually get to visit you now instead of the General and your grave. Of course, your grave wasn't half as rude-" He had been cut off by Ed cuffing him upside the head, and they'd ended up playfully scuffling across the living room floor until they knocked over a lamp. Ed's panicked cursing had Al laughing until he was in tears.

Ed could have been miffed by the fact that Al spent just as much time with the General as he did with his big brother, but found that he didn't mind at all. It was comforting to see how much Roy cared about his brother, to know that the older man had been there for Al when Ed had not been able. Al liked to get them all together, usually by making his brother take him to lunch and then inviting the General along. Ed never complained about this, as it usually ended up with Al and Anya eating a hole through the General's wallet, not his, and it was fun to see how his little brother and his daughter had Roy wrapped around their fingers.

He was spending a lot more time with Roy than he ever would have imagined. Of his own free will and usually on his initiative, to boot. They went to lunch together at least twice a week, and Ed sometimes took his work into the General's office, where he sprawled out on the couch and instigated minor arguments when he got bored.

He boxed Major Roth in bit by bit, but didn't move in yet, because he sensed there was something deeper, that Major Roth was just a pawn.

He often dreamed he was in Lab 5, the Slicer brothers and the homunculi standing in a loose half circle behind him talking amongst themselves, their voices a low buzzing hum as he studied the disproportionately large chessboard before him, tried to look to the other side and see his opponent but couldn't raise his eyes above the opposite edge of the board. Sometimes Esta was there beside him, her breath sickly sweet as she said, "Chess is the one game I never bothered to learn to play. It's too hard to cheat." Laughed, soft and lovely and over.

Sometimes it was Anya who was beside him, studying the board seriously, sucking on the ear of the stuffed bear that lay buried in the rubble with her uncle's body. Her small hands would hover over the board but not touch, and she would ask, "Which one am I?" Her right hand would stop over the Queen that Ed knew, the way you know things in dreams, had been broken and remade. "This one is me, right? This one is me."

He didn't understand why he came up from the dreams shaking with terror. He'd had so many worse.

It was after three weeks of those dreams, on a night when Anya was sleeping over at Gracia's, that Ed hit the bar with Breda and Fuery. He wanted to lose himself in the alcohol until the images left his brain, but he didn't like drinking to that point. He had done that too much in the other world those first three years. Drank until he was pleasantly numb, until the world slipped and slid away- and woke tangled in unfamiliar sheets the next morning, sometimes sore and alone, sometimes wrapped around a stranger.

This time when he used another warm body to distract himself, he was almost sober. When the curvy blonde in the stoplight red dress hit on him, he hit back. He went back to her apartment with her and lost himself in pale, smooth skin and too much jasmine perfume, the taste of cigarettes and cheap beer. The first sex he'd had since he and Esta had made love in a rundown motel room with blood on the floor and desperation dragging at their chests, but he didn't think of that. He didn't let himself think about anything but the woman whose nails were digging into his back and whose name he knew he wouldn't remember the next morning.

He wasn't drunk enough to be able to sleep next to a near stranger, and ended up slipping out of the apartment and to his own shower and bed before the sun even rose.

He tried that four more times with varied partners and equally varied levels of success.

When he slept the dreams were back, and he crossed sex off his list of stress relief possibilities.

Early the next Monday morning, he hit the gym.

It was the first time he'd ever used the militaries facilities. The first time he'd ever needed to, since before he'd always had his brother to spar with, and in the other world there had been Nakamura Shuu and Tony Visconti. Two completely different styles with two completely different minds behind them to keep him on his toes.

An hour of sweat and adrenaline kept his mind clear, kept him limber and more relaxed all day; but it did nothing for the dreams.

By the time winter settled in to Central, Ed was running on four hours of sleep a night. Riza was the first to notice the well-hidden strain and confronted him one afternoon at the shooting range.

"Edward," she asked between rounds. "Are you alright?"

He grinned at her. "Of course."

"Edward."

His grin faltered, flickered, died. He looked down the range to his target. "It's… I've just been having bad dreams, is all." He shrugged, and she watched him, steady and searching. "Just… weird dreams, you know? Not even frightening, not like what I dreamed about at first. Envy and that mad bastard and Esta with her-" And his throat closed up there, like it always did. And he swallowed down the horror, like he always did, and went on, "An' anyway, they're just odd. Fucked up, an' when I wake up I'm. It's." Another shrug, this one a bit jerkier. "I guess I haven't been sleeping well."

Riza unloaded her gun, was silent a few moments. Ed could see she was gathering herself up for what she was about to say. "After Ishbal… and after that night, I couldn't sleep right for months. Nothing I did helped the nightmares. Not sex, not alcohol, not running myself to exhaustion." It was her turn to shrug. "So I swallowed my pride and went to the doctor, asked for sleeping pills. It felt like giving up, but I couldn't afford to be tired. I couldn't afford to get rundown." A wry smile. "Who would have watched over the General?"

Ed hesitated before asking his next question, but she had brought it up, and his conversation with Gracia months before had made him wonder. "Riza. Just how bad was the General, while I was gone?"

Riza looked down at her gun. Was silent for so long Ed almost thought she wasn't going to answer, but then she said, "I'm certain he put a gun in his mouth. I'm less certain what stopped him from pulling the trigger." She smiled bitterly. "It wasn't me, that's for certain. I… I couldn't help him. I didn't know how. And he didn't want to be helped."

"He loves you." Ed told her, because it was true.

"I know." She looked up at him, met his eyes. "But it was your return that made him live again."

Ed had no idea what to say to that.

The next day he made a doctor's appointment.

Riza was right. It felt like giving up. But he had Anya to think about, and she deserved a father that wasn't testy and tired.

They were in his office- his old office, the one in East City with rain pattering against the windows. They were arguing, but he wasn't sure what they were arguing about. They were always arguing, weren't they? The words didn't matter, never mattered. They were hurled back and forth without thought and what really mattered was not mentioned, was acknowledged only in the tension between them.

He slammed his hands on either side of the boy's hips. Ed stared up at him defiantly, fists clenched. "Fuck you."

Roy's temper spiked. "Damn it, Edward-"

"What?" And suddenly it wasn't a boy sitting between his arms, but a man, and defiance had turned to amusement. Mismatched hands trailed up the front of Roy's jacket. "You're such a bastard sometimes." he said, shifting on Roy's desk, spreading his legs and placing his feet on the armrests of Roy's chair. Edward's hands hooked into the collar of Roy's jacket, and he pulled him down-

His alarm clock went off, shrill and amazingly irritating. He reached over and shut it off, then pressed his face into his pillow. Fuck.

Of all the people to be attracted to, why did it have to be Fullmetal?

Because you're a suicidal idiot. Roy told himself, and got out of bed.

"It's snowing!" Anya said happily, twirling around with her arms out stretched, her black coat and colorful scarves flying.

Ed walked a good eight feet behind her and hoped she didn't get the idea to start chucking snowballs at him. It was just too early in the morning to engage in a snowball fight. He sipped his coffee, sighed blissfully and made a mental note to go back to that café often, because it was the best damn coffee he had ever had.

"General!"

Ed glanced up. He saw Anya run towards Roy, watched as she lost her footing and skid across the ice, pinwheeled her arms comically and finally slammed into Roy, knocking them both down, right into a pile of freshly shoveled snow. He winced.

"Ow." Anya sat up, clutching her head.

Roy pushed himself up to a sitting position, brushed snow out of his hair. "I'd say that about sums up the situation."

Anya grinned apologetically. "Sorry."

"It's fine." Roy said, ruffling her bangs and smiling at her. He looked up as Ed reached them.

"Being liked by Elrics is a hazardous occupation, wouldn't you say?" He grabbed Roy's hand, pulled him up. He turned to Anya next, hauled the girl up by the back of her jacket and brushed her off. "Slow down, monster. Next time you'll break something." He turned back to Roy. "You okay?"

Still brushing off his coat, Roy nodded. "Fine."

Ed nodded. "Going to be soaked, though." He handed his coffee to Anya, then clapped his hands and touched them to the front of Roy's coat. The alchemical reaction rippled over him, sank into his clothes. Warmth traveled outwards from Edward's hands and steam rose from his coat. "There."

Roy fought down the urge to shudder. It felt strange to have Ed's alchemy that close to his skin. "Thanks."

Ed blinked, seemed to realize his hands were still pressed to Roy's chest and stepped back half a step. He shrugged, then clapped again and gave Anya the same treatment.

The girl's eyes reflected the light and seemed to glow for a moment. She giggled. "That tickles."

Ed snatched back his coffee when he was done. "Right. Now- let's get going before Hawkeye decides to give us extra work."

"You mean gives me extra work." Roy said dejectedly. "You're late all the time and she never gives so you much as a disapproving look."

"That's because she doesn't have to bully me into doing my work."

Anya took Roy's hand and tugged on it excitedly. "Uncle Al is coming to visit this weekend!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah! He and Winry. He said he's take me sledding!" Anya squeezed his hand. "You should come over and hang out with us, cause he misses you." She scowled. "And cause he won't play cards with Papa and me anymore, cause we cheat. But that's half the fun of the game!"

Roy glanced over at Ed, and found the younger man sipping his coffee happily, purposely ignoring him and Anya, leaving him alone with the girl's affections. Or maybe he really was that involved with his caffeine fix, if the half-lidded eyes and blissful expression were anything to go by. Ed's face was slightly flushed from the cold, and the slight breeze teased at his hair. He was in all black again today with the exception of a bright red scarf he hadn't bothered to knot right. Roy had always wondered if Ed knew how striking the color was on him. He doubted it.

Ed took another sip of his coffee, and his eyelashes fluttered, making Anya giggle and Roy try very, very hard not to think of what else could cause Edward to make that expression. "Mhmm." Or that sound. Ed held the cup out to Roy. "Here. You have to try this. It is our ticket to never getting in trouble for being late again."

His gaze lingered for a second on Edward's lips. If it were anyone else, he would have leaned down and kissed them, tasting it that way, but he doubted Edward would appreciate the gesture, so instead he took the coffee and lifted it to his lips, took a cautious sip. He nearly moaned.

"See?" Ed asked.

"Where did you get this?" Roy asked, clutching the cup to his chest greedily.

Ed grinned. "You'll have to come with me next time and find out."

They shared the rest of it on their way to the office. They did not talk, just walked in companionable silence. Anya hummed under her breath and swung her and Roy's joined hands, occasionally sticking out her tongue and attempting to catch one of the big, fat snowflakes that were floating down lethargically. It was a nice way to start the day, Roy decided. Anya's innocent cheer and Edward's shoulder bumping against his every few steps.

The rest of the day carried the same happy, relaxed air. Ed and Anya hung around the office until around noon, when Anya started to fidget and doodle in the margins of her book and Ed suggested they head to the library before he dropped her off at Gracia's. He poked his head into Roy's office before he left, eyed Roy's workload and grinned evilly as he waved goodbye.

That night he fell asleep thinking of Edward. Fell into dreams of him. Hot, heavy dreams where Ed lay under him, moved beneath him, hard jerks of his hips that had Roy's fingers digging into golden thighs. Sweat slicked skin and all that glorious hair unbound. Amber eyes hazy, lips parted on gasps of pleasure.

"Roy."

He woke aching, and when Roy reached down to relieve himself, it was Edward he imagined.