The door is kicked open with enough force to send it rebounding back off of the wall. Hawkeye eases her hand off the butt of her pistol, scowling disapproval at the red-coated incarnation of fury stomping into the office, but Colonel Mustang doesn't even look up from the paperwork on his desk. Calm and cool, as though a hole hasn't just been knocked in the plaster of his wall, he simply says, "Good afternoon, Fullmetal. Is this a social call?"

"Like I'd bother," the young man growls, baring his teeth wolfishly. A grubby hand, stained bandages trailing from his wrist, slams a wad of paper on the desk. "My report. Are you happy now?"

The Colonel hisses an exaggerated sigh, lifting the sheets between thumb and forefinger with a faint expression of distaste. "And why should I be happy to receive this?" he inquires with a raised brow.

Fullmetal snorts, stuffs his hands in his pockets. "It's on time."

"Honestly, Fullmetal, I'd rather you took the extra hour or so necessary to at least make an attempt at legibility." He flips the top sheet over, shakes his head. "Train schedules, again?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," the young man snarls, voice laced with sarcasm. "I left the good stationary at home. Look, I use what I have, alright?"

"Even train stations have paper. I'm sure your watch could secure a couple sheets." He can almost feel the look of disgust that Fullmetal is shooting him, and he keeps his eyes trained on the ragged excuse for a report.

"You know, you're really not as smart as you think you are." Fullmetal kicks the leg of the desk, sulky and rebellious. "Can I go now?"

"You should get some ice for your face." Something in Hawkeye's tone manages to be both solicitous and chiding at the same time, while still retaining its professional decorum. The Colonel blinks, his gaze lifting from the pages as her words sink in, and finally takes a good look at his newly-returned subordinate.

Gold eyes, tarnished to bronze with fatigue, glare back with muted anger from a face half-covered with a sickly purple bruise. Blood is crusted along the line of his jaw, as though he'd given his face a quick wash, but failed to mop it all away. The tips of his hair are darkened as well; more blood, and Mustang is beginning to wonder if it is all his, or if it belonged to some other unfortunate soul. Clasping his arms across his chest in a pose of exasperation, Fullmetal is resting nearly all his weight to his left, propping himself up on his automail leg, only pride and determination holding him upright.

How had he not seen this before?

"Dismissed," he tells him, curt, but not unkind. "Get some rest."

Fullmetal glowers at him, as though that were the wrong response. He limps toward the door, grumbling beneath his breath, and pauses again once he reaches the doorway. An infinitesimal shake of his head (the Colonel would have missed it, had he not been watching so closely), and he starts to slouch onward.

"Fullmetal?" The gentleness in his voice surprises even himself, and the young man turns, tense and wary. "Is there something you wanted to tell me?"

He almost thinks he's said something inappropriate, for the volatile alchemist scowls at him in silence for a long minute. But the heat fades, the lids over those golden eyes sagging. "Nothing I haven't tried to tell you before," he mumbles, and is gone.

He stares after Edward, inexplicably certain that he has just missed something vitally important. He can almost feel the shape of it, like the ragged edges of a wound that won't knit; bothersome, painful, and irresistible to incautious prodding.

You're not as smart as you think you are. This time, as he replays the words in his head, he can almost hear the challenge in them, and the disappointment.

"Sir?" Hawkeye's voice at his elbow brings him back from his reverie. "Sir, these forms..."

"Yes, Lieutenant." He sighs, forcing himself to focus on the work before him. "Thank you."

He read the papers she offers him quickly, slashing his signature on the appropriate pages, and afterwards she retreats from his office, leaving him to stare at the torn and stained report at the edge of his blotter.

Is there something you wanted to tell me?

Nothing I haven't tried to tell you before.

As Hawkeye is preparing to leave for the day, the Colonel calls her in to his office.

"Before you go, I'd like all of Fullmetal's reports from the past year," he says straightaway. "Not the copies, but the originals."

The First Lieutenant gives him a half-irritated, half-curious look, but shrugs out of her coat. "Are you sure?" she inquires. "The copies are easier to read."

Dissembling comes easy, even when directed at her. "I know, his handwriting is appalling. I'm having some trouble making out a few words in his latest travesty, and want to compare them against his previous reports." She arches an eyebrow at him, clearly aware that this is not the real reason, but refraining from pointing it out. With a sharp salute she leaves, returning ten minutes later with a bulging folder.

"Is there anything else, sir?" Dark, inscrutable eyes study him, and he shakes his head.

"No, thank you Lieutenant. I'll just straighten this out, and be off myself."

She nods. "Have a good weekend, sir."

Once he's alone, Mustang opens the folder and begins flipping idly through the messy reports, wondering just what he is looking for. It was a hunch that had him pull out these old papers, so vague as to be almost negligible. Sighing, he snags a pen from his blotter and begins to take notes.

An hour later, a shape is starting to emerge. Five other reports boast a final page of train schedules, while four more are concluded with hotel bills. The rest are neater; lined paper, almost legible handwriting. Interestingly, those are also from the more routine assignments he'd sent Fullmetal out on. The other nine dealt with much more trying circumstances. He taps his pen on the desk, considering. The four reports with notes scrawled on the backs of hotel bills were from an ugly series of attacks in Southern; it had been necessary to send Fullmetal out repeatedly until the entire band of thugs and rogue alchemists had been subdued. Not a pleasant situation at all.

But the last five were far worse. The situations were unconnected, but each time Fullmetal had returned injured or withdrawn. The reports, despite their stark, unsophisticated language and childish scrawl, were telling enough. Chimeras, illegal experimentation, religious fanaticism. One involved an orphanage, and even he had cringed as he read the details of the headmaster's crimes. And this latest... he pulls the new report closer, frowning. Human transmutation this time. With Edward's past, nightmarish would likely be the mildest term to explain his experience.

The start of a headache curls around the back of his eyes, and he rubs them irritably. The rational part of his mind explains that it makes sense for reports of the worst missions to be written on whatever lay at hand, but plain paper is easily obtained. The train schedules seem more deliberate; before he's always assumed it was designed to flout authority in general, and irk himself in particular, but he's increasingly convinced that there is something more here. Something subtle, which is odd in and of itself, because Fullmetal is never subtle. Even his messy handwriting is bold, punctuated with slashes and scribbles and how does he manage to not tear the paper with the force of his hand?

The clock in the corner chimes softly; six in the evening, on a Friday no less. Only Fullmetal could give him cause to stay late on a Friday night, so troublesome...

Mustang's intuition flares to life again, and he stops, scanning over the reports as the faintest memory tickles his mind. Sure enough- most of the reports were handed in throughout the week, whenever Edward arrived back in Central. But all of the reports with the train schedules were delivered on Fridays, even when Fullmetal had come back to the city earlier in the week.

It's like picking apart a knot, seeing the strands unravel. Edward generally brought in his reports shortly after he returned to town, the sooner to be back in the library with his brother. But sometimes he'd hole up in the dorms, ignoring everything but a direct order to present himself in the office, and when he did show it was with poor grace and bad temper- and usually without his report. In one instance only had he brought the report right away; incidentally, he'd also returned to Central that Friday morning.

He bends back over the papers, anticipation of cracking this code pressing back the ache in his eyes and the grumble of hunger from his stomach. Dangerous or despicable assignments. Fridays. Train schedules. The link is there, but what does it mean?

He begins studying the schedule pages themselves, reading the haphazard writing crawling over the printed words. They look almost as though Edward had simply snatched up the paper and begun scrawling, regardless of where the top of the page actually was. But it doesn't take him long to see that where the writing starts is not where the importance lies.

It's where the lines end.

There are a number of small towns that skirt Central, many no more than an hour away by train, and a fair amount of people who work in the city commute in from them. There are regular trains that run practically day and night between them, carrying the influx of workers like the tide. And on every Friday report, a different town's line is indicated, every line of handwriting unerringly leading only to the schedules for whichever town was chosen.

As he stares at the pages, it suddenly seems to the Colonel that he's been overlooking the plainest of communication. Here the handwriting leads to Sephore, and on the next they direct him to Flosten. Even the doodles in the margins and the randomly placed insults, which he'd previously thought spoke only of Fullmetal's lack of maturity, now seem to express frustration. Look at me, they scream. Are you blind?

Picking up the newest report, he scans the train schedule. Bisman, a town about forty five minutes from Central, is the destination. Most of the trains have already departed, but the last line of handwriting on the page (why the fuck don't you get off your ass and do your own dirty work sometime, Colonel Bastard?) leads to the 109, departing at seven fifteen. A quick glance at the clock tells him that if he hurries he can still make it, and he slides the reports back into the folder even as he's calling the motor pool, and securing a car.

A brief train ride, and perhaps he can solve this riddle that Fullmetal has placed in his hands.

He has plenty of time to think, staring out the window as the darkened scenery rushes past in streaks of gray and black, muted earthtones. Wondering what could cause Fullmetal to send him such cryptic codes, whether it has to do with the Philosopher's Stone, or if something more sinister is afoot. This level of secrecy is more than unusual coming from the young alchemist, and not for the first time, he slips his hand into the pocket of his greatcoat, stroking the rough fabric of his gloves for reassurance. It wouldn't be the first time he's stepped into the line of fire for Fullmetal, but he generally had some idea of what he was getting involved in when it happened. This time he's moving blind, and it's not a very comfortable sensation.

Once he arrives, then what? There are no further clues to lead him once he reaches his destination, and he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. What was he thinking? Following the unspoken challenge of a cocky, underaged alchemist with a well known penchant for troublemaking and issues with authority figures... Ludicrous. He knows better. He should have simply called Edward into his office, demanded an explanation. He should have left a note, telling his staff where he was going. Just in case.

The speaker at the front of the car squawks out the station name, and moments later he can feel the steady rhythm of the train begin to change, the metronomic chatter of the wheels slowing gradually as the brakes take hold with a whine. He reaches beneath his seat and pulls out a small black bag, the one he keeps at the office, packed in case of emergencies. Even if this is a dead end he doesn't expect he'll be home this evening, though the irritation he'd normally feel over this is dulled by curiosity and the faintest tingle of adrenaline. His fingers dip briefly into his pocket again, a quick touch, before settling back and waiting to arrive in Bisman.

He steps from the train car, conspicuous in blue and gold among the local travelers in the small, rural station. For a moment he stands still in the middle of the thin crowd, letting the other people mill around him, greeting family or simply gathering their bags. The train steams, lets out a melancholy whistle, before grudgingly grinding into motion again, and the Colonel takes a moment to study his surroundings, looking for some clue as to where to proceed now. The other travelers have disappeared into the night, leaving him standing on the platform and as Mustang is wondering if the stationmaster might have any information, he realizes he's not entirely alone.

At the other end of the station, a familiar figure in black is sitting on a bench. He unfolds his legs, standing with deliberate slowness and gives the Colonel a sharp glare.

"Fucking took you long enough," Fullmetal grumbles, limping over to meet him. "Do you ever read those damn reports?"

The bruise on the young man's face is garishly purpled in the unsteady lamplight, making his gold eyes seem brighter than usual despite the exhaustion clearly shading them. There's something disturbingly familiar in that gaze, although Mustang can't put his finger on it, but he tucks away the information anyway, to consider later. "When I can decipher them," he answers. "Though I'm really not accustomed to receiving requests from my subordinates on coded train schedules." Fullmetal flushes, gloved hands wrapping tight into fists at his side. But instead of exploding, the young man takes a deep breath, lets it out and gives him a nasty look.

"Shut the fuck up, Mustang. I don't have the energy for your shit tonight."

"You're the one who lured me out here, Fullmetal." Edward tosses his head, rolling his eyes and Mustang sees the dark crust of blood still lining the other man's jaw. "If you're tired, why aren't you resting like I told you to? Where's Alphonse?"

At his brother's name, the fire in his face extinguishes and Edward hunches in on himself. "He's back in Central. He's got a hotel room, and a pile of books. He'll be fine for the night."

Roy shakes his head. "Only half an answer. Why are we here?"

Fullmetal shoots him another dark look. "Not now. Just... later, alright? C'mon." He starts trudging toward the ramp, without bothering to see if he's followed. After a moment Mustang strides after him, his fingers itching for the gloves in his pocket.