Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The bottom line is, Edward Elric has a secret fucking weapon for a dad. Worthless dad, awesome secret weapon.

There’s probably a metaphor there, but Ed doesn’t want to think about it.

And unlike Ed, this secret weapon can fix things as well as break them, which is the reason Ed’s dragging his worthless dad to the safe house before he’s really sure of the guy. Tick tock, right? He can regret it later.

They walk in the door to find Mustang out in the hall bent double like he’s been sucker-punched. Only when they’re practically on top of him does he tip his head up, but he’s staring though them, not seeing anything.

Ed’s not exactly an expert on the human condition, but he knows this look inside and out. It’s the look of somebody who’s just had everything he relies on get ripped away, and nothing he could do to stop it.

He’s too late.

Too late. Too fucking late, too late for Hawkeye, too late for Al, too late for his mom—and Hawkeye said he’s supposed to look out for Mustang, the fuck was she thinking? He’s never around when anybody needs him; they all slip through his fingers and break, one after another, he shouldn’t ever touch anybody, he’s poison. Did he think that had changed? Had he actually managed to forget what happened to just about every fucking person he’s ever loved? What the fuck was he thinking?

He slams his hands together, and the world shatters like glass around him.

Later—he doesn’t know how much later, and he doesn’t know what happened between; all he has are images and colors, fragments—he realizes he’s on the floor. Or, to be specific about it, the crying Armstrong’s pinning him to the floor and looking at him like he’s a wild animal escaped from the zoo. Where the hell’d Armstrong even come from?

“Get off me.” He’s hoarse, the way he is when he’s been screaming. Shit. “What happened?”

“Top ten most unsettling questions I have ever heard asked,” says a husky, dazed voice Ed recognizes as Hughes’s. “Item the first: ‘What happened?’ courtesy of one Edward Elric, who had just been prevented from destroying a building and killing us all—apparently by accident! Ah ha ha!”

So that’s why Armstrong’s looking at him like that.

Hughes stands up and brushes himself off. He’s a little wild-eyed, but, well. Fair enough. “I’m going to check on Lieutenant Hawkeye,” he says. “Major, don’t let him move.”

Shit, Hawkeye.

Ed tries to throw himself out of Armstrong’s grip, but it’s like wrestling a goddamn mountain. If he’d been in anything like his right mind, he’d never have let a beast this big pin him. It’s a sad fact, but his best bet is to try to talk his way out of this.

“Seriously, Major, you can let me go now. Uh, sorry about that. But I’m okay now. I just wanna see Hawkeye, I just wanna see—” Armstrong’s still staring at him with that fucking horrified face—“I’m not gonna do anything, just let me, let me—fuck you, I’ll kill you, get off me, I’m—”

“Major,” Hughes says from the door to Hawkeye’s room, luckily before Ed has time to verbally dig himself any deeper. “You can bring him in now.”

Armstrong stands, hoists Ed up, and turns him facing forward. He grabs him by the upper arms and lifts, so Ed’s feet don’t even touch the ground.

Good job talking him into believing you’re a-okay, Elric. You’ve got a brilliant fucking future as a negotiator.

He’s amazed Al-voice has no comment on this. Maybe it’s off laughing to itself too hard to comment.

It doesn’t matter, though, none of it matters, because they take him to Hawkeye’s room anyway, and he can see in a second that she’s fine.

She’s fine. She’s totally fine, out but breathing easy, and Knox is even smiling. This is the happiest damn sick room Ed’s ever seen. She’s fine, fine, fine. He wasn’t late this time.

He didn’t kill this one. He didn’t kill Hawkeye.

Shit, Mustang almost gave him a heart attack and made him blow up the building for nothing. He lurches forward in Armstrong’s grip and bares his teeth at the idiot. “You asshole, you said she was dead!”

“I did not say she was dead, Elric. I didn’t say anything. Whatever assumptions you may have made—”

“Oh my God, shut up, you were acting like it was the end of the world. What was I supposed to think, you fucking drama queen!?”

“She was in surgery. Knox said she probably wouldn’t survive. I wasn’t being dramatic, I thought—” Mustang stops, closes his eyes, presses his lips together in a flat line like it hurts.

She almost died, then. She really almost died, not just, you know, in a few weeks, but right fucking now. Oh. Oh shit, that was close. If not for Hohenheim…

“Where’s Hohenheim, anyway? Bastard does his good deed for the day and then wanders off?”

Why Ed should care is a mystery. He wants to talk to the guy, but it doesn’t need to happen this minute. It’s not that. So what?

You miss him.

Al-voice has this awesome timing. And hell, there’s no end to the pathetic. How’s he managing to miss a guy he hasn’t seen for years?

Mustang’s recovered enough to make weird eyebrows at him. “Yes, apparently. Like father like son, perhaps,” he says.

Ed’s eyes fly wide, the snarl is totally out of his control. He feels like he’s gonna puke and he just about dislocates his shoulder trying to wrench away from Armstrong.

Mustang acts unimpressed. And Ed would believe that a lot more if he didn’t reek of fear sweat.

Mustang, though, he’s used to fighting when he’s scared. It’s part of what makes him cool. His face never changes, he just stares Ed down and says, “You’ll wake the Lieutenant.”

Ed slumps like he’s a puppet and Mustang cut his strings. Hawkeye. He was about to lose it in Hawkeye’s room for fuck’s sake. He really is gonna puke now, and no wonder. This day is bullshit, what the hell else are they gonna throw at him? Fuck.

And now he’s hanging from Armstrong’s hands panting like a mad dog. In front. Of Mustang.

“Major, let’s step outside,” Mustang says. And that’s fine, that’s good. Once they get outside, Ed’s out. He’s had it, it’s too much, he’s fucking going into hiding until the world is less nuts. It’s not brave, it’s not even sane, but that will be what he does, even if he has to dislocate one arm and detach the other to do it.

They get about ten steps from the building and Ed’s just tensing himself for a full-on fight when Mustang says, “Set him down, Major.”

“Colonel?” Armstrong asks, and Ed would snarl on principle, but he’s too confused. Mustang nods and Armstrong sets him reluctantly down.

Mustang’s gonna let him go? That doesn’t make any fucking sense. Doesn’t he want to ask about, like, Hohenheim, Philosopher’s Stones, the way Ed almost blew up the damn safe house? He does. He has to.

He’s letting Ed go?

Ed takes an experimental step back. Nobody tries to stop him.

Mustang’s messing with his mind again. Doesn’t matter. Ed’s grateful anyway. “Ask Hughes,” he says. “He pretty much knows what I do.”

Mustang nods.

Ed tips his head to the side and, despite the day, he smiles. This guy, he honestly trusts Ed. Even after today, he still trusts Ed. Seriously, how wacky can you get?

“Thanks, Roy.”

He runs like hell before Mustang has a chance to change his crazy mind.

* * *

Ed goes on a smashing spree when he gets to his place. Hughes wants to know why he doesn’t care about central heating? Cuz it’s worth it. It’s worth it that he can break everything in the house and it won’t matter because, hell, that shit was broken anyway.

That lasts him a couple hours. Once he’s worn himself out and feels less like the ground is cracking apart, he collapses and checks out his hands. They’re bleeding all over the fucking place, not really a surprise. From the glass, right? (Hey, no maggots.) He thinks about fixing them with alchemy as a sort of fuck you, Roy Mustang, but that’s not fair. A deal’s a deal. Besides, it’s not even Roy he’s pissed at, it’s freaking life.

Which is pathetic, and he’s giving himself exactly one day to get over it and get off his ass.

Or that’s what he decides on the first day. Of course he instantly gets sick after that. Whenever there’s too much crazy, his body starts failing him, and that’s a bitch, because his body’s pretty much all he’s got. His soul’s gotta be rotten through by now, and his brain’s prone to misfiring at the best of times. And this for sure isn’t the best of times.

In a way, getting sick is nice, though. Gives him an excuse to hide and lick his wounds. Not have to deal with Roy. Or Hughes. Or Hohenheim. He’d like to check on Hawkeye, but he’s not ready to deal with her, either. Anyway she’s fine, he saw. She’s fine.

He thinks about dragging himself to the desert, but that’s not a great idea. Not now, down to less than three weeks (eighteen days). Shitty timing for a nervous breakdown. He is gonna learn to stop being worthless someday. Assuming he doesn’t die first.

Mostly he stays curled on the bed that Lizard fixed, staring at the dried flowers and the broken stuff. Dirt and spiderwebs and shards of glass, and the sun comes in everywhere and reflects at weird angles. The place is kind of nice, that’s what Hughes doesn’t get.

Ed reads, off and on. He works out as much as his body can handle. He buys food every once in a while. He tries not to think about anything, just listens to Al’s voice whispering in the quiet.

Sometimes it’s not so bad, having Al’s shadow in his brain.

Al-voice thinks he should stop running away. Al is almost always right. If he hadn’t died and left Ed alone, maybe he could do something about forcing Ed to listen to him, too.

Eventually Ed gets to the point where he can see that, actually, the Day of Oh My God was pretty freaking funny. All that crap happening on the same day, what’re the odds, right? The gods have it in for Edward Elric.

He doesn’t think he’s keeping track of the time, but apparently he is, because he wakes up one morning and knows they’re down to ten days.

It’s past time to get off his ass and make himself useful. He’s not sick anymore, he’s not crazier than usual, he’s as close to fine as he gets. He’ll go find somebody who deserves a beating, and that’ll make him feel real again. Then he’s gotta find Greed, who’s been MIA for a worryingly long time. Next he’ll check on Hawkeye, and after that he’ll talk to Roy, who’s probably in a tizzy by now. Last and maybe least, he needs to see about his secret weapon dad.

He’s still got a lot to do.

* * *

Greed is unfindable, apparently. Ed looks in all the usual places, but no Greed and no Ling. Instead, there’s an enraged Lan Fan and her equally unhappy granddad.

Turns out Ed shouldn’t have started the day with a fight, cuz he’s coming off being sick, and it might’ve been nice to be fresh when imperial bodyguards attacked him. Too bad about that.

The good news is, Lan Fan doesn’t kill him.

The bad news is, nobody knows where the fuck Greelin is.

“I thought you were following him around,” Ed says once everybody’s calmed down and stopped throwing knives.

“We thought you were working for him,” Granddad says.

Lan Fan just polishes her knife. She’s a straightforward one, nice and easy to understand.

“I am, but he decided I can look out for myself. Greed doesn’t fret about me, yeah? Or about you. As compliments go, it’s a really fucking annoying one. Ling still frets, though, and that’s why this is weird.”

“If the homunculus has somehow killed our prince—”

“No way.” Weren’t they paying attention? “If anything, Ling’s gonna own Greed soon. Greed’s kind of a simple tool, you ask me.” It occurs to Ed that this whole conversation is pointless. “Anyway, if you don’t know and I don’t know, this is a waste of fucking time. He’ll turn up. Can’t mind his own damn business. Soon as there’s a shot at world domination, he’ll be there.” Ed turns to Lan Fan, who’s carrying an arsenal and wearing a freaky mask with black clothes and still isn’t fooling anybody. “He’s fine, okay? Get a grip.”

She chucks the knife at him. He’s fairly sure she misses on purpose, though.

* * *

That exercise in uselessness accomplished, next order of business is Hawkeye. So far, the Hawkeye errand isn’t looking much better than the Greed one.

Ed’s standing just inside the door of the safe house. He’s been there for a while, and hasn’t yet convinced himself that it’d be what you might call a smart idea to get any closer to Hawkeye’s room than this.

Gunshots sound.

“Wah ha ha!” cackles a woman whose voice he doesn’t recognize. “You suck!”

More gunshots.

“Whoa, shit, Riza.” The strange woman again. “Don’t shoot the messenger! How’re you gonna get better if nobody gives you constructive criticism?”

More gunshots. This has pretty much been the pattern the whole time Ed’s been standing here, which is why he hasn’t moved yet. But he decides he’s being a wuss, and makes himself go to the room. He’s the fucking Demon Alchemist—people are meant to be afraid of him.

Besides, he’s for sure not gonna say anything about Hawkeye’s shooting, so there’ll be no reason for her to kill him. Right?

“Edward,” Hawkeye says, shooting him a quick, dismissive glance. “You’re late.” She fires one last shot. Not at Ed, thankfully.

“Didn’t know I was on a schedule,” Ed mutters, sidling over carefully out of the line of fire. The strange woman’s sitting on the other side of Hawkeye’s bed, staring at him with big, interested eyes. She totally looks like the kind of person who’d give Hawkeye crap about her shooting. Which is to say, she looks completely deranged.

Hayate’s sitting at the woman’s feet. He looks up when Ed comes in and thumps his tail against the floor a few times before settling back down and going to sleep. Dogs have it so fucking easy, they don’t even know.

“Cute,” the strange woman decides after she’s given Ed a good once-over. “Which is amazing, considering whatever the hell happened to his face. But too jailbait for me. Who is he?”

“Edward,” Hawkeye says. “Meet Rebecca. Rebecca, leave the room.”

“Give the woman a few helpful comments, she turns into a four-square bitch,” Rebecca mutters, but she jumps up so fast she startles Hayate. “I hope you don’t expect any gratitude, Edward. You’ll be doomed to disappointment.”

“Gratitude?” What the fuck? Ed thinks he’ll be doing well if he gets out of here without bullet holes. Gratitude, shit.

Rebecca pauses and gives him another hard look. He wishes she’d just fuckin’ leave already. He hadn’t been looking forward to this when he thought he was only gonna have to talk to Hawkeye, and instead he’s got Hawkeye plus nosy peanut gallery.

“Riza,” says the peanut gallery, “is this kid broken?”

Hawkeye’s reloading, doesn’t bother to look up. “Compared to whom?”

Rebecca snorts. “Yeah, right,” she says, and finally freaking goes.

Hawkeye finishes reloading and aims again. She’s shooting across the room—maybe fifteen feet—at a human-shaped paper target. If she’d been shooting with her good hand, all the bullets’d be going through the same hole in the middle of the target’s head.

Havoc said he once saw Hawkeye shoot at a match with such precision that the bullet scraped the top of the match and lit it. He didn’t actually say he was holding the match at the time, but his panicky face told its own story.

She hasn’t gotten that scary awesome with her off hand. She’s not even trying for the toughest shots; aiming for the chest, not the head. And the pattern isn’t textbook pretty.

Still, you know, any one of those shots would’ve killed the guy.

“You’re secretly not human, right?” Ed says, trying not to sound too impressed or freaked out or anything. “You’re like the Ultimate Gunslinger homunculus or something.”

Hawkeye scowls at him. “This isn’t close to good enough. At this range? I’ll be useless if I can’t do better than this.”

“Uh, okay.” Shit, she agrees with the peanut gallery. “But if you’re seriously pretending you’re human, remember it’s only been like two weeks since everybody thought you were gonna croak. Baby steps.”

“And where have you been all this time?” she asks, glaring at the paper target like it’s a fucking insult. “You promised to watch the Colonel.”

Ed shuffles in place and remembers why he’d thought about hiding out until everybody died and nobody could blame him for anything. “I promised to watch him if you died, not—”

“Go find him.” She’s giving him the gimlet eye, whoa.

“For fuck’s sake. Fine, I’m goin’ already.”

He told himself he’d do anything for her as long as she survived, right? Right. And if what she wants is for him to get away from her when she’s holding a gun and looking like that, hey—that’s okay. He’ll leave the death-defying Hawkeye-taunting to this Rebecca character, who is apparently that kind of weird.

* * *

“Ed!” says Hughes, friendly like he’s never seen Ed lose it and blow shit up ever, let alone recently. “Where have you been?”

“What’s it to you, asshole?” Ed snaps. “I’m here now.”

“So you are, so you are!” Hughes beams and seizes Ed by the shoulders and Ed tries real hard not to freak out and cut him. “Go talk to Roy! Roy’s spent this time so well, Ed, you’ll be proud. He has plans. He has deep thoughts. He needs to talk to you.”

Hughes shoves him across the Dividing Tape (yeah, there’s Dividing Tape in the safe house now), and stands beaming on the other side.

Bastard’s up to something for sure. Ed stares at him, but that smile says nothing giving, so Ed eventually shrugs and wanders off to find Roy. Working Hughes out is never worth the trouble it takes. Odds are he’s on your side, or at least he thinks he is, so it’s best to let him do whatever weird shit he wants and not worry too much about it.

Roy’s hiding in the study. He thinks he’s all sneaky, but when somebody’s hiding, the signs are pretty freaking obvious.

“And what the hell is your problem?” Ed demands.

“Elric,” Roy says, voice sounding kinda like it’s echoing out of the bottom of a well. Roy Mustang: frog in a well. “Where have you been?”

Ed is getting really tired of that question. “I took a lovely vacation to Creta, idiot. Where’d you think I was?”

“Well, I had no idea.” Ed loves how he gets all pissed off like he has a right. “How could I have known? You might have died.”

…Oh, so that’s what his problem is. Ed had forgotten what a worrywart Roy was even before the whole Breda and Hawkeye near-death things. He’s sort of out of the habit of having people worry about him. No worries, though; lately everybody seems determined to retrain him.

“Whatever, don’t you give me shit. You know how many people’ve given me shit today? Everybody plus Hawkeye. If you want me not to bail on you, then you need to chill the fuck out. Cuz I can’t take it. I’m like fragile.”

Roy pinches the bridge of his nose and does a laughing-so-I-don’t-cry thing. “Fragile?”

“You bet. Delicate, even.” Might just snap and kill you all. Ha ha. “Hughes says you got a plan, you’re gonna save the world, you are his sunshine. Well, you and his wife and kid. Or whatever. What’s that about?”

“I do have a plan. And now that you’ve resurfaced, all we have to do is find your father, and we’ll be able to put it into effect.”

“Don’t wait on him. Goddamn world could end while you’re waiting on him, trust me.”

“But—”

“No, Mustang, I’m fucking serious, here. Don’t wait. He’ll show up if he’s gonna.”

Mustang scowls at him. “All right,” he says, annoyed. “We’ll meet tomorrow at the safe house and discuss our strategy with Lieutenant Hawkeye. If that meets with your approval.”

Haha, yeah. Like as if the whole pack of schemers haven’t worked out absolutely everything and made a dozen backup plans by now. What is this, they want Ed to feel included? Freaks.

“Whatever. You killed Wrath and Pride yet?” Ed’s pretty sure they haven’t. Because if they had, Hughes would’ve bragged about it first thing.

“No,” Roy mutters. Loser. “But we will.” Roy proceeds to go on at length about how they’re gonna do more or less what Ed wanted to do a month ago, only now with a side of political bullshit.

Blah blah blah. The point is, these homunculus bastards are going down.

“And what’re you doing about the human douchebags?” Ed interrupts after freaking ten minutes of blathering.

“I will destroy them,” Roy says, scary all of a sudden. He doesn’t look like himself. Come to think of it, he probably looks like Ed gone cold.

Hawkeye said to keep him from doing anything unforgivable, but Ed’s not sure she has the same standards he does. If Roy wants to go on a lunatic killing spree for great justice, then isn’t Ed the last person in Amestris who can tell him not to?

He’s pretty sure Hawkeye wouldn’t want that. Still, Ed can’t exactly say shit like Hawkeye wouldn’t want that, because if he did, Roy would burn him to death and who could blame him? Maybe he’ll have better luck with I’ll tell Hawkeye on you.

Well, whatever. If it gets to be a problem, it’s not like Ed actually has to justify anything. He can just knock Roy down, tie him up, and leave him until he sees reason or at least mellows out. It’s not what Hawkeye would do, but Ed thinks she’ll approve.

“Okay,” Ed agrees.

Roy’s crazy face wavers; he gives Ed a suspicious look. “It must be a bad sign that you, of all people, are agreeing with me.”

Rock. Ed doesn’t have to do anything, he can just hang out and lead by negative example. “Hey, fuck you, Mustang. Maybe I was humoring you cuz you looked like Scar’s understudy.”

“And yet you never humored Scar.”

“Huh. No, I guess I didn’t. I killed him.” Ed does love a well-placed awkward silence. “Maybe it’s kinda different with you, though,” he goes on sympathetically. “I mean, I know exactly how you feel.” Rubbing salt into the wound.

He also happens to know that his sympathetic face is fucking scary these days. Hell yes.

“Would you prefer me to leave the humans to General Armstrong?” Roy asks, trying for snarky, mostly sounding cranky and stressed.

“Sure. She’s no good for the alchemy side, right? But she’s scary as fuck. Those desk jockey assholes’re never gonna know what hit ‘em.”

“I’m going to be very annoyed if I crawl out of the wreckage of the end of the world to find that General Armstrong is the fuhrer. Assuming we survive.”

Ed snorts. “Like Hughes’d let that happen.” And anyway they’re not gonna survive.

“Well,” Roy concedes, “you have a point.”

“I always do. So, right, tomorrow. Hawkeye. ‘Til then, I got shit to do. See ya.”

“Tomorrow.”

Ed runs into Hughes on the way out, obviously, cuz Hughes was lurking and eavesdropping like he always freaking does. It oughtta be way more creepy than it is.

“You, Edward Elric,” he declares, “are a good influence.”

In that leading by negative example way, sure. “You know what, Hughes? Nobody’s ever said that to me before. Like. In my life.”

Hughes pushes up his glasses and acts like he’s serious. “I stand amazed.”

* * *

So that’s that, then. Apocalypse imminent. Countdown begins. The eleventh hour.

Ed’s decided he’s not gonna waste time looking for Hohenheim after all. He’s got this possibly stupid theory that the guy hasn’t wasted his freakishly long life, that he has plans and shit. That he’s implementing those theoretical plans right now. Leave it to ol’ Da, right? Sure, because a guy who can’t do dick for his own family is just the man you want saving the country.

Ed needs to stop fucking thinking about it, cuz it’s way too late for that. And if it’s too late for thinking, then it’s an incredibly bad time to start worrying about everybody he’s ever met, and Lizard and Winry in particular. Especially since they already told him to fuck off because they weren’t leaving. Right?

So why the hell is he brooding about it?

You miss them, brother, Al-voice says.

Yeah, yeah, broken fucking record.

Ed walks past a phone booth and pauses. What he’s thinking about doing is dumb. As in not a good idea. Just because he’s got a phone, a pocket full of change, and a head full of phone numbers he doesn’t remember memorizing does not mean he should put them all together. Half the people on the other ends of those phone numbers hate the thought of him anyway. If they’re gonna hear about the end of the world, they’d rather hear it from anyone else. He should get Hughes to do this.

“Hey,” he inexplicably finds himself saying into the phone. “It’s me.”

“Ed?” asks Winry. “Why are you calling? Are you trying to banish me from the country again?”

“Just checking in, for fuck’s sake. Just—look, Lizard’s okay, right?”

“He’s fine. Checking in? Ed, you’re being weird. What’s wrong with you?”

“…Nothing new.”

“Mhmm. I don’t believe you for a second. By the way, I have made you, Edward Elric, the most amazing arm ever. I’m a genius. Everyone’s jealous. When are you coming to pick it up?”

“If the world doesn’t end—”

“The world had better not end. Do you know how many hours I spent on that automail? Don’t you dare tell me that was a waste of time. In fact, why are you talking to me? Get back to work, Ed.”

Click.

Ed stares at the phone for a while, eventually notices he’s kind of grinning at it. He nods, hangs up, picks the phone back up and dials again.

 

Hey, it’s me.

It’s who?

Come on, you remember me. I killed your dad that time.

…How did you get this number?

Don’t worry about it, hey, if you ever thought about visiting Xing? Now would be a really great time.

Wha—I mean—are you threatening—

The country’s blowing up or something.

What!?

 

Hey, it’s me.

The…Demon Alchemist?

Yeah. So the country’s blowing up.

Where did you go!? I can’t believe you just left me here, you just left, you, you, you—

Okay, sorry, whatever. Country’s blowing up. Focus for a second, shit.

 

Hey, it’s me.

You. You’re dead to me.

Yeah, I figured that, but listen…

 

Xing? But D, why can’t I go to Creta?

Wherever, that’s fine. Just not Amestris.

So I can come back in a month? Exactly?

Around a month. I gave you some leeway.

Less than a month, then? Three weeks? Three weeks and a day? Two days?

A month. A fucking month, Sal, why is this so hard?

 

So you’re paying for this vacation, are you, little Demon?

Don’t call me little, fucker, and yeah, if I survive—

Which seems deeply improbable. Just how likely is it that I’ll get my money?

Not all that likely. But hey, if you wanna stay here and die in a hideous, gruesome—

All right, all right. You’re so much trouble.

You are such a dick. It’s not like I’m asking you to help.

Perish the thought.

 

Hey, it’s me.

…Kid.

If, uh. So I sort of told some people that you’d meet ‘em in Rizembool and take ‘em out of the country with you. That okay? You’re taking Vanessa and them anyway, right? So, y’know, what’s a few more?

Does Roy know about this?

No. But, I mean, he can. I don’t give a shit. Whatever.

Where in Rizembool? When?

Awesome, so there’s this lady named Pinako, and shit, it scares me how much you’re gonna love her…

 

Ed carefully hangs up the phone and backs out of the booth, eyes on the dial like it might turn into a snake. He thinks about calling Granny Pinako, but no. This way’s more fun, and besides…

Just no.

Two more steps backward, then he shakes himself and turns to walk down the street, go meet up with Hawkeye and Roy and whoever, get on with the End Times.

That whole phone thing. That was weird. Needed to be done though, right? Right. Turned out pretty okay and everything. Considering.

He’s definitely gonna have nightmares about it. Fuck.

* * *

Apparently all the Civil Unrest wasn’t so much Civil Unrest as it was Roy and Hughes and the general Armstrong scheming their guts out. This means the citizens of Central are even bigger suckers than Ed thought.

Entire city played by Roy Mustang. Lame.

That piece of information aside, the chat with Hawkeye was, like Ed expected, basically pointless. All politics and no apocalypse, how is this his problem? And everybody’d made up their minds already, anyway; they just wanted Ed to smile and nod. Right, cuz he’s such a pro at being a yes-man. What the fuck?

Goddamn military, it seriously warps people’s brains. They could just go out and get stuff done, but oh no. Gotta have a fucking meeting first.

So today, two days from the end of the world, they’re having yet another fucking meeting at yet another one of Hughes’s infinite safe houses. This time Hughes swore and promised they’d actually do something afterward, but Ed’s starting to suspect he’s full of shit. People been talking for an hour, nothing’s happened. Ed’s bored.

He doesn’t get this. Didn’t they all agree not to wait for the actual Promised Day, since that’d be stupid? They did. And yet. Fucking talking forever.

And there’re goddamn strangers all over the freakin’ place, whose genius idea was that? What kind of fail conspiracy is it when everybody including the guys you’re overthrowing knows what you’re up to? The hell.

Even the ones who aren’t strangers are kinda…well, frankly, Ed doesn’t like their looks. The weird Rebecca woman’s here with a military crowd, Hawkeye’s granddad passed by, some concerned citizen types with pitchforks and shit are lurking around. They none of them know what the fuck they’re talking about, but they all got somethin’ to say.

At least the Briggs guys are off bashing heads in, so somebody’s doing something smart. Ed almost wishes he were with them. Except they don’t need him, they got it under control. It’s best Ed sticks with the softy patrol here to make sure they don’t call the whole thing off cuz it’s inhumane or whatever.

The Xing girl (Ed did eventually find her), said she’d come, but she hasn’t. Most reasonable thing she’s done for a while; Ed’s still not real clear on what the fuck she thinks she’s doing in Amestris.

People never make any kind of sense, it’s depressing.

Roy’s talking. Something about monsters and justice and the beauty of humanity. Saving the country. Puppies and candy canes. Blah blah blah. People are buying it, too, like the tools they are.

That said, it is fun to watch Roy get his guys all fired up, like a magician’s trick. It doesn’t work on Ed—he’s basically a burnt-out match when it comes to shit like that—but that doesn’t mean he can’t see the art of it. The art of building people up and calming them back down, pulling them out of the hole when they’re at rock bottom. Pretty cool.

Personally, Ed likes to comfort himself with such reflections as everybody dies and at least I’m still bleeding blood. He gets that that wouldn’t be so much, you know, comforting for most people. But whatever works.

Bottom line: cool or not, Roy’s inspirational speeches have nothing to do with Ed, so he wanders off. He’s bored. Nobody’s looking his way anyway. He may as well go take down Pride while they’re all blathering. It’ll be efficient.

* * *

Problem with that being, first he’s gotta figure out where Pride is. Lucky him, though. He’s got connections.

“Freak. Don’t give alcohol to minors.”

Chris gives him her deeply unimpressed look, which is the one she’s best at. Her and Hawkeye, one as unimpressed as the other. “Did I just catch the Demon Alchemist obeying a law?”

Ed shrugs. “There’s no fun in it if you break all the laws. You gotta break ‘em at random and keep people guessing. Besides, that shit stunts your growth.”

Chris murmurs something that might be, “Well, you can’t afford that,” as she whisks away the drink, but Ed chooses to ignore it for the sake of the peace. Also because when you come right down to it, he’s sort of afraid of Chris.

“How’s my son?” she asks.

“He’s a pain in the ass, is what he is,” Ed tells her. “Was it his upbringing?”

“My, aren’t we burning bridges today?”

Fuck. If she actually came out and mentioned it, then Ed will pay. Not today. Later. When he’s least expecting it.

“Sorry,” he says, knowing it’s not gonna save him.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks.

“Nothing, I’m fantastic, totally enjoying the End Times. What’s wrong with you that you gotta keep asking?” Damn, he’d be better off just cutting his tongue out himself. “Pretend I didn’t say any of that. I got a question.”

She scowls at him, then shrugs and grabs the rag to wipe down glasses like she expects to be bored. Like nothing Ed throws at her is gonna bother her, cuz for sure she’s seen worse. Ed’s always admired her—is there a word for it? That fuck you, fuck this, fuck everything thing she does. Fatalism. There you go.

“I’m looking for the fuhrer’s son,” he says. “Just wondered if you had a clue. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“You think you can kill a homunculus by yourself?”

She doesn’t have to be so blatantly dubious about it. “Did it before.”

“Hm,” she says, wiping glasses and thunking them down along the bar. Wipe, wipe, thunk. Wipe, wipe, thunk. “You’ve never had it easy, have you, kid?”

Oh, what the fuck is this? Whatever, yeah, life hasn’t been kind to Ed. So what? Ed hasn’t been kind to himself, either. “I’m fine. Mind your own damn business. Do you know where he is or don’t you?”

She thunks down her last glass and rummages under the bar. She’s got fucking everything under there. Wouldn’t surprise Ed if she had a stockpile of Philosopher’s Stones just for the hell of it.

She fishes out a picture of the Pride kid and a map. “Sightings,” she says. “Probably meaningless, though. He used to pretend to be a normal kid, so he was usually at home or school. Who knows where he is now?”

Holy shit. Be prepared, yeah? Spend enough time with Chris, it kind of explains everything that’s wrong with Roy.

Ed looks at the picture, and yeah, he’d recognize this little bastard even if he didn’t know a name to put to him. Something about the blank eyes, maybe. Something about the fake smile, the one that says everybody else’s game isn’t his problem.

For the most part, people are all playing the same game, playing by the same rules. Basic politeness, not pissing in the street, not killing everybody who irritates you, that kinda thing.

Yeah. That’s most people, but there are a few assholes like the ones Ed kills. Like this homunculus kid. Those guys, they say fuck it, they’ll do whatever they want, play their own game by their own rules.

And that’s fine. They can do that.

Can I play, too?

Ed grins at Chris. “Hey, thanks.”

“He’ll probably be with the fuhrer’s wife,” she says, watching his face, waiting for something.

Ed taps the picture against the bar and frowns. “She know what he is?”

“I don’t know,” Chris says. “But she loves him.”

“Huh.” Ed tilts the picture to look at the kid’s face again and tries to wrap his mind around that. Homunculus husband. Homunculus son. A woman who actually loves them both. But maybe it’s not so surprising. If Ed’s learned one thing from hunting down scumbags, it’s that most mothers can love just about anything. He’s not sure if that’s creepy or awesome.

It doesn’t stop him from killing anybody, though. “Sucks to be her. You’re leaving town tonight, right?”

Chris scowls. Ed doesn’t know what the hell her problem is now.

* * *

He can’t find the kid. He’s got a picture, he’s got a fucking map, and he still can’t find the kid. That is just plain sad. Embarrassing, too, cuz he’s gonna have to go back to Roy and troops now, and they’ll be like, “Where were you?” and instead of being able to say, “Kicking homunculus ass,” he’s gonna have to say, “Wandering aimlessly around Central pissing people off for no reason.”

Well, no, actually he’s gonna stare belligerently and refuse to answer and feel like a spastic little kid. But if he did answer, the answer would be lame.

By the time he gets back to the house, most everybody’s bailed, except for a little group hanging around in front of the door. Mysterious errands, who knows. And there’s some new guy there, looming over Roy like a man mountain.

“Who’s the freakishly huge guy?” Ed asks Hughes, eyeing said freakishly huge guy. He may actually be bigger than Armstrong. It’s not natural. “Or, I dunno, what is the freakishly huge guy?”

Hughes jumps a foot when Ed starts talking to him, and that’s gratifying, anyway. “Ah. Ed! We wondered where you’d gone off to.”

Ed shrugs and stares belligerently and feels like a spastic little kid. Hughes sighs, but lets it go. “That’s Basque Gran, the Iron Blood Alchemist.”

“Right.” Ed considers him again. This guy would be seriously hard to bring down. Ed’s not sure what those arrays do, but between the general look of them and the title, he figures it involves pointy hunks of metal. Yikes. Best bet would probably be to get behind the guy and go for the eyes.

Gran’s got a scar on his face, too. It’s not as cool as Ed’s. “He’s fucking enormous. How’d Scar miss him?”

“Perhaps Scar was distracted by you,” Hughes says.

“Huh.” Maybe Ed accidentally-indirectly saved this enormous guy’s life. How completely weird. “Okay. You said something was happening after your stupid fucking meeting, and everybody’s gone, so I guess it’s over. Now what?”

“We’re attacking the Father,” Hughes says proudly.

Ah, good. Ed’s not gonna have to charge in there alone and die stupidly, which was his plan if they didn’t do something today. Now he can charge in with a whole bunch of people and they can all die stupidly. Rock. “What’s this we?”

Hughes pouts. Hughes is nuts. “Fine. You and Roy and Gran are attacking the Father. Happy now? Hawkeye and I are going to wait outside and make sure the civilians don’t, ah. Become overly enthusiastic.”

Overly enthusiastic, huh? Ed grins. “Right.”

“Ah, Elric. There you are.” Roy.

“Hey.” Ed nods at Roy, but doesn’t bother acknowledging the huge guy. He’s kind of annoyed they’re taking a stranger. “I hear today’s the big finale. Make or break. Fuhrer or bust.”

Roy disapproves at him. “Catalina and her troops should be downtown by now, helping Briggs attack the capitol building and create a distraction. Once we’re in the lab, Hughes will meet up with my team, and they’ll keep an eye on the outside world.”

“Uh, okay.” Apparently Ed’s gonna get meetinged at no matter what. He wishes they’d stop confusing him with someone who gives a shit.

“What do you plan to do, Elric?”

“Tag along.” Did he seriously fucking ask that question? Because even Hughes knows the answer to it already. Roy seems to forget who found out about all this shit in the first place. Besides, Ed made a deal with Hawkeye. He figures if he keeps Roy alive until the end of the world, she can’t say he didn’t hold up his end. “See the sights.”

“Sounds fun. Can I come, too?”

Ed spins. Shit, he’s slipping, how many people have snuck up on him lately? Too fucking many.

And this time it’s Hohenheim. That definitely adds insult to injury.

“You! Where the fuck have you been?” He could ask how Hohenheim found the place, too, but he’s a little worried that Hohenheim’s been keeping track of him. And if he has, Ed doesn’t want to know. Too weird.

Hohenheim’s giving him fretful dad looks. It’s like he’s trying to goad Ed into attacking him. “Are you…feeling better?”

This puzzles Ed for a second, but then he remembers that the last time Hohenheim saw him close up, he was probably like. Pinned down by Armstrong and snarling on the floor or something. And Hohenheim left anyway. “Fuck you,” Ed tells him. “I said where’ve you been?”

“I’ve been preparing.” Hohenheim smiles like there’s something to smile about.

Ed scowls back, which is irrational, since that’s exactly what he’d hoped the jackass was doing. “Preparing what?”

Hohenheim takes this time to explain that the father guy can short out Amestrian alchemy. Wouldn’t that’ve been nice to know anytime before now?

“So we’re fucked,” Ed says.

“If that happens, I should be able to handle him on my own, but—”

“But obviously you’ve never checked, yeah yeah yeah. How about Xingian alchemy?”

“It should have no effect on—”

“Then we’re taking the Xing girl, if—Hughes. Hughes, you’re a giant fucking stalker, find the Xing girl.”

Hughes raises eyebrows at him, looks all amused. Then he points.

Xing girl, twenty feet to the left. So she came after all.

This is like the day of embarrassing.

“Shut up,” Ed tells Hughes, who hasn’t actually said anything. “I’m having a shit day because it’s the end of the world. Cut me some slack.”

Hughes laughs at him. If Ed weren’t so busy with the aforementioned world ending, he might have to pound the crap out of the guy. But duty, you know, it calls.

The Xing girl marches up to him and scowls like the brat she is. He shares his good news anyway cuz he’s magnanimous like that. “I know a guy with a Philosopher’s Stone,” he says. “Wanna come get it?”

“You do have a way with words,” Roy murmurs as the Xing girl folds her arms and scowls harder. Ed ignores him.

“Is it this Father person you told me about?” she demands.

“Right.”

She gazes speculatively around at the gang. “I’ll come,” she decides eventually. Sounding not all that sure about it.

Ed smirks triumphantly at Roy. He can totally talk people into doing stupid shit; Roy doesn’t have a monopoly on it. “Hey, Lan Fan, you’re coming, too, right? Ling’ll probably be there. You gotta wait ‘til after the showdown to kill Mei, though, cuz I need her.”

Lan Fan drops out of the tree where she’s been listening to pretty much this whole conversation and nods. Everybody jumps including Hughes, it’s nice. See? Ed notices stuff. He notices when people are in trees, because trees are the logical place to go, being all high and hidden and with a great view. Why are people always walkin’ around on the ground?

Ed’s not the one who’s crazy.

Anyway, Lan Fan’s been following him for days (she must’ve been totally out of ideas to sink that low), so he knows to check for her.

“Okay, let’s walk and talk. And you.” Ed turns to Hohenheim. “I wanna hear this plan you came up with, cuz it’s still tough to believe you didn’t spend your whole life working fulltime on being a massive asshole.”

“Elric.” Roy’s scolding him. Roy, who should be staying the fuck out of it cuz it’s got nothing to do with him. And besides, he has a weird relationship with his parent, too; he can’t talk.

“Stay the fuck out of it,” Ed tells him. Roy starts to argue, but Hughes plucks at his sleeve and smiles at him, some mystery Hughes smile. Whatever. Point is, it shuts Roy up. Hughes is sometimes useful. And everybody else is minding their own damn business like they’re civilized.

“If my plan works out,” Hohenheim says, “I may have a request for you afterward.”

That is so not an answer to the question. Ed has to remind himself that it’s actually impossible to break this guy’s face. “I don’t owe you shit.”

“Of course you don’t. But it’s a request you may enjoy.”

“A fuckin’ request? Like what, and by the way, in what world do we have time for this?”

“We have a moment. As for the request, if I survive…well. I’ve been alive for a very long time. I understand fixing that problem is your area of expertise.”

Ed blinks for a second, just straight up confused. Then it hits him what his crazy-ass, worthless fucking excuse for a father is asking for, here.

“I’m not gonna kill you as a personal favor, you sick fuck.”

“Don’t call your father those names. And you tried to kill me the first time you met me in Central.”

“That was then, this is now. It was an accident, anyway.”

“Accident?”

“Yeah, remember how I’m batshit? I kind of wander around blowing stuff up and wreaking havoc and killing people in general, no idea what I’m doing half the time.” Ed can hear Roy making choking noises. Bastard. “God, you’re such an asshole. First you’re like, ‘You’d kill your dear old dad?’ all pathetic, and now you’re like, ‘Kill your old dad.’ I mean, what the fuck.”

“I’m reasonably sure this fight will kill me. But if it doesn’t—”

“Yeah, sorry if you’re disappointed, it’ll be tragic. Still not my problem.”

“Hm. We can address that if we come to it. In the meantime….”

Hohenheim shares his plan, if you can call it that. Sounds kinda like one of Ed’s plans, in the way it boils down to kill everything, hope it works out. Maybe this proves they’re related.

Or maybe Hohenheim’s holding out. That’s obviously what Roy thinks; he’s got his suspicious-constipated face on.

“Fine,” Ed says to shut Hohenheim up. They’ve made it to the lab now and there’s no point in dicking around outside. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy anyway, so let’s go with it.”

Roy’s staring with his mouth open. That’s right, jerk, I can read boring-ass military theory books as well as the next guy. “We gonna kill these guys or what?” Ed asks.

There are three guards outside the lab. Everybody else is probably off trying to keep the general Armstrong from destroying Central (total lost cause there). Only three. That’s easy enough.

“We’re not killing them, Elric,” Roy says all horrified. What must he have been like before Ishbal? Talk about babe in the woods.

“Okay, sunshine,” Ed says. “Are we gonna explain the error of their ways before or after they shoot you in the head, Roy Mustang, AWOL traitor guy?”

At this point, the huge guy steps up, smashes his fists together, and shoots fucking chains across the kill zone, wrapping up the guards like presents.

Ed turns and looks at the guy—properly looks at him, not just threat evaluation—for the first time. “Okay,” he says. “That was actually kind of awesome.”

The huge guy smiles. “Years of practice,” he says.

Ed’s glad Roy brought this Gran character along, after all.

“On that note,” Hughes says, “I am fleeing the scene. Lieutenant Hawkeye and I will come looking for your corpses if you don’t contact us within twenty-four hours.”

“Why bother? If we die, then you’re only gonna be a few hours behind us.”

“Keep smiling, Ed,” Hughes says, backing off with a wave. “Roy, don’t do anything Hawkeye wouldn’t let you do.” He pauses for one moment of seriousness. “Good luck.”

* * *

The lab is creepy as fuck. Ed hadn’t really noticed the first time, being busy chasing down Mustang and crew. He’s not sure why it’s coming as a surprise to him now, because obviously it’s creepy as fuck, right?

Maybe it’s all the pipes. Creepy pipes.

“We’re never going to find him,” the Xing girl says, and Ed would yell at her, except she’s not actually whining. She sounds fuckin’ terrified, and…okay, he gets where she’s coming from. “He’s everywhere,” she whispers, her cat thing clinging to her shoulder and shaking.

“It’s cool,” Ed tells her. “We got until tomorrow. And then it’ll still be cool, cuz we’ll be dead and won’t care.” Relieved of all cares, like Hawkeye said.

“Ed, please don’t try to comfort anyone in my hearing ever again,” Roy says, compulsively checking six. He’s obviously missing Hawkeye more than Ed misses his arm. Again, Ed would mock, except he’s missing Hawkeye almost that much, too. Why’d the moron have to get herself stabbed in the stomach?

“It would be more efficient if we split up,” Hohenheim announces.

Shoe drops. This is what the bastard was holding back, this is what he was after. So he wants alone time with the father guy, huh?

Well fuck that.

“We got all day,” Ed points out, bracing himself for the bullshit Hohenheim’s gonna use to defend his stupid idea.

Hohenheim turns to Lan Fan, of all random things. “This young lady and I could form one search party, and the rest of you could form the other. You’d have Miss Chang’s alchemy to support you in case—”

“Just you and Lan Fan? No fuckin’ way, dirty old man.”

“Edward, would you deprive me of the pleasure of a lady’s company?”

Ed doesn’t know what Hohenheim thinks sneakin’ away is gonna accomplish, but he doesn’t much care, either. Point is, it’s not happening. “Screw you. Is running out on people hardwired into you, shit-for-brains? We’re not splitting up. We got an entire day to find the guy. When we do find the guy, we’re gonna tackle him all at once, right, because that’s the smart option. As opposed to your plan. If you have one.”

Hohenheim frowns. “Edward, I think I have more years of strategizing behind me than you do.”

“Yeah? I think I got more killing people behind me than you do, so shut the fuck up.”

“I did manage to destroy my entire country out at one point, you know.”

“Uh, no you didn’t. You stood there with your head up your ass while somebody else destroyed your country. Face facts.”

“We’ll stay together,” Roy decrees out of nowhere, wearing his I’m the Alpha face. Ed laughs at his stupid face, but doesn’t argue. Long as he’s gonna be on Ed’s side, Roy can act as alpha as he wants.

Come to think of it, this is how Ed manages to get along with Greelin, too.

Hohenheim sighs and turns back to Lan Fan, whispers something to her. She stares at him incredulously for a second, then takes off. The traitor.

“What was that about?” Ed demands.

“She’s doing a little reconnaissance for me,” Hohenheim says, trying to look trustworthy. Bombing spectacularly. The family face doesn’t do trustworthy, apparently.

Well. Al did it pretty well. He’s dead, though.

“Fine,” Ed says. “But if she gets killed, it’ll be your fault.”

Hohenheim sighs. Roy squirms cuz apparently he can’t handle family drama. The Xing girl and Gran try to act like they aren’t listening. Ed rolls his eyes at all of them and almost wishes Hughes were here. Except that’d get the idiot killed, which is why they didn’t bring him. Right.

They walk.

* * *

Ed’s starting to get seriously depressed about Central. Like, how fucking oblivious can you get? They have a goddamn monster factory in the middle of their city, and they don’t notice? They don’t notice monster factories, they can’t throw a proper riot, the hell are they good for?

Monsters. It’s ridiculous. Five minutes after they walked into the lab, they opened the wrong door and got tackled by a bunch of pissed off chimera. Ed has a funny feeling that this is how the whole lab is gonna go. But at least the chimera weren’t a huge problem—they wiped the poor bastards out so fast, it was almost sad.

Ed had never seen the Xing girl fight before. He understands now how she made it across a desert and through Amestris with no bodyguard. Damn.

After chimeras, they got swarmed with some kind of freaky doll-soldiers. What the fuck those were, Ed neither knows nor cares to know, but they were a bitch to kill. Not as bad as homunculi, but still a sincere pain in the ass. In the end, Roy burned them to ash. Every once in a while, Roy is pretty useful.

So. Chimeras, doll-soldier things, and now this. Central is completely dead to him.

“You’re early,” says this walleyed guy with weird teeth and, like, evil wrinkles. He’s giving out enough waves of creepy to drown the whole city. Ed would’ve tried to kill him right off the bat, but he got sidetracked by the Bradleys, and that gave Roy and Hohenheim a chance to start talking. They’re actually talking to Walleye. Unbelievable.

The Bradleys are even more annoying than the doll-soldiers. Ed didn’t like Bradley Mark I, and now here’s a whole flock of wannabes. They’re tough, not to mention creepy as fuck. Still, between Ed and Gran and Mei, they’re making progress. Or at least, Ed thought they were.

“You’re far too early,” Walleye says, interrupting Roy and Hohenheim’s babble. He grins a slimy, sexual predator’s grin.

An array kicks up, and Ed realizes, way too late, that Walleye is standing in the middle of a circle of five Bradleys. And somehow nobody noticed, which means they all deserve to have their asses kicked, because what kind of fail alchemists are they?

While Ed’s staring at that looming disaster and wondering if there’s anything he can blow up to stop it, a Bradley sneaks up behind him and grabs him. He let someone sneak up behind him, for fuck’s sake, and grab him. He seriously deserves to get his ass kicked.

Which may be what’s about to happen. It feels like he’s getting sucked down into something, or pulled backwards, or who even freaking knows.

Actually, it feels…kinda familiar.

Oh fuck.

“We need to keep you occupied for a while,” Walleye says. “Until you can be of use.”

Crackle, flash, a nauseating feeling like being shredded, and the world is gone.

* * *

Or anyway, that world’s gone. But Ed knows this one, too. White space. Big door. Grinning non-person.

Back in this old nightmare again.

Thing is, it’s such an old nightmare, it’s hardly even nightmarish anymore. Mainly it’s familiar. Familiar and annoying. He’s dreamt this so often that his brain eventually did a neat trick and, as far as Ed can tell, totally disassociated the place from what happened here.

So now Ed looks up at the Gate, and even though he knows this is how he killed Al, that’s not what he’s thinking. He’s thinking, Do you know how much sleep you stole from me, you bastard?

Reality’s got nothing on his subconscious when it comes to horrifying the shit out of him, anyway.

“Back again, young fool?” the Truth asks, smirking. Wearing Ed’s arm and leg. Ed has a sudden insight into his huge problem with the fuckers who keep trophies.

“Shut up,” Ed says, “I got no idea how I ended up here this time, and I don’t owe you shit.”

The Truth laughs at him. And if that isn’t fucking typical.

Truth’s still laughing when the sick-making shredding feeling starts up again. Ed is really goddamn tired of being jerked around like this.

* * *

When he opens his eyes again—or maybe when he has eyes again—he’s in some weird underground room. He huffs an irritated sigh, sits up, takes stock.

Weird underground room with creepy pipes everywhere and some kind of throne thing, check. That giant Gran guy, check. Hohenheim, on the floor looking almost as annoyed as Ed, check. Teacher…

Hang on, Teacher? “What’re you doing here?” Here, and not looking so great. “Shit, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. What are any of us doing here?” She sits up and looks around. Doesn’t seem to like much of what she sees. “Is that Van Hohenheim?”

“Izumi!” Hohenheim says like they just ran into each other at a freaking garden party. “It’s good to see you doing…well?”

“Likewise. For the moment, anyway.” Teacher shrugs. Too bad she didn’t kick Hohenheim in the face for being stupid. “So what is this place?”

“Lab 3, maybe,” Ed says. “Teacher, did you come through the Gate?”

Izumi frowns, shakes her head. “It felt like the Gate, but I came straight here. Did you go through the Gate?”

“Yeah.” Which is weird. “Yeah, what—?”

It’s tough to have a real conversation, seeing as they have to shout over Gran, who’s rolling around roaring in pain and stuff. He definitely had hands when they walked into the lab, but he doesn’t now, so he must’ve gone through the Gate, paid the price. But why? When? And Ed went through the Gate, too, even though he didn’t transmute anything. How’s that work? Did Walleye transmute the Bradley that was holding him? Did Ed get sucked into the array, too?

What the fuck would be the point of that?

But it looks like that is what happened, cuz there’s Walleye crawling around on the ground behind Teacher, dazed, but otherwise fine. Must’ve had a Philosopher’s Stone stashed somewhere.

They for sure don’t need any more of Walleye’s shit. Ed claps, walks over, and stabs the guy quick in the back of the neck before he has a chance to orient himself.

When he turns away, Hohenheim looks sad and Teacher looks pissed off.

“What?” Ed demands in, hey, a normal voice. Gran’s down to quiet moaning now, which is a relief. “We got bigger problems than that fucker. Get over it.”

Hohenheim shoves his hands in his pockets and stares at the floor. Teacher scowls, but she nods, too, like maybe Ed’s not wrong. She goes to put a hand on Gran’s back and make him shut up.

Of course Ed’s not wrong. They should be building up all the advantages they can while they can, cuz this situation is totally earmarked for going to shit sometime soon. Bearing that in mind, he has a look around the place. Not much here, really, apart from pipes and a throne.

A throne, huh?

He claps and smashes the shit out of the throne. Does it prove anything? Probably not. Does it make him feel better? Kind of.

Makes Teacher feel better, too. She’s smirking at him, now. He smirks back.

Good things never last, obviously.

“One,” says an annoying voice from the dark. “Two, three, and…four.”

A guy steps into the light. He looks just like Hohenheim, only older, and also like way more of a crazy asshole. Ed’s never thought it before, but seeing this guy, he decides Hohenheim has kind of a nice face.

“We’re one short.”

Ah. Five human sacrifices? Must be. So this is the father guy, makes sense. He must want five idiots who opened the Gate; that would explain Ed and Teacher and Hohenheim. And Gran, who—Ed checks—has finally managed to stand up. He looks like hell, but he looks like a fight-to-the-death kind of hell. Ed’s liking him more all the time.

“Dwarf in the flask,” Hohenheim says, surprisingly cool.

“Slave Number 23,” the father guy answers. “You once gave me part of your body. Now you’ll become part of mine.”

Hohenheim laughs, just in case anybody had any doubts about his total weirdness. “Here we are, finally reunited after so many years, and you don’t seem happy to see me,” he chuckles. Man has a real verbal diarrhea problem. He and Ed are gonna have to discuss that (if they survive, which obviously they won’t).

“Don’t talk to him, you stupid asshole,” Ed hisses in Hohenheim’s ear, making him jump. “Just fuckin’ kill him already.”

“Edward,” Hohenheim murmurs back, trying to act calm, collected, and like somebody who didn’t jump a foot when his own kid talked to him. “I’d like to understand why he—”

“Oh, fuck why he did it.” Hohenheim is a moron. “Point is, he did. And he’s gonna do worse in a minute. You’re such a tool.”

Hohenheim starts talking again (surprise, surprise), but Ed’s already moving.

There’s a look people get when they’re too far gone. It’s in the eyes, the mouth, the way they move. Something’s snapped, and it shows, okay? It shows bigger than shit, especially in somebody who’s been that way for a thousand damn years or whatever.

Ed gets one good hit in out of sheer surprise, and he tries to make the most of it. He pulls the same trick he did with Gluttony, figures it can’t hurt to see what happens.

What happens is he almost fucking dies.

If breaking down Gluttony’s Stone felt like a river of people screaming through him, then this is a goddamn battering ram tearing him apart. There’s a wall of sound, not individual screams, and sickening pressure in every direction. He can’t even fucking think; feels like his head’s gonna burst open. He does some screaming of his own.

Then it stops. One second thousands of wailing, shoving people in his head, and the next, nothing. Silence. Ed falls over.

He can see the father guy’s fallen over, too. At least it did some good. Ed rolls a bit to face Teacher, who must’ve dragged him away and saved his ass. Crazy dangerous—what if she’d been sucked in? “Hey,” he croaks. “Thanks.”

She smoothes back his hair, which is very weird. “You’re a lot of trouble, idiot apprentice. Get up. That didn’t finish him off.”

Hah, of course it didn’t. Ed heaves himself to his feet in time to see Hohenheim charge toward the father guy, who’s standing already, not looking anything like as bad as Ed. Fuck.

Teacher charges in after Hohenheim. Gran charges in after Teacher. Ed takes a couple more seconds to breathe, tells himself fuck it, and goes charging in too. He does love a free-for-all. He loves them more, though, when all life in freaking Amestris doesn’t rest on the outcome.

After about ten minutes, Ed’s bloody and dizzy from wacky alchemy and being smashed into walls, Teacher’s bloody and doubled over and looking seriously not good, Gran’s on his feet out of nothing but plain cussedness, and even Hohenheim’s starting to get kinda frayed around the edges.

The father guy, meanwhile, looks annoyed. Otherwise, not too different.

Ed laughs. He’s not sure why. Because everybody’s gonna die, and it’s hilarious? The father guy clearly takes it personally, though. His problem is, he’s got no sense of humor.

“Where is he?” he screams. “Where’s the fifth?”

Ed laughs more. Regardless of how it turns out, he likes how badly they screwed with the plan. For one thing, they’re a day early, which means father guy’s gonna have to pin everyone down here until doom’s day (goooood fuckin’ luck). For another thing, the moron’s short a sacrifice.

He probably doesn’t want any Xingian alchemists since he can’t short circuit them, so no Mei. He might go for the crying Armstrong, but he’s not conveniently at hand—he’s meant to be watching his feral sister. So that leaves Roy.

Roy, who hasn’t shown up. They are short one weasily, scheming colonel.

Ed’s still grinning about that when the roof caves in and he almost gets knocked out by a chuck of ceiling and a Xing girl. The cat thing lands right on his head. Greed falls down a few feet away, cackles to himself, and immediately jumps up to help Hohenheim.

“Nice timing,” Ed tells Mei, holding a sleeve to the claw-marks on his forehead (thanks, cat thing). “Might’ve been better if you hadn’t almost smashed me flat, but hey, I’m not complaining.”

She clearly doesn’t have time for his shit; she’s too busy staring around all wild and fierce and stuff. Which is fair.

Mei and Greed falling from the ceiling hasn’t made as much of a stir as it should have. Ed kinda hoped Greed would do a number on the father guy, but of course not; father guy zaps Greed every time he gets in range, same as Izumi and Gran. As Ed watches, though, father guy bends backwards and black shit comes stabbing out of his mouth.

What the hell’d they do to make that happen? Eurgh. Still, gotta be a good thing, right?

Wrong. Shit, it’s the opposite of good. The stabby things are forming into a small, kinda human-shaped mass of black and eyeballs. It’s like a snake shedding its skin.

And as if that’s not fucked up enough, Ed spots the elusive Pride hanging out in the shadows in the corner of the room. He must’ve fallen down when Mei and Greed did. It freaks Ed out that he didn’t notice before.

Pride looks just like his pictures, which is to say, he looks like a little bastard who doesn’t deserve to live. He’s watching the fight with a bored expression that says he’s not worried about the outcome. Pisses Ed off.

“The kid’s a homunculus,” he shouts to Izumi and Gran, pointing helpfully. They don’t hesitate at all, just attack as soon as Ed shouts. This working with people thing isn’t so bad. Maybe people have a point about that.

Although Gran’s doing alchemy by smashing his stumps together, which is disturbing to watch. And Ed feels kinda responsible for it. Downsides to teamwork.

The father guy’s freaking chatting with Hohenheim again. Something about how he’s gonna become a god or swallow god or blah blah. It’s the kind of thing that’s only cute when Greed says it. Ed decides this is a good time to try to smash in an eyeball with a rock.

For once, Ed’s rock makes contact instead of getting zapped, but it doesn’t seem to do anything except irritate the guy. A few eyes turn toward Ed, then a black, eyebally hand touches the ground, and this wave of something slams out like a thunderclap.

Izumi growls and Gran bellows. Ed claps and, ignoring the horrible sinking feeling, touches the ground.

Nothing happens. This is what Hohenheim was talking about, then.

“Alchemy’s broken,” Ed tells Mei, who’s been hanging out all this time watching them fuck up, apparently too angry and confused to join in. She snaps out of it to shoot Ed a pitying glance, then draws a circle and transmutes a rock into the shape of his head. Although he likes to think he doesn’t actually look that stupid.

“I never liked you,” he tells her. He feels she should know this before they die. She rolls her eyes, says, “Unbelievably rude,” and sends the Ed-rock flying toward the father guy. It hits him in the face. It’s gratifying how much the bastard didn’t see that coming.

But he’s sure as shit noticed them now.

“Get close to me!” Mei shouts. Everybody obeys except Greed, which strikes Ed as weird. Shouldn’t there be more disobedience? From him, at least? Well, any port in a storm, maybe. Mei draws a circle, puts her hands down—

Father guy tries to attack, but he can’t get through Mei’s circle. That, Ed has to admit, is awfully useful.

Well, in a way. In another way, Hohenheim is now fighting the bad guy while everybody else hides behind him and a little girl, and Greed makes pointless sneak-attacks that never work. It’s shameful. Happily, Pride fixes that problem.

He can’t get in the circle, his freaky shadows can’t get in the circle (Ed is not about the freaky shadows, that is so fucked up), but he can stand outside the circle and throw rocks in, just like the brat kid he looks like he should be.

It’s not serious, Ed tells himself, just annoying. And anyway, Ed’s got his back to Hohenheim, propping the guy up. What if he left and Hohenheim fell down and the world ended? Wouldn’t he feel like a jackass then?

Pride throws a rock that just misses Teacher’s eye, and Ed’s good sense takes a walk.

“Hey, Gran!” he shouts over the scream of apocalyptic alchemy. “Get over here and hold this guy up!” This way Hohenheim won’t fall over, and Gran can stop fucking smashing his stumps together. Genius.

Gran obliges, and Ed charges out of the circle with Teacher right behind him. Kid doesn’t have a prayer against both of them, especially not when he’s gonna try to be gentle and they sure as shit are not. (It’s good to be a sacrifice.) Even the worse for wear, the Demon Alchemist and Izumi Curtis don’t need alchemy to beat the crap out of somebody.

They pass him back and forth for a while, fight going about the way Ed thought it would. Kid cuts them up with those shadow things, sure, but there’s no real doubt about how this is gonna end. It’s actually kinda fun, fighting with Teacher.

Or it would be, if Ed hadn’t noticed the father guy taking off for the hole in the ceiling, Hohenheim and Greed chasing after him. That’s troubling. Sucks the joy out of things.

“Typical humans,” Pride gasps, fending off Ed, ignoring the way his dad just ditched him. “So unspeakably stupid. Don’t you see that there’s no greater use for you than this? Why won’t you let us make something of your lives?”

Teacher’s royally pissed, and the last thing she wants is some snot-nosed homunculus giving her lip. Ed could’ve told him that. Too late now, though: she’s already grabbed him by the neck and flung him into a wall. A structurally unsound wall. Pride hits it pretty hard, and then half of it lands on top of him when it collapses.

On top of him and also Ed. Ed thinks, watching these enormous chunks of wall come falling toward him, that this is where teamwork flat-out sucks.

Al-voice screams his name. It’s the last thing he hears for a while.

* * *

Brother. Brother. Brother.

“It would be easier to transmute the rocks.”

“He’s pretty sturdy. Pull harder.”

Brother, wake up.

“I don’t think that will work, Ling Yao.”

“You make it sound like my name tastes bad. How do you do that?”

Brother!

I’m awake, Al, for fuck’s sake. Shut up.

“If you dislocate his shoulder, I will have to fix it, so please let me…”

Ed thinks, Fuck you, Xing girl, I’ll fix it myself. Then he remembers he promised Roy he wouldn’t pull that shit anymore. Then he thinks Roy never showed up and is probably dead anyway, so what difference does it make?

This is about the time he realizes he actually is awake.

“Fuck you,” he rasps out, trying to squirm away from—Ling?—whoever it is that’s yanking on his arm. The flesh one, not the metal one. There’s shitty luck for you. “Are you trying to rip my arm out of its socket?”

“Please stand back, Ling Yao,” Mei says.

Ling’s right, she does make it sound like the name tastes bad. That’s some talent.

Now that Ed’s awake and able to complain for himself, they don’t take too long to get him free. Mei transmutes the rocks out of the way, and they drag him out. Thanks, Ling, for not letting that happen before.

Only thing that saved Ed from being squashed flat was the transmuted wall he was next to—Teacher’d been using it as a shield at one point. The big wall chunks fell against Ed’s transmuted wall, tipped sideways, and made a little triangle of space for him to not die in. Just another near-death experience thanks to Teacher, no big thing. He isn’t even all that beat up, apart from the initial knock on the head.

Which, yeah, may yet turn out bad. Whatever, it’s a good sign he woke up, and he’s clinging to that thought.

Mei’s staring at him. “Thanks for finding me, I guess,” he tells her, trying to be nice about it. He does owe her big time. She keeps staring. “Probably would’ve died, so. Yeah.” Still staring. “Okay, what?”

“Did they win?” she asks.

“You just pulled me out from under a fucking pile of rocks,” Ed reminds her. “And you’re asking me if they won.”

She scowls. “Well, did they?”

“They did,” says Ling, who’s wandering around the wreckage and the bodies of random Bradleys who must’ve fallen down here, looking all kinds of punch drunk. “If they’d lost, we wouldn’t be alone. We’d have Father keeping us company, assuming we were alive at all.”

“There you go,” Ed tells Mei. Who’s ignoring him now, cuz she’s busy looking for a way to climb out. She spends a lot of time ignoring him. In fact. “What’re you doing down here anyway?” Ed aims the question at Ling as the more friendly ear in the room, arm-yanking or no. “Thought I saw you and Greed go climbing out.”

“And we were thrown right back down.”

“Yeah? And Greed let you take over?”

Ling pauses, considers one of the bodies, turns it gently over with his foot. He leans down and starts rummaging through the pockets. Ed wonders about this guy sometimes, seriously. “Greed is gone,” he says.

Riiiight.

Ed’s spent a lot of time watching Roy, who is one sneaky bastard, and he knows the signs of sneaky bastards who aren’t on the level. It’s possible that Ling’s really cut up about Greed and is trying to hide it. It’s possible. But Ed suspects that actually Greed’s not as gone as Ling’s going to want, say, Lan Fan and the nation of Xing to think.

This is so very much not Ed’s problem that there may not be a word strong enough to express how extremely not his problem it is. He’s asking nothing.

He likes to think Greed’s still around, though. Greed was fun.

“Whatever,” Ed decides. “So you got pitched down here Greedless, and yet somehow you’re fine?”

“Mei Chang did me the honor of healing the worst of my injuries,” Ling says, randomly formal.

Ed whirls to face the Xing girl. “You saved his life?” This girl? She is un-fucking-believable. “I thought you wanted him dead. I’m kind of a pro in this area, and listen, if you want somebody dead, it’s a good idea not to save their lives. Fucking what is wrong with you?”

“Actually,” Ling murmurs, “it was a brilliant move on her part. I’ll defend her clan with my life, now.”

“Whatever your life’s worth, idiot,” Ed snaps at him. “You get possessed, you get tossed into pits, you think you can cut it as an emperor? Bet me.”

Ling gives Ed a woozy grin. “Oh, I will. Name your terms.” And he proudly holds up a bottle of red stuff.

“Oh, shit. Is that a fucking Philosopher’s Stone?” It totally is a fucking Philosopher’s Stone. “Where the hell did you get that?”

Ling gestures vaguely toward one of the corpses. The one whose pockets he was rummaging through. Ed squints and tries to make out some features under the blood.

Oh, yeah. Walleye. So did he have a whole stash of Philosopher’s Stones, or did he just not use up his one?

“That was my kill, asshole.”

Ling stops smiling and stares wild-eyed at Ed, as dangerously uncontrolled as Ed’s ever seen him. “You owe me, alchemist.”

Ed grins. He loves it when people flip out; it’s like they have common ground or something. “Yeah. Guess I do.” He gives Ling and Mei a second to be really confused before he throws in, “Like I’d want one of those creepy-ass things anyway. What the hell’d I do with it? Fuck that. Essence of dead people: it’s all yours.”

Ling relaxes all at once, sinking down on some debris, eyes closed. Been kind of a long day for him, too, huh? “I’m going to find Lan Fan,” he says eventually. “Aren’t you worried about your people?”

‘His people.’ Shit, Ed doesn’t even wanna know. If they’re dead, they’re dead, nothing he can do about it. If they’re alive, they’re gonna want to fuss over him and fix him and shit. He doesn’t need the aggravation.

Plus, if he never knows for sure, he can assume they’re alive. Right?

Coward.

Al-voice never pulls punches. Ed sighs, claps, and touches his hands to the ground.

Nothing happens.

Well, that’s that question answered.

In view of fucking broken alchemy, Ed has to climb up to the floor above the hard way. He notices he’s really sore and bleeding all over the damn place (still no maggots), and not only is he not allowed to fix it, he can’t. Shit.

“Don’t worry about us!” Ling calls after him. “I’m sure we’ll be fine! We’ll just make our own way out!”

“You have the only alchemist in Amestris who isn’t worthless standing next to you, dipshit. Shut the fuck up, don’t bother me.”

Ed hoists himself onto the upper floor really carefully, cuz it’d be just his fuckin’ luck for the edge to collapse and pitch him back down, thereby crushing Ling.

But no. It holds. He edges along on his belly for a while, then stands and starts walking. He hopes that didn’t wear out all his good luck.

* * *

First body he comes across that he cares about is Hawkeye’s. He almost has a fuckin’ heart attack before he figures out she’s just unconscious, not dead. Which is cool as far as it goes, but there’re a lot of questions Ed might ask her if she were conscious. Things like, What the fuck are you doing here? and, Didn’t you say twenty-four hours, you lying asshole? and also, Are you trying to get yourself killed? Tell me now so I can stop giving a shit about you.

She’s out, though. He’s gonna have to save those questions up. Maybe add a few more. In the meantime, he checks around to see if he can work out how she ended up like this. Who did this to her.

He almost steps on the little baby thing a few feet away. It’s like the size of a bean, weirdly cute. There’s a funny round gem or something right in the middle of its widdle forehead. Ed’s got no fuckin’ clue what it is, but there’s nothing else close by to explain what knocked out Hawkeye. So was she protecting the bean, or did she beat the crap out of some homunculus ‘til it turned into a bean?

Ed makes an experimental cut down the thing’s back with one of the metal scraps on the floor. The cut bleeds for a second, then seals up and heals like it was never there.

Homunculus, then. Must be Pride: Ed seriously doubts that any force on earth, even Hawkeye, could ever make Wrath look like this. Kid must’ve sliced Hawkeye up with shadows, then bashed her all over the room ‘til he knocked her out. Nice. He didn’t kill her, and she clearly got her own back, but that doesn’t mean Ed feels like giving him a chance to try again.

He knows this thing has a mother who’ll miss him. He knows.

Everybody’s got people they miss, that’s life.

He kills the thing. It dissolves into dust, the way they do. Sad to watch, maybe just cuz it was so small.

He is actually feeling bad about killing a homunculus. Fucking Hughes broke his brain. He stands abruptly and turns to Hawkeye. Focus on the living, idiot.

Hawkeye’s not looking like she’ll wake up any time soon, and he doesn’t want to drag her ass around this maze looking for an exit—that might kill her. Which means he’s gonna have to leave her here.

Why does the best option have to suck so much of the time?

But whether it sucks or not, it is the best option, so Ed drags Hawkeye into a corner and throws his coat over her. With the coat over her face like that, she looks like a lump of trash or a corpse. Nobody should bother her, why would they? Ed nods, satisfied, and takes off to find Hughes, who’s definitely here if Hawkeye is. Hughes can take care of her. Put that busybody impulse to good use.

Ed ends up wandering for a while, and it’d be interesting if he weren’t on the clock. Rooms with weird arrays, trashed labs, dead chimeras. Whole libraries full of what’re probably really bad ideas. A huge room with broken doors, an array on the floor, and a second storey balcony. Ed looks up.

That is totally Hughes clinging to the rail and staring down at him with a knife in his teeth. This is Hughes all over. Goofball, goofball, homicidal maniac, goofball. You never know where you stand with the guy.

Nice to have him on your side, though. Nice he’s not dead.

God, him and Hawkeye. Twenty-four hours, huh? Yeah right. Ed’s gonna beat the shit out of everybody just as soon as he works up the energy.

Hughes pushes back from the rail and pulls the knife out of his mouth, which is too bad, cuz it means he’s gonna talk. “Ed,” he says. “There you are. I was afraid I was going to have to go digging for you.”

Ed rolls his eyes. He was starting to suspect that not even death could save him from Hughes, and check it out. He was right.

* * *

Hughes leads him two rooms over and up a level, which is apparently where Roy is. Hey, Roy’s alive, their survival stats are awesome. Apparently Roy and Lan Fan didn’t make it to the fight with the father guy cuz they were busy up above, making friends with Kael and taking down Wrath.

Which, Ed guesses, is good to know, but he wishes Hughes’d shut the fuck up for a second. He’s talking so fast Ed can’t get a word in about Hawkeye. It’s just starting to really piss him off when Hughes abruptly stops talking and waves him into the room where Roy is.

Roy’s standing over a body.

Well, not quite a body. A soon-to-be-body, though. Hohenheim. And in all the shit Hughes said, he couldn’t have mentioned this?

Fuckin’ Hughes. He wants some sappy deathbed scene, guaranteed. He’d probably freak if Ed tried to walk away, but where’s the point in talking to somebody who’s practically a corpse?

Ed does want to know for sure that the father guy’s dead, though, and this is the easiest way to find out. He trudges over to almost-dead Hohenheim. This is gonna suck. “Hey.”

Hohenheim turns quick as he can to face Ed. Quick as he can isn’t all that quick at this point. It’s depressing.

“You nail that father guy?” Ed asks. Keeping on track.

Hohenheim smiles, puzzled. “Yes. Didn’t you notice?”

“I was under a fuckin’ pile of rock, thanks for your concern,” Ed tells him. “You really are a shitty excuse for a father.”

Hohenheim keeps smiling. Well, he did take a lot of hits to the head. “When your children complain about your parenting, you can tell them about me. They’ll count their blessings.”

It’s not real promising that Ed hears your children and instantly thinks broken bottle shoved up—but hell. If the idea of Ed having kids makes Hohenheim feel better, fine. He’s dying. If Ed’s ever gonna throw him a bone, better be now. “Whatever, old man, I’m telling ‘em I hatched from an egg.”

Hohenheim manages to laugh a little, give the guy credit. “Well, that should be easy enough to believe.”

“Shut up, bastard, you weren’t even around to raise me wrong. You don’t get to give me crap.”

Hohenheim laughs again, but he’s kinda breathless. “That’s fair.”

“So how’d you take him down?”

“Hm. In the end, the people who made up his Philosopher’s Stone weren’t on his side, but mine were on my side. He ran out of the time he needed to tip the balance in his favor. I owe a great deal to Greed. And to you, of course.” Still smiling at Ed, like he’s trying to make up for ten years’ worth of smiles right now. “It would have been a mistake to take him on alone. Thank you.” He trails off and goes quiet. Ed thinks he’s gonna leave it like that, but no. One last thing. “I’ll say hello to Trisha and Alphonse for you.”

And then the bastard dies.

“Nice parting shot,” Ed whispers. Fucker. If the dead really do wait on the other side of the Gate, then Ed’s gonna have some kind of welcoming committee. He probably won’t even make it to his family. Be torn to pieces before that.

Family of four, three of ‘em dead, and the last one’s…well, the last one’s Ed. Bad luck, that’s all. Bad luck family. Just goes that way sometimes.

Of course Ed’s not having any fucking kids.

He reaches out and closes Hohenheim’s eyes. What’s with this dying like a normal person? Ed was expecting him to break down to dust and nothing. Being a Philosopher’s Stone.

At least I didn’t have to kill him.

Al-voice is crying.

“Are you all right?” Hughes asks, quiet.

People really, really need to stop asking Ed that question.

“I barely knew the guy,” he says. It’s hard to push the words out, like his throat’s decided to choke itself. Idiot body. Idiot Hughes. “Hey, Mustang,” he goes on before Hughes can think up any more good, lacerating questions. “Burn him for me.”

“Burn…?” Roy looks baffled by this request, even though, thanks, it’s a totally fucking normal one. Cremation. It’s a done thing. Ed maybe didn’t much like his worthless dad, but that doesn’t mean he wants the guy to be maggot food.

“Ed, are you sure you want—”

“I said burn him.”

Roy stares with no expression in those blackout eyes of his. Ed scowls back, cuz this is fair. This is fair, he can ask for this. He has the right.

“If you wait until we get to a proper crematorium,” Roy says finally, never looking away, “then you can collect the ashes. Wouldn’t you prefer that?”

No. No, because what the fuck is he gonna do with dead father ashes? Dump ‘em somewhere? Where? Where d’you dump a guy who was always running away?

But obviously Roy’d prefer it, which is fuckin’ weird, people are weird about death. And Ed’s no better. Why’s he even care if Hohenheim’s body gets maggoty? Not like anybody’s in there anymore. But he does care. What is that, some kind of biological programming?

“Fine. But you burn him. And you better not leave bones, cuz I am not dealing with old man bone chunks, Mustang.”

“I can do that,” Roy agrees. They study each other for a while. Ed turned to this guy to take care of his worthless dad without hardly thinking about it. Now that he is thinking about it, that seems weird. Hohenheim wasn’t anything to Roy. So why?

Weird.

Eventually Roy sighs and turns away. “Let’s find the Lieutenant before she shoots someone on principle,” he says.

“Shit, Hawkeye!” Distracting Ed with dying fathers, cheap trick. “Doubt she’s even come to yet.” They ought to haul her ass to a hospital and tie her to a bed, Knox-style.

“What do you mean, come to?” Roy’s freaking out. He’s so high-strung.

“We’d better go find out, hmm?” Hughes gives Roy a significant look that means nothing to Ed, then throws his jacket over Ed’s shoulders and wanders into the maze of the lab, calling out Hawkeye’s name. Roy follows him.

What’s that about? Does Hughes think Ed’s cold or something? What the fuck?

Ed finds himself clutching the jacket closer, which pisses him off more. But he trails after the two of them anyway.

They leave the body behind.

* * *

They find Hawkeye; she’s fine. She’s even awake. Apparently dumping her in a corner and leaving her was a great idea, health-wise.

“Do you ever wash this coat?” she asks with what sounds like polite curiosity, but isn’t.

“Well, you bled all over it, so I’m gonna have to wash it now,” Ed tells her. “And fuck off, by the way. Should’ve let you freeze. Ingrate.”

She makes a scary face at Ed. He bares his teeth back at her. Sometime soon, they’re gonna have a talk, just the two of them, about injured people who make lying promises not to sneak into dangerous labs and do stupid shit.

“Lieutenant,” Roy says. “You and Hughes agreed to wait twenty-four hours before coming here.”

Ed horrifies himself by thinking, Yeah, what he said.

She turns to Roy with her very blankest face. “Yes, sir,” she answers, that special style of yes, sir that actually means fuck you.

“And yet you seem to be rather early.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why is that, Lieutenant?”

She blinks at him. “I’m glad you’re alive, sir.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you’re alive, too. But if—”

“If I hadn’t come, you might not be alive. Sir.”

Roy shakes his head and makes a little touché gesture. Hughes is grinning like a mad fool, maybe cuz he is a mad fool. And Ed…

Ed needs to learn all of Hawkeye’s tricks, because they rock.

“Can you stand?” Roy asks.

“I should be fine once I’m on my feet.” She holds out an imperious, bloody hand. Roy pulls her up, guides her arm over his shoulder, puts an arm around her waist. “I will find out why you came here,” he says.

She says, “I’m sure you will, sir.”

* * *

They walk out of the ruins of Lab 3 and run into Teacher and Sig, who’re apparently also still alive. That’s a surprise and a relief. Teacher actually hugs Ed, it’s freaky. Mei’s here, too, hovering over the Gran guy. And Ling’s here; he’s getting bitched out by Lan Fan. No sign of her granddad, though.

It looks like Gran’s dead. Too bad. Ed liked him.

A bit further on, there are a bunch of random military types. Both Armstrongs, looking beat to hell, and the Briggs guys. Plus Havoc in a wheelchair and Breda with a cane, deeply full of themselves for some reason. Then there are a flock of fierce-looking civilians. Every frigging one of them seems to know more about what went down than Ed does. Wild congratulations on all sides, whatever. Lots of shouting.

Roy and Hughes shove Ed between them so he won’t get molested by strangers. If he didn’t know they were doing it to keep him from killing people, he’d be sort of touched.

They’re almost to the middle of the crowd when the light goes weird. Ed squints up and watches for a second as the moon blacks out the sun.

He does some quick calculating. Unless he spent more than ten hours under a pile of rock, there is no fucking way that makes any sense.

* * *

Apparently Hughes and Hawkeye waited almost eighteen hours to come back to the lab. Roy was irritated about them being six hours early, but that’s nothing to how early Ed thought they were. This explains why everybody who wasn’t a sacrifice looked so fucking exhausted—they’d been fighting for a whole day.

Fourteen extra hours, give or take. Teacher decides Ed and Gran and Hohenheim must’ve spent those hours in the Gate, cuz it’s the only difference she and Ed can come up with. Impossible hypothesis to test, obviously. Gran definitely opened the Gate, but they can’t exactly check with Hohenheim.

Assuming they’re right, though, it means time can pass differently inside the Gate if the Gate freaking feels like it.

Ed loved Amestrian alchemy, he really did. He’s gonna miss it like crazy. Even so, he’s kind of glad everybody’s gonna be forced to love Xingian alchemy instead, cuz when you come right down to it, Amestrian alchemy was some scary shit.

So that’s the abuse of alchemy problem solved: alchemy’s broken. And Xing’s purification arts are meant to be about love and peace and healing, so Ed likes to think it’ll be a couple years before Amestrians manage to fuck them up. (He’s trying not to remember Mei Chang on the warpath.) Now the only problem is goddamn politics, and Ed, for the most part, doesn’t care.

He’d vaguely wondered what Hughes was getting up to while everybody else was living, eating, and breathing alchemy. Now he knows, because they crawl out of that hellish lab, Ed blinks, and Roy’s the fucking fuhrer.

Ed’s never gonna bitch about the scheming again. He can’t wait for Chris to get back. She’s gonna laugh her ass off about this, and he wants to see it.

The worrying thing is, Hughes is obviously not done yet. Hughes may never be done. Scheming may be to him what alchemy is to Ed. Or what killing people is to Ed. Either way it’s scary.

Ed follows the upheaval from a safe distance, which isn’t hard: politics is all anybody’s talking about. Inevitable side-effect of a coup. Ed takes a quick trip to Rizembool to dump worthless father ashes next to his mom’s grave (he wants to see the fucker run away from her now), and it seems like every train stop on the way back brings a wave of new gossip.

Ling and Lan Fan and Mei went back to Xing, where Ling instantly finagled his way into being emperor (Ed suspects assassination). Now suddenly Xing’s super-friendly with Amestris for the first time in living memory.

Roy’s busy doing nice things for Ishbal—Ed heard as much from some scowling Ishbalans who were waiting for the axe to fall. Ed found himself in opposites world: he was the guy telling people they didn’t need to be paranoid. Meanwhile, a lot of non-Ishbalans are freaking out. They say the evil Ishbalans are invading the country or whatever, like it wasn’t their country to begin with. People are assholes.

The general Armstrong’s second, that guy Miles, he’s the liaison between Roy and the Ishbalans. That’s cool. Ed hears he’s randomly collected a troop of chimera guys, like bodyguards or who knows. Apparently they follow him everywhere and it’s hilarious. Ed’s gotta see this in action sometime.

Mrs. Wrath is overhauling the entire adoption/orphanage/foster care system in Amestris. Whenever anyone complains to her about the money she’s spending, she says, “Your fuhrer killed my husband.” And she gets her damn money.

Tough lady. Ed wonders if she’s doing all this cuz she’s still looking for her kid.

And finally there’s the local stuff. Knox is working in his son’s clinic like a real doctor. Hawkeye’s signing up for some military shooting contest that she’s totally gonna win with her off hand because she’s not human. (And thinking of that, Ed buys her a freaking mirror to replace her old one and has it shipped. He figures it should keep her from hunting him down.) Havoc and Breda are making a fortune as contractors specializing in weapons R&D. They like to pretend they’re not still Roy’s lapdogs, but Ed knows the truth. And he hopes to God they never meet Winry.

Ed’s been following the gossip, yeah. But he hasn’t been involved, and he likes it that way. When the world was ending, he was pretty confident he couldn’t make it any worse. The world’s not ending anymore. There is once again plenty he can fuck up if he lets himself. He’s done.

He was living in some kind of dream world if he honestly thought he could get away with that. Hughes catches up with him about a month after Roy goes fuhrer.

“Edward Elric,” he says. “Just the man I’ve been looking for!” He must’ve been looking hard, too, cuz Ed’s been avoiding him like a leper.

The thing is, Hughes’s been so crazy busy that Ed thought he’d be safe for a while. Hughes is the one managing Roy and the newspapers and the ambitious types. Like, he set up everybody who wanted to be fuhrer with jobs so awesome they don’t want to be fuhrer anymore. He put the general Armstrong in charge of the entire border, which was evil genius.

But you apparently can’t keep Hughes busy enough. He chased Ed to ground in a shitty restaurant on the outskirts of town where nobody knows any Demon Alchemist (not personally, anyway) and Ed has to pay for his own food, which sucks. And it didn’t even help. Nowhere’s safe.

The problem is, Hughes knows everybody, and what’s more, everybody likes him. They fall all over themselves to do him favors. Probably he just had to stand in a bar and say, “Gosh, I wonder where the Demon Alchemist is these days,” and bam, everybody in Central turned into a freaking Hughesian spy.

Ed thinks idly about setting fire to something to put this conversation off for a while.

“Now, now, don’t look at me like you’re daydreaming about the color of my blood,” Hughes says, which obviously causes Ed to do just that. “I’m doing you a favor. Do you know how many phone calls I’ve gotten from Winry Rockbell?”

Ed looks away. Winry’s one of a long list of people he should’ve called after whatever. He didn’t call anybody, though, and it’s clearly coming to bite him in the ass.

“She was threatening to come look for you herself if I didn’t find you.”

Right. Ed shoves his chair back from the table. Screw setting fires, he’s running the fuck away.

No, shit, that never works with Hughes.

“I’ve been thinking,” Hughes says, predictably not put off by anything Ed does, “that your mistake is in your life philosophy. You’ve been guilty of narrow thinking, Ed.”

“I’ve never known what the hell you’re talkin’ about,” Ed rasps out, preoccupied with Winry and how fucking pissed she’s gonna be once she catches up with him. “Not once, not in the whole damn time I’ve known you.”

“What I mean is,” Hughes goes on, “you seem to have a gift for saving entire countries. Maybe individual people are too small. Although you’ve done pretty well with Hawkeye.”

Ed’s mind goes perfectly blank, like somebody dumped a bucket of white paint over everything in there.

Hughes thinks he’s good at saving people.

Hughes is insane.

“I have a suggestion!” Hughes beams. Ed should feel the chill of foreboding, but he’s too busy reeling from the last deranged comment. “You can be the new fuhrer’s bodyguard. Because, you see, the fuhrer is the state. In a sense. And you helped save the state once before. It makes perfect sense.”

“…Out of your fucking mind.”

“Hawkeye’s with me!”

“So what!? So you’re both out of your fucking minds! Fuck off, Hughes, I kill people. You know that’s all I do. And screw you anyway, I’m busy, I’m—”

“What are you busy doing, Ed?” Hughes asks, abruptly deathly serious, leaning forward across the table. “What are your plans? Back to Demon Alchemist duty? I don’t think you’ll find it very satisfying.”

Ed laughs, tries to ignore how cracked and shaky it sounds. “Yeah, well. Everything’s a letdown after the end of the world. I was thinking alchemy; it needs some help. The great swap to purification arts, yeah?” That’s what Teacher’s been up to, learning the purification arts.

Turns out to be a good thing the military was so stingy with its alchemists. Independent alchemists are pretty thin on the ground, and State Alchemists got hoarded like crown jewels, so the economy never depended on them. If it had, the father guy might as well’ve leveled the country, cuz it’d turn out the same.

Even so, it’d be nice to have alchemy back. And Ed would, you know, like to be in on that.

Hughes is grinning. Ed looks at that goddamn grin, and he knows, no avoiding it, that they might as well slap him in a cage right now, because he’s never gonna be free of this man. Roy and Hawkeye might let him go (maybe) if they believed that was what he wanted. Winry he might be able to avoid. Teacher doesn’t ever go looking for people, they can just fucking come to her.

Hughes, though? He’ll never give up, he can find Ed anywhere, and he doesn’t give a flying fuck what it is Ed thinks he wants.

Ed twitches and drops his fork before he’s tempted to use it on Hughes.

“Ed, the job I’m offering you will be very exciting, and you’ll have plenty of private time to study alchemy. Travel, books, adventure! You won’t regret it.”

He’s regretting it already. “Do I get a pension?”

* * *

Ed’s bored.

Ed is really, really fucking bored.

If he’d known that saving Amestris would turn out this goddamn boring, he would’ve let the place burn. Travel and adventure, his ass. He should dismember Hughes, the shithead. And he’d like to see what the crime stats look like now that he doesn’t have time to keep people in line cuz he’s too fuckin’ busy babysitting Roy.

Al-voice murmurs that this is good for him. Course, Al thought milk was good for you too, when actually it might as well be poison for how disgusting it is.

“Ed,” Roy snaps, dropping his pen and bringing his hands up to massage his temples. “Feel free to go. Anywhere. For as long as you like.”

“Gotta stay until Hawkeye gets back,” Ed points out, then goes back to tapping an automail finger against the window. He’s been doing it for like an hour. Fuck you, Mustang in Morse code ‘til he got tired of it, then on to I’m so fucking bored in a code he learned from Mei, and he was just trying to remember if he’d ever learned any old-school alchemy tapping codes or any Ishbalan ones when Roy started bitching. “She’ll kill us both if I run early.”

“Five more minutes of this,” Roy says, “and I’ll kill myself.”

“Some devotion to your country you got, jackass.”

“Why don’t you practice your purification arts? Or read? Or do anything but that?”

“If I read, I won’t notice if people come in to kill you.”

“Then you could—”

“Tell me what you’re doing.”

Roy freezes like a mouse staring down a snake. Ed loves it when he does that. “Tell you?”

“Yeah, sure. It’ll be boring as fuck, but not as boring as sitting here watching you scribble things and pull your hair out.”

“You’d like me,” Roy says in a worryingly dreamy kind of way, “to share the contents of these top secret documents with you. Because you’re bored.”

“Basically, yeah,” Ed agrees. “Problem?”

Roy’s got a weird, unfocused look now. It’s kinda freaky.

“No,” he says finally, still not actually looking at anything. “No problem. Why would there be a problem?”

Thereupon follows, right, half an hour of the details of the opening deal Roy and Miles are working out with the Ishbalans. Ed already knows all this shit, because he introduced Miles to Mistress Shan and listened to them hammer it out in like twenty minutes. Done and done, right?

Wrong. So wrong. First the nice, clean agreement had to be translated into politicianese until nobody could understand a fuckin’ thing. And only then did Roy get to look at it.

Why anybody’d want this job is a frigging eternal mystery. Everybody should do like Hawkeye’s granddad. He calls himself an advisor, whatever that means. Far as Ed can see, it gets him a nice chair and sweet pay, plus everybody saluting him and calling him sir. In exchange for all that, he periodically wanders over to bitch at Roy. Otherwise doesn’t do dick. Or, if that didn’t appeal, you could do like the general Armstrong, who’s off smashing hell out of dissidents and having a blast.

Roy, meanwhile, gets the nice desk and good pay and saluting, but he has to read all this crap. And field death threats. But he doesn’t get to smash anybody.

He is the clear loser.

Or maybe Ed’s the clear loser, cuz he’s the one standing here twiddling his thumbs and watching Roy’s life suck, isn’t he?

Content of the paperwork’s not less boring than total silence was, but it is fun to know what exactly Roy’s driving himself nuts over. So there’s that. Plus every once in a while Ed can clarify something, since he was there for the original talk and knows what the bullshit language was meant to mean.

Roy’s face when he does that? Yeah, it’s never gonna get old.

This being trapped thing. Ed’s not hating it as much as he ought to. He’s letting himself settle here, letting himself be one of these people. And he knows it’s gonna end in tears and disaster cuz it always fuckin’ does. He is scared shitless.

But it’s so easy. They make it easy. They make it really hard for him to cut them loose like he should. The world keeps not going to hell, and it’s annoying. He doesn’t know how to act. For now, he’s trying not to think about it, which is a loser’s tactic. And impossible anyway, what with Al-voice acting all thrilled with developments.

Assholes. If they’d given Ed a proper, death-defying job, he’d be a safe distance away, and besides wouldn’t have time to brood about this shit.

Anyway, half an hour of boring-ass paperwork later, suddenly there’s Hughes. Holy shit, is there ever Hughes—Hughes laughing so hard he can’t talk. He staggers in, slams the door behind him, and leans back against it, weak with the fuckin’ hilarity of it all. He holds up a newspaper so they can see. Front page of the Central Times.

It’s a picture of Ed—blurry and far away, but still obviously Ed—and it’s titled ‘The Enigmatic Demon Alchemist—Noble Vigilante or Sinister Government Asassin?’

There is a typo in Ed’s fuckin’ headline. “Mark Rhodes,” he hears himself say distantly, “is a dead man.”

“You haven’t even read the article yet,” Hughes gasps out between fits of snickering. “Oh god, the scar! The black magic rituals! Sheep, sheep!” Then he’s laughing too hard to go on. Thank fuck.

“I’m not wasting my time reading that shit when I could be killing him instead, the—oh, hell, and I’m stuck with this bastard for another hour!”

“Now that Hughes is here,” Roy says, wild-eyed, “I think you may go. Hawkeye won’t hold it against either of us, because Hughes is deadly and paranoid enough even for her.”

“Seriously?” Ed asks. “Cuz if she hunts me down, I’m gonna blame you for everything I ever did wrong in my life.”

Roy scowls, which Ed doesn’t get. Dipshit can’t take a joke.

“Hmm, we wouldn’t want that,” Hughes murmurs, smirking. See? Hughes thinks it’s funny. Course, Hughes thinks everything’s funny.

Roy pulls himself together, good job. “She won’t hunt you down, Elric,” he says. “Go. Be free. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tonight?” Hughes cuts in. “Gracia is making an apple pie. The best apple pie you ever tasted in your life! My perfect Elicia is helping with the crust!”

“I hate apple pie,” Ed lies. He backs away in case Hughes is getting crazy ideas about grabbing his arm or something.

“Winry will be there!”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“Ed,” Roy interrupts, rubbing his forehead. “Just go.”

“You’re my favorite, Roy,” Ed announces, darting past Hughes, flinging the door open, and dashing out into the hall.

“Don’t kill anyone within city limits!” Roy shouts after him. Maybe not something the fuhrer should be shouting down the hall, huh?

Ed grins. It’s gonna be a good day. He can tell.