theory and practice - part 3

[metisket]

Ed escaped Knox two weeks later, and within two days of that, he was behaving as if he’d never been hurt at all. The scar on his face would be there for life, and the fingers were still missing, but he walked with an easy confidence that a person who’d recently been nearly disemboweled shouldn’t have. It strongly reminded Maes of the disappearing limp after that night in Lab 5. It reminded Maes that he’d never seen Ed severely injured before this, despite his line of work.

Which seemed very odd, now he thought about it.

“Roy,” Maes said as he and Roy and Hawkeye walked to a park to meet Ed. “Can alchemists heal injuries?”

“There’s a branch of medical alchemy,” Roy replied, giving him a curious look that Hawkeye echoed. “It’s not my specialty. From what I hear, Xing has been much more successful with it than we have. Amestrian alchemy has always been more focused on destruction.”

Maes nodded. Yes, yes, Amestris: nation of all screwed up. That wasn’t the point. “Has Ed ever been to Xing?”

Roy was beginning to look worried. “Not as far as I know.”

Maes shook his head. “Something’s not right. He’s healing too fast.”

“Healing too fast?”

“I saw him yesterday, and apart from the fingers, which he hasn’t grown back, he looked in perfect health. The way you alchemists talk, you don’t get something for nothing. So what’s he paying with?”

“If I had a Philosopher’s Stone, I could fake basic medical alchemy,” Roy said slowly. “But Elric couldn’t have…”

“He hasn’t had time. I’ve been keeping a close eye on him since he found out what a Philosopher’s Stone is, and he hasn’t had time to stockpile enough people to make one of his own. Besides, surprising though it may seem, I can’t picture him doing that.”

“No.” Roy frowned. “No. He’s always favored the direct approach.” Hawkeye nodded agreement.

They walked in silence the rest of the way. As they stepped through the gate into the park proper, Roy said, “I’ll find out.”

“You’ll find out what?” said Ed, who was, for the love of everything holy, in a tree. Maes and Roy both jumped, and Hawkeye had a gun halfway out of its holster before her brain caught up. You never did get used to Ed.

“I’ll find out why you think the answer to that question is any business of yours,” Roy said smoothly. Up in the shadows amongst the branches, Maes could just make out the gleam of Ed’s teeth as he grinned. “Why are you in a tree, Elric?”

Ed shrugged, dropping the grin, and swung down like a monkey to land in front of them. “I like trees,” he said. And he liked walls and fences and window ledges… “So I finally got to look in a mirror,” Ed went on cheerfully. “Check this out.”

He grinned again. Now that he was both out of bandages and on ground level, Maes could properly appreciate the grin. The scar cut diagonally across Ed’s cheek, and when he grinned, it twisted, giving his eye an evil cast and making that side of his mouth snarl. He’d always looked crazy, but that grin was grotesque.

“You’ll bring all the girls to the yard, Ed,” Maes sighed.

Ed laughed.

“Excuse me?” said a tiny girl with a tiny creature perched on her shoulder. Maes was now conjuring girls up by mentioning them. Thank God Roy had never developed this ability. “Um, I’m sorry to bother you, but I heard that the Demon Alchemist lived in this city. Do you happen to know where I could find him?”

Oh, help.

“Lucky you, you already found him,” said the Demon Alchemist, a cold about-face from his manner of seconds before. Maes felt special. “The fuck do you want?”

“You’re the Demon Alchemist?” the girl asked with candid horror. When Ed just stared at her, she looked to the rest of them for confirmation. Maes nodded at her sadly. Poor thing. He didn’t know what she’d expected, but no one ever expected Ed. “Oh,” she said. Impressively, it only took her a moment to regroup. “I need to speak with an alchemist.”

“Yeah?” Ed asked, unimpressed, but at least no longer overtly hostile. “And why’d you come to me? Everybody knows I’m nuts.”

“Um, yes,” the little girl said, twisting her hands, while her little creature twisted its paws in sympathy. “But a very kind person in the town of Youswell said that I should never talk to a state alchemist because they were evil and selfish and mean and probably ugly.”

“Cover your ears, Mustang,” Ed muttered, and Hawkeye made a sound that Maes was almost sure was a choked-off laugh. Roy thought so too, because he gave her a wounded look. She stared straight ahead, innocently expressionless.

“…Also they let his father die,” the girl went on, more unsure of them by the minute. “And he said you were the only other alchemist he knew by name. He said you kill evil men. He said why haven’t you come to kill the man who owns their mine yet?”

“I can’t be fuckin’ everywhere,” Ed informed her.

“Is this how you get most of your jobs, Elric?” Roy asked.

“No. Shut up.”

“He didn’t say you were rude,” the girl announced, less nervous and more indignant.

“He told you what I was, right?” Ed was getting annoyed. Maes wished he wouldn’t. “What the hell did you expect?”

“You were supposed to be, be…” she broke off and resorted to pantomime. Maes wasn’t sure what all she meant, but she might have been indicating, among other things, elegant, exciting, handsome…cuddly?

“…tall,” she finally decided.

Ed’s reaction to this was priceless. It wasn’t that Ed was dramatically short, but he was slightly below average. Maes was mortally certain no one had dared comment on it in recent memory, though. What sane person would call the Demon Alchemist short? Ed was absolutely blindsided.

After a long time spent gaping, Ed pulled himself together enough to howl, “Don’t call me short, you maggot-sized little brat!”

Hawkeye was making that choked-laughing sound again.

“A gentleman would never compare a lady to a maggot!” the tiny, crazy girl cried.

“A lady would never go looking for a murderer,” Ed told her.

“A princess would do anything for her people!”

“Holy shit, did you just say princess? You look Xingian. Hang on, are you a fucking princess of Xing? Why the hell did all you people feel the need to crawl across the desert this month, and why the hell did you all end up at my feet? Huh? Are you gonna steal my food now, is that how this is gonna go? Fuck off!”

Edward Elric: soul of diplomacy.

“Should we interrupt?” Maes murmured to Roy.

“No,” Roy whispered back.

No. Now was that a no because Ed, contrary to appearances, was not about to cause an international incident? Or was that a no because Roy thought said international incident would be funny? Maes had no confidence.

Thank God there was a nice, big desert between Amestris and Xing. Amen.

“I don’t need you!” the Xingian princess announced, pointing an indignant finger toward Ed. “You! Who would want your help anyway, you tiny rice-grain man!? Even the other man with scars on his face was nicer than you!”

“The other man with scars on his face?” Ed demanded. “What kind of scars?”

“Eh? Like this.” She drew an X across her face. Of course she did.

“You’re talking about Scar,” Ed marveled. “Are you like magnetically drawn to murderers, stupid midget? Where did you see him?”

“Why should I tell you?” Indignantly folded arms.

“I’ll tell you about alchemy if you tell me where you saw him,” Ed said. Because—oh ho!—equivalent exchange. Maes did understand Ed. Sometimes. Rarely.

“Now?” the girl asked. She was getting more imperiously princess-like by the second.

“Tomorrow. We’ll go to the library. I’ll show you books, you’ll show me maps. Deal?”

The girl considered for one more long second, then stuck out her hand awkwardly, as if she’d read about this custom somewhere, but had never tried it. “My name is Mei Chang, Princess of Xing,” she said. “And this is Xiao Mei,” of the creature.

“Yeah?” Ed tested out his new grin. “I’m the Demon Alchemist.”

Maes turned to Roy and Hawkeye. He was glad to see that Hawkeye looked faintly worried. Roy, on the other hand, seemed thrilled. What do you think of that? said his silly, smiling face.

What Maes thought was that the homunculi were going to have to hurry if they meant to destroy the country before Ed and Mei Chang beat them to it.

* * *

With the clarity of hindsight, Maes could see that he had no one but himself to blame for the position he was in. He’d known, after all, that Ed was on a hunt. He also knew first hand what a very bad idea it was to be with Ed while he was on a hunt.

It wasn’t a proper hunt, at least; Ed assured them he just wanted to ask Scar questions—about Kimbley, about what had happened up north, and, ominously, about ‘what his problem is.’ Still, proper or not, a hunt was a hunt, and Maes had seen one already. No need to repeat the experience.

But he’d forgotten. Yes. Oh, yes. Roy was going to deliver unto him the Sarcasm of Doom. Maes hoped at least that Roy would never realize he’d let Ed steer him into the shady part of the downtown without paying attention to where they were, because Maes would never live that down.

Maes rather enjoyed Ed’s company. He just needed to keep in mind that there were times when, charming though he was, the pleasure of his company wasn’t worth the grief.

“There,” Ed hissed.

And there was a man with an X-shaped scar across his face standing at the mouth of an alley. Maes thought, Why me? Why is it always me, why can’t it ever be Roy?

“I have to call Roy,” he said, following that train of thought. “It’ll only take a second, don’t disappear until I call Roy, stay still for just a—Ed!”

Ed did not listen well. Or at all. Tch.

Maes called Roy’s office anyway, and got Hawkeye. He asked for backup. Perhaps he screamed for backup. It wasn’t his fault; he was in a hurry.

By luck more than strategy, he managed to catch up with Scar and Ed; they’d stopped running. They were standing in an empty lot staring at each other, Scar almost uncertainly, Ed as if he were trying to place something. Maes wondered if he should throw out a comment. Please don’t blow up my city, that kind of thing.

“Oh,” Ed said in an odd tone made up of rage and satisfaction. “I know you.”

“You don’t know anything, boy,” Scar intoned in the tried-and-true commanding manner of violent fanatics everywhere.

Ed started circling. Maes knew how things played out when Ed started circling. He was glad he’d gotten hold of Hawkeye after all, because that meant Hawkeye would be the one driving. Roy had no sense of urgency behind the wheel.

“You,” Ed growled, “are the Ishbalan whose brother studied alchemy.”

Scar stopped dead, face abruptly wiped of all expression. Maes imagined his own face didn’t look much better.

Scar was Ishbalan. Oh, hell. That explained everything.

Ed laughed. “I thought so,” he said in a malicious hiss. “You used to argue with him about it, they said. You thought it was contrary to the will of Ishbala or what the fuck ever. I hear he saved you. I hear he gave you his arm and his life.”

Scar made a convulsive clutching gesture at his right arm, but didn’t answer.

“It’s funny,” Ed said conversationally, closing in. “I gave my little brother my arm, too, and I offered them my life. He died anyway. That doesn’t seem equivalent.”

Scar was now confused beyond his ability to cope with it, from the look of him. Wow, Maes hated it when Ed made him feel sorry for the bad guys.

“I have no quarrel with you,” Scar said quietly.

Ed grinned that new, horrific grin of his. “Too bad, cuz I got a quarrel with you. Know what else I know? It’s funny how chatty your people are when they feel like somebody’s on their side. Or maybe you’re just a disgrace to them.” Scar was stoic about this comment, which apparently pleased Ed. “I know you killed the doctors who nursed you back to health. Was that the will of Ishbala? Whatever. Can’t say it makes much fuckin’ difference to me what your reasons were.”

Scar’s eyes widened, and he took a step back.

He should have turned and run. Ed had stopped moving, and that wasn’t a good sign at all. “And I know something you don’t know,” Ed went on, still with a smile. “Those doctors? They were my best friend’s parents.”

He clapped and attacked.

“Ed! Ed, don’t kill him, we need—Ed!” To say that Ed was ignoring Maes would be a wild understatement.

His best friend? Ed had a best friend? Where had this person been hiding, and why wasn’t mystery friend around to help restrain Ed when needed?

Maes didn’t feel comfortable aiming a knife at anyone: they were both so fast there was no telling who he’d hit or how serious the damage would be. He didn’t want to accidentally kill one of them. That would be ridiculous.

And he’d be damned if he was getting any closer to a fight between two people who murdered for fun and profit. Again, why was this kind of thing always happening to him lately?

Oh yes. Because Edward Elric.

A car screeched up behind him, and at least Roy had always had impeccable timing.

“Is that Scar?” Roy demanded, leaping out of the car and tugging at his gloves for comfort, with Hawkeye half a step behind and armed, as always, and Havoc a step behind her. The gang’s all here. “What does Elric think he’s doing?”

“Ed claims Scar killed the parents of—and I quote—his ‘best friend.’”

“Oh, that’s fantastic,” Roy said sourly, snapping his fingers.

A gout of flame passed within inches of Ed and Scar, and they broke apart and leapt back.

It took Ed some time to readjust to the world of not killing people, but he got there eventually, spotted Roy, and shouted, “What the fuck was that for!?”

“You were the one who said we needed to talk to him, Elric,” Roy said, every inch the cold, distant commanding officer. “Do you really have so little self-control?”

“Obviously I don’t have shit for self-control, Mustang.” Ed laughed, high and wild. Oh, disturbing. “Thought you knew that about me!”

“Pretend you do,” Roy snapped, losing his cool a bit, “and ask your questions.”

“I’m not asking him shit,” Ed announced, kicking dirt in Scar’s direction. “Guy like him, there’s no point. He’s got no honor.” And then Ed leaned toward Scar, who was still torn between rage and bafflement, and hissed a word in a language it took Maes a few seconds to recognize.

Well, of course it did. Ishbalans these days spoke Amestrian. No one spoke Ishbalan anymore outside of church services and last rites. Except for Ed, apparently.

“I know what I am,” Scar rumbled.

Ed laughed again, more crazed by the second. “Is this what your brother would have wanted?” he cried out with wide eyes, and Maes doubted even he knew whether he was talking to Scar or to himself.

“Scar’s Ishbalan?” Roy asked blankly.

“But of course, Roy,” Maes whispered, feeling, oh, perhaps a little manic. “I think this is a lifetime best for us, as far as hideous awkwardness goes. Unless perhaps you got his sister pregnant. Oh, please, Roy, say you did.”

Roy reached out and gripped Maes’s shoulder hard enough to hurt.

Right, Maes thought. Calm down, Maes. Breathe. It’ll be okay, you’re only stuck in the bad part of Central with a sniper, a pyromaniac, and a couple of serial killers.

Nothing to worry about at all.

“I have no quarrel with you,” Scar repeated, then slammed his hand against the wall and blew up most of the side of the building. When the dust cleared, he was gone, and nobody had died. Perhaps because the gods protected fools.

Maes might have liked a moment to stand around and feel dazed. This was not permitted. Predictably, Ed no sooner figured out what had happened than he tried to dart away after Scar. Roy seized him by the collar, misbehaving-cat style (brave soul, Roy. Brave and stupid), and bundled him into the car. Ed snarled like a mad thing the whole way.

Havoc stood beside Maes, and together they contemplated the car they were meant to get into. The car, which now contained an angry Flame Alchemist and a psychotic Demon kid.

“I don’t want to,” Havoc said.

Maes sighed agreement. “Well, Havoc, we all die one day.”

Havoc didn’t seem to find this particularly comforting.

Hawkeye brushed past them and climbed into the back seat next to Ed, slamming the door behind her. Maes and Havoc glanced at each other, then, as one, turned to the car, clicked their heels together, and saluted.

* * *

“So you called the serial killer a nasty name in Ishbalan,” Maes said once he’d coaxed Havoc into the driver’s seat and they were on their way. “What was it? And why, why do you know Ishbalan?”

“Met some guys in the desert,” Edward said, doing his usual amazing job of failing to explain anything. He was still sulking over the collar-grabbing, but that was acceptable. Maes was just impressed there hadn’t been bloodshed over it. “And it meant, like, nameless.”

“Nameless?” Roy asked, twisting around in the front seat to face them. Ed scowled at him.

“Yeah. Sort of. There are a couple ways to say it. There’s like, the way when you’re a criminal and they take your name away because Ishbala gave it and you don’t rate anymore. Then there’s Scar’s way. Where you throw it away.”

“And what does that mean?” Maes asked.

Ed shrugged. “Like, he gives up on life. He did something bad, or something bad happened, or, I dunno, he just fuckin’ doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t want to go to a god in the end. He wants to burn, and screw everything, he’s done with it. That’s what it means. And you can’t trust those people as far as you can throw ‘em, because obviously they don’t give a shit about anything.”

“He seemed attached to his brother,” Hawkeye mentioned.

“Well, his brother’s dead,” Ed said harshly. “Drop me here. I gotta see somebody.”

“Who?” Roy asked.

“Fuck off,” Ed snarled. Maes wondered if he knew that he sounded just like Lizard when he said that.

Havoc pulled briskly over and came to an abrupt halt. Jumping at any excuse to unload the snarling Ed. Maes couldn’t blame him.

* * *

Maes was becoming highly conversant with the ways of Edward Elric, and he knew that after an incident like that, he should properly give Ed at least a week to cool down. Possibly two weeks.

Events overcame his good intentions.

At this point, he had his people listening for any rumor at all, anything unusual, anything persistent. (Fuery’s glorious little bugs? They were glorious.) He was pulling a lot of static information, but every once in a while, he turned up something that seemed significant. Such as a girl who was asking around for Edward Elric. By that name.

Maes didn’t think there were very many people who knew that name.

He hunted the girl down. He didn’t like to use the word abduction, but, well, if it quacks like a duck…

He only had to talk to her for fifteen minutes before deciding that Ed needed to see her. Calling Ed had unquestionably been the right thing to do, though Maes might never be forgiven for it. The look Ed gave him when he walked through the door and found the girl sitting there was record-setting levels of evil.

“Winry,” Ed said blankly.

“You’re impossible,” Winry announced, utterly unmoved by the fact that Ed was the scariest thing ever. “Do you know how hard it was to find you in this stupid city?”

“Still looking for me after all this time?” Ed said with a strange smile that Maes didn’t like. Or maybe it was just the scar turning it strange. “I figured you’d lost interest.”

“Oh, shut up, Ed,” she snapped.

Ah ha ha. Maes had suspected she might be that kind of friend. Oh God.

“I wasn’t going to go wandering all over the place looking for you when you wouldn’t hold still for two weeks together! And nobody knew any Edward Elric, either. People would say, ‘Oh, the Demon Alchemist?’—and seriously, Ed, what is with that name?—‘Oh, he’s in East, South, Liore, New Optain, Rush Valley—he’s nowhere and you’re never going to find him.’ They’ve been saying you were in Central for months, I just didn’t believe it. But here you are. And so here I am. What don’t you understand?”

“Why you would bother,” Ed said fiercely.

“Why I would bother?” she repeated in a shout, and, much to Maes’s surprise, with sudden tears. He’d never seen anyone cry defiantly before. “What is wrong with you?”

Ed didn’t have an answer to this. It would appear that Ed didn’t deal well with tears from anyone—it wasn’t just Major Armstrong.

“You never came home!” she shouted, pointing accusingly. “I waited. I waited, I thought, he couldn’t possibly be so stupid as to wander off without any explanation. He needs automail, I thought. But then you went off to Rush Valley, you traitor, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. Just like my parents, Ed, you jerk!”

She hurled herself into Ed’s arms with a howl of rage, thumped one fist against his chest, then proceeded to sob into his shoulder.

Maes waited for a violent outburst from Ed that never came.

“I knew you would cry,” Ed said, forcing himself to hold still and be held. It had to go against all of his instincts. “That’s why I didn’t come back, I knew—”

“I wouldn’t be crying if you had come back, idiot!” Winry wailed, and followed it up with a vicious punch to the stomach.

To which there was no reaction apart from the involuntary wheeze of pain. Ed the dangerous lunatic just stood there and took it. Was this an extension of the Nina and Elicia phenomenon? Was Ed just a soft touch with girls? No, he hadn’t been like this with Paninya or Mei Chang…

Maes wondered if Ed had any more childhood friends. Maes wondered if there was a way to persuade them all to come to Central and stay awhile.

“I’m crying because you didn’t come back! And I thought you were hurt or sick or in prison or dead! And look at you! You’ve gone insane!”

“I’m not insane,” he said. And the funny thing was, just for the moment, it seemed true.

Winry apparently didn’t think so, though; she pulled back and gave him an incredulous look.

“Okay, maybe I’m a little insane,” he admitted.

“You wander around and kill people, Ed,” she said, slowly and clearly. “That is your job. The job that you chose to go out and do. And you think that’s a little insane?”

“Somebody has to do it.”

“Oh my God.”

“And you spend all your time staring at tiny metal pieces and then wiring them to people’s nervous systems. How is that not insane?”

“It helps people live better lives!”

“Yeah? Killing murderers helps people live better lives, too.”

“Judge, jury, and executioner, huh? Thank God we have you around to know what’s best for everybody.”

Maes did not like the way this conversation was going. Even more, he didn’t like the way Ed was starting to tense up and look more like the Demon kid and less like Ed.

“I don’t know what’s best,” Ed hissed. Winry glared back at him, and Maes had to respect her for her guts, if not for her common sense. “I don’t decide. The law decides. I don’t go after people if I don’t have proof—”

“You could just give your proof to the military, Ed,” Winry said. “Or the police.”

“The military,” he sneered. Apparently he wasn’t going to mention his little arrangement with Roy. “People get away with shit all the time.” He pulled away from her and put his back to a wall. “People slip through. Doesn’t fucking matter how much they deserve to be punished, they—”

“Do you think you deserve to be punished, Ed? Is that what this is about?” Winry asked briskly, folding her arms. Maes edged forward, in case she drove Ed to attack her after all. “Do you think this is what Al would have wanted?”

Ed snarled, and Winry, for the first time, flinched. Al. That must have been the brother’s name.

And Ed had asked that very same question of Scar.

“It doesn’t fucking matter what he would have wanted! I killed him, he’s dead!”

“You didn’t kill him!”

“You can’t bring the dead back to life.”

“Ed, you didn’t kill him!”

“It was my idea.”

“It was both of you—both of you! It was a stupid idea, it was so stupid you couldn’t have come up with it on your own, it took teamwork! I watched you, I was there.”

“Whatever, this is pointless,” Ed said. The Demon kid said. “He’s dead and I’m not and now we all have to fucking deal. And psychos are destroying the country. Mind if I think about that for while?”

“Okay, Ed,” Winry snapped. “Run away. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“You should be glad,” he said in an eerie, distant voice. With which Winry was not impressed.

“Now you’re deciding what I should be grateful for, huh? You always were an arrogant jerk, but this is ridiculous.”

“What the fuck, Winry. What’re you even doing here?”

“I told you, I came to see you.”

“The hell you did. You came to see the kid you knew, and I’m not that. I don’t know how to go back to that. I can’t do shit for you.”

“Of course you can’t go back; you’re crap at going back, and you always were.”

“Hey—”

“But you can get over this violent idiot phase you’re going through.”

His hands twitched. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“You can try,” she said fiercely.

“Hell.” He did one of his unsettling total mood swings and grinned a scary grin. “I can try anything. But right now I gotta go beat somebody up. I’m gonna come back, so I’m not fucking running away. That okay? I got your permission and everything? Cuz I don’t wanna act like I know what’s best for, you know, anybody, since that really seems to piss you off.”

She stared at him. Fearless. So fearless that Maes was starting to wonder a little about her sanity. “Get lost, Ed,” she said.

He grinned again and was gone. Maes wondered who he was going to go beat up. Life’s little mysteries.

“Well,” Maes said briskly into the silence. “That should give me nightmares.”

“He is such an idiot,” Winry snapped. “What did he do with his fingers!?”

“He attacked the fuhrer with a knife,” Maes reported dutifully. “The fuhrer then cut his fingers off and sliced him up a bit. Hence the face.” And the chest and the gut, et cetera, et cetera, no need to get into the gory details.

Winry stared, wide-eyed, decided he was serious, and wailed, “Oh my God.” She covered her eyes in apparent mortification. “And what did he mean, psychos are destroying the country?”

“Oh…politics,” Maes lied. Winry probably didn’t believe him, but she didn’t press it. He liked to think she would torment Ed about it later. “You know—Winry Rockbell, was it?”

She nodded, hands still over her eyes.

“Winry. Up until recently, I would have said that Ed didn’t have any friends at all. You’re a bit of a surprise.”

Winry dropped her hands and looked suspicious. Everyone Ed knew seemed to have been born suspicious; Maes had identified it as a definite trend. Suspicious. Intelligent. Brave to the point of madness. Was this what it took to deal with Edward Elric?

“What do you mean, ‘until recently’?” she demanded. Being incapable of answering questions, could that be considered another trend?

“He recently tried to kill a man who’d murdered the parents of someone he called his best friend.”

She blinked rapidly. “Oh?”

“Mm.” That wasn’t the response of someone for whom all of this information was entirely new.

Maybe Ed only had one friend, and Maes was looking at her.

“Who…who was it? I mean, who’d murdered them?” Oh-so-casual interest.

“I think I’ll let Ed tell you about that,” Maes decided. “But onto the more immediate question! Where are you staying while you’re in Central?”

“Staying? At a hotel, I guess. I—”

“Stay with my family!”

“Your family? But I—you don’t know me at all, and I couldn’t—”

“Just wait until you meet my adorable daughter!”

He was absolutely not going to let Winry Rockbell out of his sight.

* * *

“I found the friend,” Maes informed Roy over the phone.

“…Friend?”

Roy had been pulling too many all-nighters. He was usually sharper than this. “Ed’s friend.”

“What?”

“Interesting girl.”

“Girl?”

“Winry Rockbell, automail mechanic. The girl next door, as far as I can tell. Nice young woman, very tough, very smart. She’s just like Elicia’s big sister!”

“You dragged Elric’s friend home with you.”

“It makes it easy to keep track of her.”

“You once dragged Elric home with you.”

“I’ve even dragged you home with me a few times, Roy.”

“We’re not stray pets, Maes.”

“Says you. I hear Ed’s getting his automail tuned on Wednesday. My place! Are you coming?”

“I’m coming.”

“Bring a newspaper.”

“You said two months, Maes. It’s only been one. You promised—”

“Yes, yes, yes. Ye of little faith.”

* * *

Ed was not happy about having an audience for his automail maintenance, but since it was happening in Maes’s living room, an audience was what he got.

Gracia had taken Elicia to the park to feed the ducks. Maes didn’t ever want to push Ed past the limit of his endurance. Particularly not in the presence of Maes’s family.

Ed wasn’t happy about the automail maintenance itself, either. He insisted he’d only just gotten it tuned. Winry took one look and informed him he’d gotten it tuned by an amateur.

Then Roy arrived. It was like adding vinegar to baking soda.

Ed visibly relaxed when Roy showed up. This visibly annoyed Winry, who started flinging metal around to work off her irritation. Roy made the unfortunate choice to comment on this, and Maes had to edge behind the bookcase for safety.

“Don’t piss her off,” Ed cut in an uncharacteristically pleased and placid tone. “She’s nothing but a psycho with a wrench.”

Winry snorted and gave Ed a borderline affectionate thump with the wrench in question. “I don’t have to take that crap from the psycho with the knife, thanks.”

Ed had been the one to defuse a situation. The mind fairly boggled.

“Blunt trauma, stabbing,” Ed said. “What’s the difference?”

“The difference, you crazy idiot, is that I don’t kill people!”

“Brain damage is tricky, Winry. Sure, they live to stagger away. But how long do they last after that?”

“Let’s experiment,” she suggested, hefting the wrench again.

“Hey, hey, whoa! Think of the equipment! You can’t kill me now, you just spent an hour on my automail!”

“Ah,” Maes murmured to Roy. “Young love.”

Roy’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

It was so gratifying to share scary thoughts with Roy. “Did you bring the paper?”

He had. He’d brought several, in several different languages. Maes hadn’t known that you could find all of these papers in Central. He hadn’t known all of these languages existed.

“You didn’t specify which one,” Roy muttered, sounding about Ed’s age.

Maes snapped the Central Times out of the pile, refusing to encourage this behavior by commenting. “Page two,” he said, shoving it under Roy’s nose.

“Who wrote this article?” Roy asked eventually. “…I see, Mark Rhodes. So Rhodes is probably going to be shot for treason. Was that what you wanted to point out?”

He was turning so pessimistic in his age. “I wanted to point out that the newspapers will print blatant criticisms of the current government, contrary to what you seem to think. And look! The newspaper offices haven’t been burnt to the ground even though they’ve been at this all week.”

“I said two months.”

“You picked that number at random. Why so cautious? Never mind, I know why. You’re a giant control freak, that’s why. But I talked to Hawkeye, and she says everything is in place. Except for your brain.”

“You promised me two months. I’ve planned for two months. Everyone has been informed—”

“Fine, fine!” Control freak.

They lapsed into mutual annoyed silence in time to hear, “Oh, for the love of—did you lose your ability to hold still when you lost your sanity!?”

Maes thought it was nice that they all got along so well.

* * *

“I’ll be leaving next week,” Winry told Maes and Gracia the very next day. “Thank you so much for letting me stay with you! I’m sorry, I know I’ve caused you all kinds of trouble—”

“Not at all,” Gracia said warmly. She’d loved having Winry around. Maes suspected this was because it amused her when Maes was not only outnumbered by women, but also surrounded. “It’s been our pleasure.”

“Are you heading home to Rizembool?” Maes asked.

“Actually, Ed gave me the number of someone called Paninya in Rush Valley,” Winry said. “I talked to her yesterday.”

Oh please, God, no, Maes thought.

“She talked to her mechanic, and he said—eventually—that he could maybe get me an apprenticeship there. I’ve always wanted to see the town. It’s famous for its automail.”

Ed was never going to be safe in Rush Valley again. Maes felt just a little bad for him. Also like laughing for hours. In a way, it was only fair: Ed was accustomed to shipping his problems to Rush Valley, and now they were shipping themselves there. “You don’t want to stay here and keep an eye on him?”

“No, that wouldn’t work,” Winry said with authority. “It’s like taming a wild animal. I need to go away for a while or else it’ll be too much for him and he’ll break and run. He runs whenever you give him half a chance; Al would brain him if he could see this. But I’ll see Ed the next time he gets his automail repaired, and we’ll go from there.”

Gracia gave Winry a delighted smile. Maes was very fond of Gracia and Winry, generally speaking, but they could be a little scary.

But then, wasn’t this what Roy had done, too? He’d always been around, but he’d never cornered Ed, had never given him a reason to feel trapped. He’d been honest, consistent, and distant. And Ed was closer to Roy than he was to anybody else.

Maes hoped Roy hadn’t done it consciously, and if he had, Maes hoped to God he hadn’t thought of it in terms of taming a wild animal. Because that was upsetting no matter how you looked at it.

“Ah,” he said.

“While I’m gone…could you try to keep him from doing anything really stupid?” Winry asked.

“I’ll do my best,” Maes said, but he didn’t have much faith. Neither did Winry, who shrugged and sighed.

“At least try to keep him from busting his automail constantly. And if he could manage not to lose any more body parts? That would be great.”

“Men,” Gracia said, shaking her head at Maes. “What can you do with them?”

Maes tried to smile winningly.

* * *

“So I did end up talking to that Scar guy,” Ed announced out of the blue, pouncing on Maes in the middle of the street in the middle of his lunch break.

“Really?” Maes had been quite sure the talking-to-Scar door had been slammed shut and locked. “What about?”

Ed shrugged. “His brother was trying to blend Xingian alchemy and Amestrian alchemy. And it worked, was the thing. I told him about the homunculi and stuff. He told me about some weird shit he saw when he went to kill Marco—I gotta tell Mustang about it. He said it reminded him of his brother’s research.” Ed absently transmuted his arm into a blade and back again, terrifying several bystanders. “Too bad I can’t ask him more about it.”

“So…he won’t be passing this information on to anyone else?” Maes asked, just to clarify his horrible suspicion.

“Silent as the grave,” Ed confirmed with a small, satisfied smile.

And every time Maes thought he was getting less unsettling to have around, sigh. “I thought we’d agreed you weren’t going to kill him, Ed.”

“You told me not to kill him,” Ed said, unmoved. “Can’t say I remember agreeing. I kept his arm, though.”

Erk. “As a…trophy?”

“No, what the fuck is the matter with you?”

“Ed, is there any way for me to interpret ‘I kept his arm’ that isn’t extremely off-putting?”

Ed gave that serious thought, realized it didn’t deserve serious thought, and favored Maes with a sheepish sort of deranged grin. “Uh. Maybe not.”

“Thank you. Why did you keep his arm?”

“You know,” Ed said, though it had just clearly been established that he didn’t. “It’s interesting. Think I’ll show it to the Xing brat.”

“Ling Yao?”

“No,” Ed snapped, darting a scornful glance at Maes. “Ling doesn’t know shit about alchemy. The girl. She’s an alchemist; she should be able to figure something out. Xingian alchemy maybe has something to do with the human sacrifice thing.”

“Hm,” Maes said. The more he learned about alchemy, the less he wanted to know. “May I gently recommend not bringing her the arm itself?”

“Fuck you, I’ll redraw it on paper. Asshole. I do know how not to scare the shit out of people. Anyway, paper keeps better than, whatever, hacked off arms.”

Maes was silent. He was trying not to let the mental images become properly emblazoned across his brain. He was meeting with only limited success.

“I ran into Ling, by the way,” Ed said. “Speaking of him.” There was no reason for him to be refusing to meet Maes’s eyes, and yet he was refusing. Worrying.

“And how is our local Xingian prince?”

Ed was tapping his three remaining flesh fingers erratically against his thigh. Tap tap. Tap tap tap. “He’s had a rough time. I guess.”

What was Ed’s definition of a rough time? “Oh?”

“He says the shit’s gonna hit the fan two months from now. To the day, right? There’s an eclipse and everything.” Tap tap tap tap. Tap. “Thought you should know.”

“How did Ling Yao find out about this?”

Ed cracked his neck. “He’s had a rough time.” Tap tap. “Told the stupid bastard not to mess with the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Maes had never seen evidence of Ed pitying anyone before. He had to wonder if Ling Yao would have been better off dead. “Two months.” There was apparently something special about two-month time frames in Maes’s world.

Ed stared straight at him, eyes blazing. “Two months. You want my opinion? We’re fucked.”

Despite everything, Ed was usually quite the optimist. “Then I’m sending my family away.”

Ed nodded. “Yeah, well, like I said, it probably won’t help much. And good fuckin’ luck, anyway. I tried that with Winry, and she told me she’d kill me with a wrench. Like, what, over the phone? And Lizard hissed at me. He fuckin’ hissed, where’s he get this shit?”

Maes smiled diplomatically, ignoring the painful clench in his chest.

* * *

At a different time, under different circumstances, Gracia would have threatened to kill Maes with a wrench, too. As it was, she started to argue, the first words already past her lips—but then her eyes settled on Elicia. She didn’t argue. As it should be.

“I’ll call you every night,” she said. “You should stay with Roy until we come back.”

“Roy will not take well to that suggestion.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’d put up with you as a favor to me.”

“I am capable of looking after myself for a few months, dearest.”

She gave him a look of fond disbelief.

“I don’t know why you think it would be a good idea for me and Roy to be in the same house, anyway. We get along much better with a city between us. It’s fine for a day or two, but we did try the housemate thing once, you know, when we were young and foolish and single. Roy put tape down the center of every room and I wasn’t allowed to cross it. There were arguments over trash duty. Ultimately there were explosions.”

“You’re terrible on your own,” Gracia insisted.

“Roy and I are terrible together. I’ll be fine.”

“Maes. Please.”

There was no arguing with Gracia’s please. Which meant that Maes now had to argue with Roy, who wasn’t going to like this idea any more than Maes had.

* * *

Gracia and Elicia had been gone for two weeks. Maes had been at Roy’s place for all of that time, and wonder of wonders, they hadn’t killed each other. Quite.

Maes brought Ed to visit out of spite. Roy put tape down the center of every room and transmuted his drinks cabinet into a seamless block of wood. Maes considered taking a saw to it. There was passive aggressive refusal to wash dishes on both sides.

Just like old times. Maes suspected the stress of the impending end of the world was only making them behave even more badly. In the old days, they hadn’t kept each other up until the wee hours of the morning having panic-stricken strategy meetings based on too little information, tragically over-analyzed. Madame Christmas’s information on Selim, the adopted son of the homunculus fuhrer, hadn’t helped this state of affairs at all.

They had accounted for all of the homunculi. Now they seemed to have found one extra.

At least Ed provided a much-needed distraction by showing up at strange hours and laughing at the latest evidence of cohabitating woe. Apparently a house wasn’t scary as long as it didn’t contain small children. Or maybe—dare he think it?—they were making some sort of progress with Ed.

Ed was also unmoved by the prospect of extra homunculi. “We were fucked anyway,” he pointed out like the little ball of sunshine he was.

And very soon they had another distraction, because Roy’s allotted two months were up.

Maes picked up a paper on his way to work, and was near-blinded by the six-inch high headline reading, “FUHRER IS HOMUNCULUS!!!”

And Roy had said it couldn’t be done. Hah.


back to Part 1

IV. Spin