spin - part 1

[metisket]

CRAZY!ED: IT IS DONE.

And I hope to God you guys like it. The first part's maybe kind of slow. I mean, I tried to fix that, but...*bites nails* ANYWAY.

To the usual suspects!

Eiliem: I BLAME YOU. And possibly thank you, too. :D
Zephy: YOU'RE AWESOME, I don't know how you put up with all my screaming and running in circles. ^_^

I don't own FMA. Indeed, this is probably the kind of fic that makes Arakawa cry. (Sorry, Arakawa).

I. In Defiance of Reason
II. Justifying the Means
III. Theory and Practice


Spin


“The crimes of children reproduce themselves, closing their victims in cages built of nightmares.” –Miri Yu


There’s a story, a legend they tell in the east—it’s probably a Xingian story, really. You’d never know how big that desert is, the way stories wander back and forth across it. Stories about peacocks and palaces and princesses, stories about war and alchemy and automail. Stories about Xerxes.

This story, it’s about a guy who cuts himself shaving, and instead of blood, a couple maggots come out. And he freaks, he tries to dig them out with the razor, but the deeper he goes, the more there are. He cuts himself on his arm, and maggots come out there too, and pretty soon he’s lost it, hacking away all over, anything to get rid of them. In the end, he kills himself that way. Turns out there wasn’t anything in him but maggots.

If Ed finds it comforting to see his own blood, he tells himself that it doesn’t have anything to do with that story. It’s not like he’s worried he’s full of maggots, because humans don’t have maggots for blood, obviously. It’s just some bullshit story to weird people out.

That’s what he tells himself. But every time somebody cuts him and he sees that good, clean red, he thinks, thank god, he thinks, not yet.

He’s bleeding now, though he can’t remember how it happened. He ran into some guys in an alley, yeah? It’s creepy that that’s all he remembers, creepy that he blanks shit out now like a fucking drunk. Can you be a fighting junkie? Probably.

He hopes he didn’t kill anybody. Shit.

But however it happened, he’s bleeding all over the place, and he’s supposed to be meeting up with Hughes, and Hughes can’t handle crap like this. So he transmutes the cuts closed.

This is a trick he picked up from talking to Envy, and it’s getting to be a bad habit. He wishes he’d never figured out that he could fake medical alchemy by using his life as a source of energy; that’s definitely something people without much use for their lives shouldn’t know.

He uses it for every little injury, even though it feels like cheating. It is cheating, and Al would be all kinds of pissed off if he knew.

But he doesn’t know, he’s dead. And Ed keeps doing it.

He’s tired, that’s all. He’s tired of fighting, he’s tired of screwing up, he’s tired of trying to find a reason to get out of bed (thanks for that, Hawkeye). He’s just really fucking tired, and at least when he’s dead, he can let himself rest.

And hey, it’ll be nice to be out of options. The minute he’s got options, he fucks up.

* * *

“Ed!”

Hughes gives him a big smile. It’s even a real smile by now, and Ed’s gotta say he’s proud. Hughes’s smiles for Ed used to have a kind of death’s head quality to them; didn’t seem like he’d ever get over that. But check it out, he has. Give the man a cookie.

“How are you on this lovely morning?” he goes on, swinging his arms, gleeful.

Hughes is being a freak. More of a freak, that is, than usual. “The hell is your problem?”

Hughes laughs and reaches out to grab Ed’s shoulder. “Have you seen the paper this morning?”

Ed hates, he hates it when people touch him with no warning, and he hates it even more when people fucking grab at him. It kicks off a panic attack; he feels caught, he feels trapped, he feels…

He’s gone feral. He knows he has, but knowing you’re crazy doesn’t make you any less crazy—he still can’t deal. He jerks away from Hughes, and Hughes looks sad, and fuck fuck fuck, if it’s so hard to be around him, why don’t people just leave?

“No, I haven’t seen the fucking paper. What?”

Hughes rolls with it, which he’s gotten really good at doing. Because he had to. It’s just that hard to be around Ed.

“Observe!”

This paper Hughes is so proud of? Yeah, it kind of explains why the downtown is having a fucking riot right now. “Shit, Hughes. You did this?”

“I did.” His grin’s turned all wild-man. Fuck, Mustang’s gonna go ballistic.

Ed knows from riots. He started one in Liore one time. Hughes is career military, so he really oughtta be familiar with the old shoot ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out policy on civil disturbances.

Then again, Hughes gets so dazzled by intrigue sometimes that he misses the stuff that’s really fucking obvious. Like riots downtown.

“Okay. Here’s how it is,” Ed says, determined to be as obnoxious as possible if he really has to fuckin’ explain this. “I pass a guy on the way here, he says, ‘There’s no such thing as homunculi.’ The lady next to him says, ‘You calling our Mark a liar?’ cuz, lookin’ back on it, apparently she knows the dick who wrote the article. Guy down the way from them says, ‘It’s the End Times!’ and his wife tells him to shut up, but the first guy thinks she’s telling him to shut up, so he says what’s her problem, End Times guy says don’t you start in on my wife, and then some kid throws a rock cuz he’s an asshole. Everything goes straight to hell like a fucking bar fight cuz people are scared. It’s chaos down there now.”

Hughes bounces on his heels like a little kid getting ice cream. “That’s perfect,” he says.

No joke, something really freaking serious is wrong with Hughes. “Yeah, everybody loves a good riot. I’d say let’s go get hotdogs and watch, but shit, I think somebody burned the stand down.”

“Edward Elric,” Hughes says, still with the grin. “You of all people ought to appreciate the beauty of chaos in a military state. Things are now, as you say, out of control. Out of everyone’s control!”

Ed braces himself for mad laughter, but a few seconds go by and there isn’t any. Which is a relief, for what it’s worth. “So, like, if you can’t have control, nobody can?”

“I’m just leveling the playing field,” he explains, doing that earnest loony thing he does.

“Uh huh.” Actually, Ed’s pretty sure the homunculi are past the point of giving a shit about politics. They got what they wanted from Amestris already, right? Like, if Hughes had done this fifty years ago, that might’ve been useful. Now? He might as well be pelting Wrath with long-stemmed roses.

But whatever. As long as it makes Hughes happy, hell, Ed figures he can start as many freaking riots as he wants. Odds are everybody’s gonna be dead in a couple months anyway.

Well. One month, three weeks, and five days. Ed needs to learn to stop keeping track of this shit.

“Where d’you go from riots?” he asks, idly curious about just how crazy Hughes is.

“Well, I don’t know yet,” Hughes says, all chipper.

Answer: really fucking crazy.

“Uh huh. Mustang know about this yet?”

“No.” Hughes bounces. Again. What’s with the bouncing? “Want to come with me and tell him?”

Hell no, Ed doesn’t want to be associated with any of this shit. “I gotta talk to somebody. Sorry, whatever.”

“Somebody?”

And this is the other Hughes, the one who’s not a goof. This Hughes, you can actually picture doing whatever he had to to survive in Ishbal. And scaring the bejeezus out of everybody while he did it.

Still too goddamn nosy for his own good, though. “Yeah, somebody,” Ed says. “See you, I guess. Have fun with Mustang.”

He walks off, and he can see, out of the corner of his eye, that Hughes is making little unconscious grabbing motions. Like he always does when Ed walks off and leaves him with no explanation. It’s maybe the reason Ed does it so often.

As for where he’s going, he saw the byline on that article. Turns out he knows the dick who wrote it, too. Reporters are kind of like vultures: apt to show up at a kill faster than the law. Sometimes they even run into Ed, and this one’s run into him a couple times.

Mark Rhodes, the giant moron, clearly needs a visit. Fast, before some homunculus kills him and puts him out of his misery.

* * *

Ed has to wait an annoyingly long time, but Rhodes does finally come stalking out of his office. Tall, thin guy. Big glasses. Looks like a giant stork.

Ed always has to fight the impulse to tackle him on sight. Guy like that? Begging to be knocked over.

“You’re outta your fuckin’ tree,” Ed calls down to him.

Rhodes stops abruptly, blinks a few times, then tips his head back to look at Ed. “As opposed to the Demon Alchemist,” he says, “who seems to be in my tree, indeed. I wonder why.”

Ed likes the vantage point. What’s so weird about that? He jumps down, though, because he knows Rhodes, and he knows Rhodes’ll go on being an ass about it until he does.

“Why the fuck did you write that article?”

“The Demon Alchemist reads the newspaper?” Rhodes asks, whipping out his ever-present notepad and jotting something down on it.

Among Rhodes’s (many) annoying habits is a tendency to talk about people in the third person when they’re standing right fucking in front of him.

“I didn’t know you knew Hughes,” Ed says, ignoring him.

“I didn’t know the Demon Alchemist knew members of the military, either,” Rhodes says thoughtfully, making another note. “That’s very interesting. I wonder if the military supports the efforts of the Demon Alchemist?”

Rhodes’s annoying habits are legion. “Didn’t you know that was gonna start a riot? Did you even care, or is this just another way you’re touched in the head, you fuckin’ psycho?”

“People in glass houses,” Rhodes murmurs, scribbling madly.

Poor choice of adage. People in glass houses can totally throw stones as long as they don’t give a shit about the house. Or getting cut. “What I’m saying is, you’re gonna get your idiot self killed by homunculi. Get the hell out while you still can, cuz this whole country’s goin’ down. Probably starting with you, if you keep on like this.”

Rhodes looks up from the notes and blinks his stupidly enormous eyes at Ed. “Can I quote you?”

“No, asshole. Fuck, I wish you’d pretend you don’t know I exist!”

“The people—”

“If you tell me the people have a right to know,” Ed says very clearly, “I will break you.”

Rhodes makes a note of that, and Ed can’t help it if he snarls like he’s rabid. He can’t. It’s not his fault, he was driven to it. Then Rhodes makes the serious fucking mistake of looking afraid, and Ed has to take off before he really does break the guy.

People are so freaking ungrateful. Ed was trying to help, but maybe you can’t help people who are too stupid to come in outta the rain. Fuck it, the world is ending, none of this shit matters anyway. He might as well kill Rhodes himself. What difference would it make, if he’s not gonna leave? Split his stupid bird head right open, won’t matter in the long run, might make Ed feel better for a second.

Oh, brother, he hears, an echo and a whisper. Your temper is so embarrassing.

Al’s voice.

Rhodes is more right than he knows—Ed doesn’t have a leg to stand on, talking about other people’s sanity. People in glass houses with voices in their heads, that’s some kind of extra special hypocrisy.

The voice has been there all along, ever since that day. It doesn’t have a lot to say—kind of like it was set to repeat a few extremely Al phrases over and over again—but what it does have to say, it’s been saying way more often lately.

Yeah. That’s not freaky at all.

It’s Hughes’s fucking fault, calling him Ed all the time. Nobody’s called him Ed since he left Rizembool, and he liked that just fine. Liked being the Demon Alchemist, the Demon, D. Even Elric, cuz it’s funny how Mustang calls him that like he’s doing it to prove something.

But Ed. All that name does is bring back memories of what life had been like before Ed fucked it up beyond all recognition, and who needs that? Memories that cause more backchat from the inside of his own head can’t be good.

He wonders, sometimes, if this is some kind of goal of Hughes’s. You know, to point out everything he can’t have. Like, ‘Here’s my wife and my daughter and my perfect fucking life. Too bad you’re too worthless to even have a family.’

Shit, that’s not fair. Problem with Hughes is, he thinks he’s doing Ed a favor. The stupid bastard. Ed was right all along: hanging around with people is always pointless, and it’s usually painful, too.

Anyway. Whatever, so Rhodes was a wash, he’s probably doomed, it’s not Ed’s fault. Time to go check on his job security, because that actually is his problem.

* * *

Ed fishes a bloody tooth out of his pocket and tosses it on the bar. “Both ears and the tail,” he announces.

Chris Mustang, better known as Madame Christmas, picks up the tooth and considers it. “Don’t throw body parts on the counter,” she says after a second. “It’s unsanitary. David Finch, I presume?”

“Big Dave,” Ed agrees. “Slow fucker.” Probably the reason he was always tying people down. Had a thing for keeping fingers and teeth, the asshole. Ed tied him down and pulled all his fuckin’ teeth out before killing him.

It’s not often that Ed goes into these things with intent to kill, but when he does, he tries to be quick about it. It’s sick torturing them, and besides, it doesn’t prove anything. This means Ed’s usually more humane than the law, which goes in for firing squad. Pomp and circumstance and public violence, yeah? Very Amestris. So most of the time, Ed’s doing people a favor. But something about trophies really makes him lose it. He fuckin’ hates the ones who keep trophies.

Hence the tooth. Ed’s little joke.

Chris wipes tooth cooties off the counter, then fishes a manila envelope stuffed full of cash out of the register and pushes it across the bar. Shadiest paycheck ever.

Well, okay, that’s a lie. Ed’s paychecks actually tend to be shadier, but maybe hers stand out because she obviously enjoys the hell out of how bad it looks. Oh ho ho, is he hired muscle, a rent boy, just the kid who mows her lawn?

“Wow,” Ed says. “Check this out. Payment for services rendered. It’s like you’re my boss, it’s like I have a real job. I feel all grown up and shit.”

She gives him The Eyebrow. “Don’t worry, I know how very unencumbered you are. You’re Amestris’s most independent contractor.”

Ed knows she’s making fun of him because there’s no time when she isn’t making fun of him. But sometimes it’s tough to figure out what exactly her problem of the moment is.

The door opens, distracting him, and he lets it drop. Not like it matters anyway.

The door is one of the new girls coming in with somebody. Ed doesn’t know her that well, but it seems like she’s honestly taken to the guy.

Ed knows a lot about sex and absolutely nothing about it, somehow at the same time. Maybe it’s that he’s channeled all his sex drive into rage, but as strong as he is on the theory…he’s got no interest in the practice. Of course, thanks to the power of first impressions, his back-brain’s decided that sex always ends with somebody getting a broken bottle shoved up an orifice. So probably this all comes back to his misspent childhood, yeah?

“Don’t sit there and brood,” says Chris. “You’re driving away custom.”

Ed thinks not. It’s a bar in the middle of the day; every last person in here is sitting around brooding. Unless they’re on their way upstairs—and those guys aren’t paying him any attention.

But he takes her point, which is: get the fuck out. “Right. Later.”

“I should have something for you next week.”

* * *

It’s a crap job, he knows that. He does know. But it’s like he told Mustang: you gotta play to your strengths. If you waste what you’re good at, then hell, you might as well’ve never been born. And Ed’s good at killing people, he’s a fucking savant. He’s so good at it, he does it even when he’s trying for the opposite.

Winry thinks he does this job because he feels, what, superior to criminals or something. That’s not it. That’s never it. Ed figures there are two basic flavors of criminal, and he’s not superior to either one. In fact, he pretty much falls into category two.

First, there are the assholes. Ed doesn’t know or care what their problem is; maybe they were just fuckin’ born evil. That kind, they’ve got purpose. They’re absolutely sure they’re in the right. It’s irritating as hell, not least cuz it’s been a long time since Ed was sure of anything. And the last time he was sure, turned out he was dead fucking wrong. The assholes are the ones he tends to kill by accident in a fit of slavering rage. Nothing noble about it.

Then there are the other ones, the mad dogs. When you kill a mad dog, it’s not cuz you feel superior to the dog, it’s because it’s plain too dangerous to have around. You’re not executing it, you’re putting it down. Sometimes it’s even a sad thing. They didn’t set out to be evil. It’s just bad shit happened, and they tried to cope with it in a really stupid way. It’s weird how easy it is to turn yourself into a monster by accident. And if you ever realize what you’ve done, it’s too fuckin’ late by then. You’re past helping.

If Mustang had any sense, he would’ve put Ed down before now. But he doesn’t have any sense. Instead he has optimism, or what the fuck ever. He seems to think Ed is still good for something, that he’s trying to, whatever, fix the ills of society. Nice that somebody thinks so. He’s wrong, though. No matter what Ed does, crazy people are still gonna do crazy things, and desperate people are still gonna do desperate things. When Ed’s done with someone, all he can think is, “That guy won’t ever hurt anybody again.”

He knows exactly how pointless it really is. And sometimes it’s worse than pointless. Right now, see, he’d kind of like to talk to that bastard, Scar. Too bad, yeah? The only dead guy Ed’s ever managed to talk to is Al, and that doesn’t count.

Killing Scar, that was a sad thing. Even taking the Rockbells into account, it was sad. He regrets it. He doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t even fucking know anymore. He was definitely gonna let the guy live until he saw Winry, but that kicked his sense of mercy to the curb.

And now that it’s too damn late, he realizes it’d be nice to know what exactly Scar’s brother was aiming at with this east and west alchemy blending. The Xing girl’s useful, but she doesn’t know shit about Amestrian alchemy. Just like Ed doesn’t know shit about Xingian alchemy. They’re teaching each other as much as they can, but it’s hard to focus when the clock’s ticking down. As for actual examples of melded alchemy, all they’ve got to go on is an arm.

Great planning, Elric.

The girl’s being a real sport about it, at least. It’s not like it’s her country. If Amestris ate itself, Xing wouldn’t give a shit, you know, as a nation. Probably wouldn’t even much notice, not in the short term. And yet here she is, working as hard as he is—it’s like she’s forgotten what she came here for. He’s not gonna remind her, though.

* * *

The girl doesn’t show at the warehouse where they meet sometimes—fair enough, they don’t have a schedule or anything—so Ed sits there and beats his head against the alchemy by himself for a while. Gets nowhere, predictably. That end of the world thing? That is gonna happen.

But here’s the twisted part: Ed’s still having fun.

It’s just, he hasn’t done hardcore alchemy for years, and somewhere in there, he forgot that he loves it. He does love it. It feels like his brain is stretching back into its favorite shape or something, like when you get back into working out after slacking for a week. Feels good.

On the one hand, his priorities are obviously fucked. On the other hand, he may as well have some fun, right? Like the man said, it’s the End Times. Time to party if ever there was one. Or, in Ed’s case, time to geek out on alchemy and do some amateur dentistry. Whatever floats your boat.

He keeps at the alchemy for like four hours before he’s too hungry to work anymore. He doesn’t want to crack into Chris’s money here on the first day he’s got it, not when he doesn’t take anything like as many jobs as he used to. So he’s gonna have to mooch food off somebody.

He picks the House of Woe because it’s fuckin’ hilarious over there, and besides, he likes to think it’s mostly their fault he’s broke.

He goes through downtown on the way, sees that the riot’s mostly petered out. Central has a bunch of pussies for rioters, is what—Liore kept at it for days. Here it’s only been a few hours, and already all that’s left are smashed windows and some burned out broken shit in empty streets, not a human in sight. Ghost town Central. Nighttime is prime riot time, too. No wonder the Father guy hangs out here, these people are lame.

The sun’s set by the time Ed gets to Mustang’s place. He usually waits ‘til dark to show up—best odds of finding them both in, and unlike the pussy rioters, he doesn’t mind being out at night. Plus it seems to bother Mustang more when he visits late. Like Ed’s some kind of boogeyman, scarier in the dark.

Huh. The boogeyman. Ed wonders if people tell their kids the Demon Alchemist is gonna get them if they’re bad. That would be awesome. He could ask Hughes about it—parent on hand, yeah?—but when he walks in the door, Hughes is On the Phone with Gracia. That’s an uninterruptable activity, and it’ll probably go on for hours.

Which leaves Mustang, who’s hunched over the kitchen table, totally hysterical. And he doesn’t fly too well with hypothetical questions at the best of times. Oh well. At least they still have sandwiches Ed can steal.

“Hey, Colonel. How’s the newspaper fallout treating you?”

“I hate you and I’ve always hated you,” Mustang mutters savagely to the newspapers strewn all over.

“Damn, that hurts,” Ed says, clapping a hand over his heart and trying not to grin. “And I thought we had something, Mustang. I thought we were buddies. Or at least, I dunno, partners in crime.”

Mustang snorts. “I believe you’re the criminal in the room.”

“Something something riots,” Ed says pleasantly.

“All perfectly legal,” Mustang insists, but he undercuts his own argument by rubbing his eyes so hard it’s like he’s trying to pop them out of their sockets. “What did you do today, Elric?”

“Nothing much.” Early morning fight, dodged a riot, chatted with Hughes, chatted with Rhodes, got paid. A little brooding, a little alchemy. Day in the life. “What brought that on? I got blood on my chin or something?”

See, the thing is, it’s just too easy. If Mustang’s gonna make that face every time Ed says something twisted, then he can’t seriously expect Ed to stop doing it.

“So!” Ed carries on, cheered up already. Free food, scaring Mustang. Life’s little pleasures. “What’re you gonna do now? Gonna save the world one riot at a time?”

“Actually, this will probably turn out well for us,” Mustang admits like it hurts him. “It does throw a wrench into the works. It’s just not…elegant.”

Hughes likes chaos, but Mustang’s a control freak like none other. This is one of the reasons there’s fucking tape down the middle of every room in the house.

“Roy spent all morning soothing upset people,” Hughes says from right freaking behind Ed, making him spin and start a lunge, then just about pull a goddamn muscle stopping himself when he realizes it’s only Hughes.

“My, aren’t we tense,” Hughes says with his eyebrows up, fake surprised. Hughes is a dick.

“Don’t sneak up behind me, you dumbfuck,” Ed snaps. Must’ve been right at the end of the Gracia call when Ed came in, meaning Hughes has been talking to her for the last hour plus, meaning he’s gonna be chipper ‘til Ed wants to kill him.

“Yes, yes. But about your saving the world question,” Hughes says, goofball supreme, “by the time this is over, Roy will be in a brilliant position, politically. On top of that, the homunculi are going to have a very hard time sneaking around from here on out. The riot was perfect! I tried to tell you this morning.”

Ed shakes his head. It’s un-freaking-believable, the way Hughes acts like this isn’t gonna end with dead bodies piled a foot deep all over the country. And Mustang’s no better. The two of them, they know it’s a house of cards, but they go and live in it anyway. Making all these plans for a future that won’t exist, the fuck is wrong with them? If you’ve got nothing, then you’ve got nothing to lose. Easier that way.

“A perfect fucking riot,” Ed snarls. “Maybe I don’t want you assholes running the country. Oh wait, yeah, none of this shit matters anyway, cuz we’re the walking dead. Never mind. Do whatever the fuck you want.”

For some reason, he’s really pissed off. Really, weirdly—fuck, he’s shaking with it, the hell? It’s just he can’t believe them. Can’t believe they’re wasting time setting this up like it matters, like it’s not all gonna be smashed and taken away in one month, three weeks, and five days and it’s bullshit, is what it is.

On that thought, he punches the shit out of a chair so he won’t punch the shit out of Hughes or something. That’d be awkward.

Chair fucking breaks. He snarls at it, piece of crap, can’t even handle one goddamn punch.

“You need to do something about your temper, Elric,” Mustang sighs. He’s trying to joke, but he’s holding his jaw so tight it’s a wonder his teeth don’t break.

Funny, Ed thinks. My dead brother just said the same thing.

But good job, Mustang. No wonder he’s a leader of men, yeah? There’s no better way to force Ed to get a grip than reminding him of Al. It’s like filling his guts with ice, calms him right down. Good job.

He claps and puts the piece of crap chair back together. Takes a breath. “Gosh, Colonel,” he says, trying to sound upbeat, probably sounding freaky instead. “I’ll try my best.”

“Stop that right now,” Mustang says, and whoa, it’s an order. Hah.

See? Mustang’s way more fun than normal people. Or maybe Ed just likes ‘em bossy, because that would explain, like. Everybody he hangs out with.

“Assume for a moment, Ed,” Hughes puts in before anybody attacks anybody else, “that we’re not all going to die. Just as a hypothetical thought! What would you suggest we do to prepare? We have the politics covered, but Roy’s not as up on alchemy as he used to be. Humor us with your expertise.”

What, now they think Ed’s just gonna lay down and give up? Hell no, he’s gonna fight. Of course you fight, that’s life. Doesn’t matter if it’s pointless, it’s what you do. The planning for afterward is what pisses him off.

“It can’t hurt to kill the homunculi,” Ed tells them. “That’s gotta rock the boat, yeah? Tough to fuck up the country if you’re dead.”

“Then you’ll have to take out their Father, too, and you don’t know where he is,” Mustang says with the pinched, queasy look he gets whenever he’s worried. Which is a lot, poor bastard.

“Yeah, but I know somebody who does,” Ed says. Mustang and Hughes put on these shocked faces that don’t make any fucking sense. Ed’s wondered this before, but, seriously, what is it they think he does with his time? Because actually he spends most of it trying to find shit out, so surely he’s bound to, you know, find some shit out.

People make this murdering-for-justice thing out to be way more time-consuming than it is. Killing people only takes up like half an hour a week. The rest of the time? Nothing but boring-ass legwork.

But hey, if they want to think his life’s all mystery, drama, and intrigue, whatever. More power to them. It’s just depressing how they never learn.

“So I’ll go see my info guy tomorrow,” Ed says. “I like it, it’s like division of labor. All the monsters play together, all the normal humans play together. Cool.”

“You’re more human than you like to think, Ed,” Hughes tells him. Ed cracks up.

Human. He loves how people say that like it’s some kind of positive thing, like humans aren’t the slimiest creeps around. Even the homunculi tend to be basically predictable. Humans don’t even manage that.

And of all people, Hughes doesn’t get how bad humans are. Now that’s hilarious.

“That’s me,” Ed says, still snickering. “One of the guys. I’ll, uh. Report in, or whatever. Sometime. See ya.”

“Take care, Elric,” Mustang calls after him.

Take care, shit. Man’s a dreamer.

* * *

The way Ed understands it, once upon a time a long time ago, some asshole decided he could make himself a country as a lab experiment. This asshole had clearly been around too long for his own good or anybody else’s, and was proposing to be around even longer.

So, next question: what’s the experiment? It’s not a Philosopher’s Stone, cuz asshole’s got those already. Something like that, though, only with nation-wide levels of bad shit instead of just building-wide. Maybe the scale’s bigger than one nation, too, what with it involving the moon.

Whatever, the theory’s all fascinating, sure. The fundamental problem, though, could be solved just by Ed killing this Father guy. Right? A lot of the world’s problems could be solved by killing the right asshole. And seeing as that’s what Ed’s good for…

Hah, like anything’s ever that easy. From what Ling says, this Father guy is no joke, a hundred times tougher than the homunculi. And Ed can’t even reliably take them down.

Still, Ling’s bound to have some kind of interesting news. He accidentally infiltrated the enemy camp, didn’t he? He’s a fuckin’ goldmine.

People are always looking at Ed like he’s a sad object, but that’s just because they haven’t seen Ling lately. Guy’s gone and made it so the thing he most wants and the thing he’s most afraid of are the same thing. The power to protect his country and the power to destroy it, all in one Ling-shaped package.

That’s no ordinary level of fuck-up. That takes a pro.

But that’s all Ling’s problem and none of Ed’s. For his part, Ed’s glad that Greed is around again, especially now he’s over his obedient lapdog kick. As homunculi go, Greed’s a real winner. And, yeah, predictable. Ed walks into Carl’s bar, and there he is, all right. Must be Tuesday.

“Which one are you?” Ed asks. It’s usually obvious, but not when they’re brooding. Creepily enough, they brood the exact same way.

“I’m Greed,” he snaps, indignant.

“Uh huh.” Why they both seem to think Ed should know, he can’t say. “Still haven’t learned to share, I guess.”

“If I ever so much as thought about sharing, this human would take the body back in a heartbeat. He’s not average, my host.” Greed’s all proud for some reason. “He never gives up.”

“Yeah, well. He’s only fifteen, still got a lot of energy in him.” Just like Ed’s only fifteen. Except Ed hasn’t got much energy.

Wait. Now he thinks about it, he’s turned sixteen, hasn’t he? Hell, time flies. So this makes him officially old enough to die for his country. Convenient, considering that’s what he’s about to do.

He eyes Greelin and wonders what the legal age limit is on dying for somebody else’s country.

“Speaking of him, lemme talk to him.”

“This body belongs to Greed,” Greed says.

“That body’s a fuckin’ timeshare, and I want. To talk. To Ling.”

Greed crosses his arms and puts on his total asshole expression. “The body is mine.”

Which is about the time Ed loses patience, so he grabs Greed by the ears and screams, “Lan Fan, Lan Fan, Lan Fan,” into his face for a while.

Funny thing, this shocks Greed into total lack of reaction. Ling, though? He punches Ed in the nose as soon as he gets the body back.

Hah. Ling Yao. Gotta love the guy.

“What happened to Lan Fan?” Ling demands.

“Huh? Nothing. Well, she’s worried about you, jackass, but otherwise she’s fine. She menaced me with a knife and everything.” It’d been pretty funny, actually.

“Can’t you come up with a better way to get my attention!?” Ling demands all outraged, clutching his ears.

“No, see, cuz when you flip your shit, that’s when you win. Which says something bad about you, huh?”

“What do you want?” Man, such a sour face.

“Just information, don’t be a dick. You’re an insider now, right? So if I want to kill a homunculus, where should I hang out?”

Ling huffs irritably and crosses his arms, but he has to know Ed’s right. “Well, Gluttony’s been lurking around the train sta—ngh!”

Personality flip, commence. That didn’t last long.

“That was a dirty fucking trick. Both of you!”

“What’re you talkin’ about?” Ed asks, grinning. “Thought you were taking over the world or something. We’re doing you a favor, killing off the competition.”

“They can’t become my minions if they’re dead,” Greed explains, aggrieved.

“Yeah, well, they’re not gonna become your minions if they’re alive, so…”

“Oh, but they will.”

“Oh, but they won’t. Hey, the father guy, you know where he is, right? Show me.”

“Our agreement was that you would be working for me. Do you remember that agreement? You don’t seem to remember that agreement.”

“Hey, I got my eyes on nothin’ but your best interests. You just sit back and leave it all to me. Greed for overlord!”

Greed sighs. “I don’t know why I ever thought it was a good idea to let you live.”

Hah. That’s what they all say.

* * *

“What,” says Ed, staring into the kitchen at…at…. Look, how are these assholes gonna handle a whole country when they can’t even handle one goddamn house? “The fuck?”

“It’s his turn to wash the dishes,” Mustang explains without the tiniest bit of shame. Which, okay. Fine. What that doesn’t explain is why the entire fucking room is drenched, along with Hughes and Mustang. Like, the bickering is funny, but trashing the house is just sad. You don’t trash a nice house. If you’re gonna trash your place, it oughtta be a shithole to start.

But fine. Whatever. Ed’s not gonna say a thing, not about how he’s gonna tell Gracia and Hawkeye about this, not even about how he and Al were better than this when they were little kids.

“It is not my turn. I washed the dishes yesterday,” Hughes is saying, folding his stupid, soggy arms and freaking sulking.

“Figure it out when I’m not here,” Ed snaps. “I heard where the father guy is. You wanna hear about that, or you wanna trash the kitchen a little more? I feel like the fucking grownup here, it’s bullshit.”

“Where is he?” Mustang. One minute fighting over the dishes like a brat kid, next minute looking like somebody you’d trust with your life. Sometimes the whiplash gives Ed a headache.

“Center of town. Center of Central. Cute, huh? Lab 3. Kind of explains all the weird shit Scar said he saw in there.”

Silence. Mustang and Hughes swap worried looks. Ed yawns. “So we gonna go kill this guy?”

“We might want to look into a little more strategy than that, Ed,” Hughes says. Hughes, the guy who strategizes himself into riots. And is dripping all over the floor.

“Whatever,” Ed says, and hops up onto the only dry counter space to wait out whatever meandering, waste-of-fucking-time conversation these guys feel like they need to have.

Hughes thinks they should go for the homunculi before the father guy. Hey, Ed’s down for that. But oh no, Mustang wants to go talk to some general. The fuck does he want to do that for? Neither Hughes nor Ed is particularly clear. But he just keeps talking: she’s not as vicious as she looks this, maybe I can persuade her that, and pretty soon Hughes is nodding along.

This kind of shit always happens around Mustang. Sometimes people get out of his sphere of influence and snap out of it, but more often they never recover, just wander along, dazed and obedient, totally convinced Mustang’s idea is awesome. And sometimes Mustang’s ideas are awesome, but other times, see, they’re crap. Whiplash again, and no one seems to see this except for Ed. Even Hughes, who should freaking know better, gets pulled along.

They decide Mustang’ll go talk to the general, and Hughes’ll talk to that guy…whatever…Hawkeye’s granddad (and how weird is that?). They nod at each other, pretending to be grim. Grim, hah. Yeah right. They love this scheming shit.

Obviously, this means Hughes is getting ditched with the dishes. Ed hopes Mustang knows he’s gonna suffer for that later.

“My perfect daughter,” Hughes murmurs out of nowhere, staring at a dripping dish with freaky, tranced-out eyes, “is the world’s best dish-wiper! Did I ever mention that?”

Mustang scurries out the door before he gets a dish chucked at his head. Ed grins at Hughes, who bows a little, then he follows Mustang out. Probably a good idea to make sure this random general doesn’t kill him. How annoying would that be? Hawkeye would kick Ed’s ass all the way to East, for one thing.

It takes Mustang almost the whole walk to the car to figure out that Ed’s tagging along.

“What are you doing, Elric?” he asks. You’d think it’d be obvious to a guy as smart as Mustang pretends to be.

“Just coming to watch this crash and burn. Why?”

“Why?”

“Hey, actually, I gotta a question. You in the mood for questions?”

“Is there any way I can persuade you not to come along? By pointing out that you’re not military? By pointing out that she’ll be more suspicious if you’re there? Violence, bribes, any method at all?”

“Nope.”

Mustang sighs all woeful. His life is so hard. “Ask your question.”

“You and Ling, you’re both doing stupid fucking things to take over your countries. Ling was born to it, so I kinda get him. What’s your deal? Why do you have to be the one to fix all the shit?”

Mustang’s quiet for a long time. Quiet and grim, for real this time. Finally he says, “It’s my duty to protect as many people as I can. It’s the only thing that will come close to making up for what I’ve done.”

Ed smiles. Like Hughes said, then. Mustang thinks he’s so bad; it’s hilarious. It’s even sort of sweet. You’d think—the guy calls himself an adult, right?—you’d think he’d have seen what bad is, by now.

But maybe not. It’s not like most people go looking for evil in quite the determined way Ed does. Then again, Mustang served with freaking Kimbley. He should know he isn’t in that league.

Yeah. It’s cute how he doesn’t.

“And you think that’s funny,” Mustang murmurs. He doesn’t know whether to be pissed off or just confused, and that’s pretty hilarious, too.

“I think your face is funny, Colonel,” Ed says. “I got no comment on your megalomania. Because we had this talk already. So yeah, question over. Can we go kill these guys now, or we gonna keep on with the heart to heart?”

“We’re not killing them, Elric, weren’t you listening?” Uh, obviously not, Mustang. “We’re trying to convince them to cooperate with us.”

“Uh huh. So like, if they won’t cooperate, we can kill them then?”

“Elric.”

Too. Easy.

* * *

They run into the general right outside the base. Mustang says that’s lucky, cuz no way was he letting Ed on base. “I absolutely do not want your presence being a matter of military record,” he says. Apparently the gate guards can ID everybody if the mood strikes them. Ed’s not a fan of that idea, either. For one thing, he never carries any ID. He bets that wouldn’t make him popular with the guards.

The general turns out to be General Armstrong, the crying Armstrong’s older sister. You’d never know it, though. This lady? For sure if you ever saw her cry, she’d kill you.

She gives Ed one long look when he and Mustang show up, then nods a little, like maybe he isn’t totally useless. That done, she drops him from her attention completely (Ed can’t actually remember the last time somebody did that; it’s a weird feeling) in favor of fighting with Mustang. And whoa. Stand aside for the pros. They’re going a mile a minute: Mustang’s being a skeezeball, Armstrong’s calling him worthless, and they’re pretending not to plot the overthrow of their government with everything they got.

Bad as Hughes, both of ‘em.

It’s fun watching them do the hissing alley cat thing for a while, but it dulls after ten minutes or so, and Ed’s gotta look for his entertainment elsewhere. Lucky him, he doesn’t have to look far.

Armstrong’s number two is some guy called Miles. He’s Ishbalan, he’s in the Amestrian military, he is clearly one twisted man. Ed likes him already.

Unlike that worthless bastard Scar, Miles reminds Ed of the Ishbalans he knew in Xerxes. Tough and crazy and totally unbeatable, just like the desert. Like they’d lived there so long, they’d absorbed part of the essence of it right into them.

Ed spends a lot of time in the desert, when he has time. In winter, especially. As soon as he could move with the automail back when, he ran to the desert for reasons that were never totally clear to him. Maybe he’d had plans of death by heat stroke. Fuck knows. That wasn’t the most mentally stable time in his life, what with the death and the pain and the voice in his head.

But maybe he was looking for the ruins, for the city where everybody died in a night. Maybe he was looking for proof that, once upon a time, somebody had fucked up even worse than Edward Elric. And if that’s what he was looking for, then yeah, he found it. He stayed out there for almost a year, only leaving for library runs to try to work out how he’d managed to kill Al.

It’s a clean kind of insanity you get in the desert, always more dangerous to the people around you than it is to you. The light and heat, it makes people angry. Hot blooded, hah. Sun and dirt and scrubby plants and poisonous animals, and there’s no question that life’s a bitch and a struggle. The desert can’t be bothered to tell lies; everybody there knows the score. Fight or die, that’s all there is. And for Ed, there was always the automail, always the burning. Like punishment built right in so he didn’t have to worry about it.

(Didn’t have to worry about it, that is, until just recently when Winry saw the burn scars. God damn, the shrieking.)

When you go crazy in a city, it’s different. It turns you in on yourself first, out on everybody else later. Ed read somewhere that if you put too many rats in a cage, they lose it and start killing each other, even if they have plenty to eat. That may be why he cracks so hard in cities. Too many rats.

City crazy gets worse in the winter. Ed wonders what the hell Miles was thinking, moving up north. Or is it okay because he takes the desert with him wherever he goes? Ed thinks he’d like that; thinks it would’ve been cool to grow up in the desert himself. Although not to grow up Ishbalan, because, you know, fucking genocide.

“You’re staring, boy,” Miles says, soft and uninflected. Not making eye contact, because you don’t, in the desert. Not unless you want to start something.

Ed smiles, remembering. The first time he’d run out there, he’d always wanted to start something. Nice how they’d made it so easy.

“You remind me of somebody,” he says, and he says it in Ishbalan, not because he needs to, not because it even makes sense for him to be talking like a priest, but just to fuck with the guy. See if he can startle up a facial expression.

“I see,” Miles answers in Amestrian. And that’s a no on expressions. Ed grins.

Miles reminds him of Kael, actually. Kael had been justifiably not too shot with having a nutball little Amestrian kid show up and start picking fights with anybody who held still long enough. But Kael’d gotten used to him. Maybe Miles would too.

Kael’s the one who gave Ed the whole vigilante idea, actually. Mistress Shan is, practically speaking, the Law of Xerxes, and Kael’s the tool she uses to enforce it. She aims him at people who have it coming, and he wipes them out. Ed liked the idea, although it was annoying to have to do all the legwork himself. At least Chris does that shit now.

Mistress Shan and Kael would beat Ed to death if they knew what he’d done with their model of justice. They’d take it in turn.

“I understand you killed one of my fellow Ishbalans,” Miles says. No judgment in it, just a statement.

Damn, this guy’s grapevine rocks.

“Yeah, he was a dick,” Ed agrees. “I’m kinda regretting it now, though. Turns out I coulda used him. But time only goes one way.” That’s a Mistress Shan quote. “Tough shit, I guess.”

Miles frowns, like he’s got no clue what to make of Ed anymore. Ed gets that a lot.

“Elric,” Mustang calls, walking away, obviously expecting Ed’ll follow like he’s on a leash. Conversation over then? Fucker could’ve just said so. Course, they are in front of a military base. Should Ed act, uh, military?

He turns and gives the general Armstrong and Miles a half-assed salute for the hell of it, then trots after Mustang. Or like, trots up right behind him and punches him in the kidney for acting all lord and master, but close enough.

He can hear Miles cracking up back there. The guy’s got a sense of humor, hey.

Mustang makes a pretty entertaining argh kind of noise, but then he bitches Ed out for ages. Still worth it for the argh.

Mustang shuts up abruptly when he figures out that this blond guy who’s walking toward them is actually walking at them. Blond guy is of the Asshole with a Clipboard variety. Watching Mustang salute him basically makes Ed want to kill everyone.

“Colonel Mustang,” the asshole says with his uptight face all pinched together. “Unusual to see you here on a Saturday. And with a…” He eyes Ed and tries to come up with a description. Ed stares back and daydreams about transmuting the ground under him into a big dragon mouth made of rock. The rock dragon would swallow the guy, Ed would transmute the ground normal, they wouldn’t even have to worry about what to do with the body. Neat. “Minor,” the guy decides.

“The son of a friend,” Mustang says, which distracts Ed from rock dragons. Hah, somebody’s scarred little teenage thug, Mustang? Yeah, sure. Though, come to think of it, Ed can totally picture people dumping their problem kids on Mustang. Straighten him up, Colonel. Make a man of him!

“Hm,” says Asshole Clipboard. “Irregular.”

Just don’t clap, Ed tells himself. You can think all the bad arrays you want. You can picture ripping the fucker apart in many and creative ways. But don’t clap.

Don’t clap, don’t clap, don’t clap.

If Mustang knew how often Ed has to have this little chat with himself, he wouldn’t be so goddamn trusting.

Mustang fobs the guy off with things to do, Saturday, you know, whatever. Calls him sir. Ed reminds himself a few more times not to clap.

They slither away in the end without having said much of anything, Mustang at his weasely best, and manage to crawl back into the car. Mustang looks like he’s heading to his own execution.

“What’s your problem?” Ed asks, because seriously what the fuck? Ed’s the one who had to watch Mustang act like he respected a total douche, he is the injured party here, Mustang needs to get a grip.

“We could be in trouble,” Mustang says, starting the car.

“That’s different from normal how?”

“That was the fuhrer’s personal secretary,” Mustang says, and peels out on a goddamn city street.

Ed thinks, Should’ve clapped.

* * *

That whole stupid thing just goes to show Ed was right, you should play to your strengths. If he can’t handle watching the weaseling, he needs to bow out for Mustang, Hughes, the general Armstrong, whoever. People who can handle it. With that in mind, he spends the next few days leaving the politics alone and thinking about alchemy instead. For all the fuckin’ good it does.

“I told you, you need to feel the dragon’s pulse,” the Xing girl says. Her face, meanwhile, says she’s starting to think Ed’s actually stupid.

“I don’t know what the fuck that means,” Ed points out for like the fiftieth time. “What’s it meant to feel like? What’re you feeling it with? Should I stare really hard at the dirt and wait for something to happen?”

Now even the cat thing’s staring at him like he’s stupid.

“You are dead inside just like your country,” the girl tells him. “Close your eyes and feel it.”

So yeah. That’s a wash.

He does figure out one thing from talking to the girl, though. He figures out why he’s got a voice in his head. Useless information, maybe, but he can’t deny it’s been bugging him.

They’ve been talking a lot about the Gate, souls, spirits, shit like that. And it gets him thinking that probably he and Al got mixed up in Gate, what with the whole blood mixing thing. Probably they ended up sort of tangled, like their spirits crossed or whatever.

And then Al died, and he went ripping through Ed on his way out.

So that’s the working theory on what the voice is. An afterimage. An echo. No way to prove anything, obviously. It could be an echo, but then again, it could be that Ed’s fucking nuts. He can’t decide which option’s worse.

* * *

Ed leaves Mustang and crew alone for a little while, and everything goes straight to hell. Apparently Asshole Clipboard was exactly as much of an asshole as he looked like he was, and seriously, Ed should have clapped.

“Hang on, you’re in hiding?”

“Technically,” Hughes says proudly, “we’re AWOL.”

He’s always looking happy about things that are totally fucked up and it makes Ed want to put a fist through the wall. “Get that smirk off your face before I take it off for you. Why’re you hiding?”

“We were all reassigned to strange places. Fuhrer Homunculus made a menacing speech to Roy. We didn’t have time for all that. Hence, AWOL!”

“If you’re in hiding, why were you so fuckin’ easy to find?”

“I was waiting for you.”

Ed’s mouth drops open, because what the fuck. “There’re less boring ways to kill yourself than to sit here waiting for a military execution, you giant freak.” And that’s just one problem among an infinite array of problems, each more screamingly idiotic than the one before.

“We didn’t want you to think we’d abandoned you,” Hughes says. Smiling. Fucking smiling. Sitting at the kitchen table like this is any other day, smiling.

Ed kicks over the chair next to Hughes (it’s the one he broke before, he’s kinda hard on that chair). That done, he goes to the kitchen cabinet, hauls out all the plates (they really gotta be so goddamn high?), and dumps them on the floor with a satisfying crash. He heads for the back door dragging another chair behind him by the legs, knocking shit over with it. It looks a little like he dragged a body through the house. He slams the chair into the wall next to the door a few times, then chucks it randomly into the living room, where it makes some kind of bad smashing noise. He kicks in the glass on the front of Mustang’s big, stupid clock for good measure, then claps and blows up the doorknob on the back door. He thinks about smearing blood somewhere, but decides it’d be overkill.

Not perfect. He’d need to set some shit on fire if he wanted to do this right. But they might’ve broken Mustang’s fingers, yeah? And Ed doesn’t want to accidentally burn the place down, that’d be fuckin’ ridiculous.

“Let’s get outta here before somebody comes to see what the hell that was about,” he calls to Hughes, who’s still sitting at the table like a moron.

“Ah.” Hughes hops up, obedient. Which is good, cuz Ed didn’t want to have to knock him out and drag him. “And…what was that about? Exactly?”

“Making this confusing instead of just straight stupid,” Ed explains as they head out the back. Freaking Hughes. He looks so smart, he acts so dumb. “Now you might be AWOL or you might be abducted, nobody can tell. We’re doing Hawkeye’s place next. I’m guessing you took Hawkeye down with you.”

“We didn’t take her down—”

“Shut up. Where’s she live?”

“I suspect the Lieutenant isn’t going to approve of your trashing her house, Ed.”

“No shit. That’s why we’re gonna ask forgiveness and not permission.”

“We can’t ask her forgiveness once she shoots us to death.”

Ed shrugs. “Worse ways to go,” he mutters.

Hughes sighs, pushes up his glasses, and rubs the bridge of his nose. Like he’s the one who’s got a headache when, actually, he is a headache. “Six blocks west,” he says. “And I hope some god or other has mercy on us.”

Ed’s not betting on it.


Part 2