leroidenfer - Tumblr blog

[leroidenfer]

Roy forgives himself this moment of abject, frozen fear—harder soldiers than himself would be struck dumb watching Ed’s broken body convulse like his spine’s a wire snapping back—watching blood bubble from his lips and pour down over his chin—

Roy has had this dream—the bruises against the pallor, the rust-red waterfall splattering on the sheets—but it’s too concrete, too detailed, too altogether possible—

He knows, in his churning gut, that this occasion will yield no rude awakening to the cold contours of his bedroom, or a records closet, or the couch in his office, or—

Oh, God, how will he face another fucking moment of another fucking day if Edward Elric dies while he stands here watching?  Wasn’t this the whole fucking point of everything he’s done to get here—scrabbling tooth and nail to reach the day that he could halt the bloodshed, end the pain, at last have authority and strength enough to protect the men around him?  Isn’t this the very thing that he became the Führer to prevent?

In the time it takes for his thoughts to race through miles of spitting gravel, his fingers hardly twitch.

Calabrese’s reflexes are somewhat sharper than his own today; she dodged back well clear of all but a faint spot of red mist on the white of her lapel.

“Shit,” she says—and has there ever been a more ominous sign than a doctor uttering profanities?  Her fingertips are at Ed’s pulse, her eyes on her wristwatch; then her other hand’s against the vein inside his elbow, and then she’s thrusting her head back out into the hall before Roy can move a muscle.  “Nancy—gurney, now—Sibyl, he needs the OR; get someone competent—” And back at Ed’s side, yanking out the IV needle, turning his head to clear his mouth— “I swear to God, that bastard Haskell never does a job right the first damn time—”

Roy hears his own voice, faintly—is that all he can muster?  Is that all he amounts to now?  “What—”

“He’s going into shock,” she says.  There’s blood all over the little metal tray she caught up on her way to the bedside; there’s so much—Ed can’t possibly have any left to lose—  “Internal bleeding, probably.”

A flurry of humanity sweeps into the room—two women with a gurney, first; a man that Calabrese sends back out before he’s crossed the threshold, with a curt “Four micrograms of noradrenaline, Steven; start me with two—meet us in the OR; move.”

The last thing he wants is to get in the way and jeopardize Ed’s chances of survival.  The second-to-last thing he wants is to be left here, stranded, not even knowing what’s to be done.

They’re moving Ed, with Calabrese at the start of her little caravan—and Roy trails like a sad dog, like a starved animal, like desperation incarnate—

Any woman so utterly in control, so entirely in her element, must be the finest that Central Hospital has to offer—in some ways, in the quick action and the articulate orders, she reminds him of himself at his best.  Shouldn’t that be comforting?

Down a long white hall, with the gurney wheels squealing, with Ed’s breath faint and wet and choking, with Calabrese’s crisp voice dropping acronyms Roy’s brain can’t wrap itself around—

They charge straight through a clattering double set of swinging doors, where she pauses to whirl on her heel and fix him with a glare.

“You can’t be in there,” she says.  He opens his mouth, to tell her—what?  That he’s the leader of this damn country, and he’ll take his bacteria-hotel of a body into any operating room he likes?

She sees the resignation, spares him an expression that almost seems like sympathy, and turns again, and disappears straight through the doors.

At that moment—for many moments after—he is not the Führer of Amestris.  He is not the Flame Alchemist; he is not the Hero of Ishval; he is not even Roy Mustang, not really.

The names and titles carry weight, and power, and significance.  He has none.

He is a small man standing in an empty hallway, with half a hopeless prayer on his lips.

That’s all.

Counterplay

[leroidenfer]

Roy’s about to grab Ed’s hand again, come hell or high water, when brisk footsteps echo in the hall.

The doctor who appears in the doorway is the kind of woman who would have terrified the living hell out of Roy when he was ten.  She is the kind of woman who would probably still terrify him if he hadn’t met Riza Hawkeye at that point.

She has long, curly dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail with enough volume to give Rebecca Catalina a run for her hard-earned money, and as she steps into the room, she gives Roy a half-second onceover that instantly summons General Armstrong to mind.

“What’s going on?” she says.

“He’s in a great deal of pain,” Roy says, using a very diluted version of the Soothing-Convincing Voice; if he lays it on too thick, he knows she’ll reject it.  “Do you suppose y—”

“Of course he is,” she says, striding to the foot of the bed and taking up the patient chart.  She occupies an impossible amount of space for a woman who can’t be more than five-foot-four.  “He’d be in less if you weren’t massaging his fractured clavicle.”

Roy whips his hand back like it’s on fire.  So many inadequate excuses—I didn’t know; I couldn’t tell; it’s so hard to distinguish between bruises and shadow when he’s covered in them both—

He can’t bear to leave it like that, though; he can’t bear the thought of Ed swimming into full consciousness and thinking he’s done something wrong—he already thinks that he’s done something wrong; is this another fucked-up, backwards nightmare, or did Ed really utter the words I went and got myself caught?  As though it’s some sort of accident born of carelessness to be kidnapped and beaten to within centimeters of one’s life—as though he wasn’t looking where he was walking, and he fell into an open manhole and wound up in a torture dungeon for two fucking weeks—

Later.  Later, they’ll have time.

For now, he irons the tremble out from his fingertips and guides a few strands of Ed’s hair very delicately back over the shell of his ear.

He shouldn’t have done that.  And he shouldn’t be leaving his hand there, fingers resting just lightly against the curve, one stroking slowly, softly into Ed’s matted hair behind it.

This is more than he’s allowed, and there are reasons for the limits; he can’t afford—

“The first dose is probably through him,” the doctor is saying, turning sheets on the clipboard.  Roy tries to squint at the name embroidered on her white coat without looking like he’s sizing up what’s under it.  Calabrese?  Calaprese?  “They started him small—”  It takes most of Roy’s remaining willpower not to wince.  “—presumably to account for his reduced body mass—” Roy would be in a perfect position to cover Ed’s ears at this point, but that might be a bit too much.  “—but I think they underestimated what he was going to wake up to.”

Before he can get down on his knees and beg with every feeble shred of energy left in him, she crosses to the door and puts her head out into the hall again.

“Nancy, I need five milligrams of morphine for an IV, please?”

And then she’s coming back in, going straight for the head of the bed, and Roy has to withdraw his hand and step back or risk the possibility that she’d stab him with a tranquilizer just to get him out of the way.

She’s shining a penlight at Ed’s face—his eyelids flicker but don’t rise—and then lifting her hand with three fingers outstretched, like she can drag him into awareness by force of will.  “How many, Edward?”

Counterplay

[leroidenfer]

“I don’t suppose they left us any of the good drugs,” Roy says, because slipping into caustic humor is a hell of a lot easier than imagining the caliber of pain that would provoke Edward Elric to ask for analgesics.  He examines the labels on the drip; to his immense dismay, it seems to be pure saline.  They probably dosed Ed with morphine after the surgery, but they haven’t left any merciful reinforcements behind.  Roy presses the call button instead—if he plays his cards right, and Ed plays along, he’s willing to bet they can swindle their way into enough of the goods to open a pharmacy out of this room.

While he waits, he reaches out—slowly—to touch Ed’s shoulder as lightly as he can.

“‘Important’?” he says.  “That’s a generous word for anything in politics.”  After what you’ve been through, I can’t believe you’re aware of anything at all.  “I believe you’re thinking of the speech—the first of mine, and the first of many.”

Exactly how much does he remember?  It’s hard to tell watching the haziness cloud up and clear again from his eyes.  If nothing else, though, just speaking probably helps to soothe him; it can’t hurt to have an ongoing auditory reminder that he’s far, far away from—that.

And Roy can’t quite convince his fingers to lift from where they’ve settled very gently right above Ed’s collarbone.

“The elections have officially begun now,” he goes on, “so we’ll get a glorious display of just how fast and deftly mud can be slung by the bunch of graying bigots fighting for office.  In any case, it was a speech.  I said all the words; some people applauded, and some of them gaped at me like I’d read the whole thing in archaic Cretan with a poor accent.  The questions were a bust; one reporter asked if there was really any difference between an elected Führer and an instated one, and I had to explain the concept of balance of power using very small words.”

He swallows, wets his lips, looks towards the door.  Is the call button malfunctioning, or do they simply not care?  Should he press it again so that they know he’s serious, or would it be better to storm out there with his front-page-familiar face and demand assistance?

“It hardly matters,” he says, keeping his eyes trained on the doorframe, because he is a coward, born and bred.  “All of us are just—relieved, more than there are words for, that you’re back with us.”

Counterplay

[leroidenfer]

Cords stand out on Ed’s neck, and the muscles of his jaw flex as he swallows down the pain—again, and again, and again.

Roy sent him to it.

Roy sold him into this slaughterhouse once when he was a child; and then again the moment that the man emerged, the moment that he had the chance to hang up the blood-red coat and forever—the chance never to wake up gasping, writhing in agony, in another damn hospital bed.  Better men might believe that the first time was a blind gamble, that he had no notion the consequences, but the second—

Roy betrayed him.

That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?

The restraints on the bed are for Ed’s own protection, after everything he’s been through—given all that he could exacerbate with movement, all the little damages still left to him now that the worst of it is done, is scabbing, is mottling purple-brown.  But it’s more than just the usual Fullmetal rebellion; Roy can see it—it’s more than just the pride; more than just the knee-jerk rejection of authority in its uncounted forms.

There’s a cold, cold panic creeping at the corners of Ed’s eyes.  Even if the demure little strip of pillowy fabric underneath the buckled strap didn’t lie directly under chafe marks crossing and crisscrossing Ed’s skin, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out why.

Roy owes him a hell of a lot more than this.

Besides, the hospital staff never outlawed this in particular.  And Roy can and will charm the pants off of any interloper, male or female or whatever the case may be, who sees fit to protest.

Very, very slowly and very, very gently, taking care not to displace Ed’s curled fingers from his sleeve (don’t think it; don’t think—anything; just don’t think), he reaches down and presses on the catch to release the buckle, and then he tugs it loose.

“Alphonse is perfectly all right,” he says, raising his captured hand to lift Ed’s by extension, the better to sweep the whole construction off the side of the mattress; as far as he’s concerned, it can dangle from its moorings there until the end of time.  “Sergeant Fuery reached him just about an hour ago; he said he’ll set out this way as soon as it’s light.”

Ed already knew that, in his heart of hearts—didn’t he?

Or does the guilt from all those years ago still have a few last slender tendrils wrapped around him?  Does he ever think He doesn’t need me anymore?  Does he ever think He’s never loved me quite as much as I love him?

…that’s exactly what Ed needs to help him flourish and recover: Roy’s sardonic inner monologue and all his carts upon carts of emotional baggage.

He pauses then.  Obviously his next step is to unclasp the ties around Ed’s ankles—well, ankle and… improvised ankle-like object—but doing so requires him to pull his sleeve free.  It’s an ordinary task in its own right, but he just can’t bear the thought of jerking out of Ed’s grip without any preamble—without an apology.

Compromise, then: the bane and the boon of his whole twice-damned, colossally stupid life.

As gently as he can manage, he pries the first of Ed’s fingers from their chosen fold in his sleeve, and then the second; he slides the rest out of their grasp, and then he catches Ed’s tormented hand in both of his.  Gently, gently, gently—he presses it between his palms.  Not too tight; not enough to hurt him; just a reassurance that it’s not because he wanted Edward to let go.

Are the subtleties of his stupid gestures even going to penetrate the dueling tides of pain and palliatives?

He lays Ed’s hand down on the sheet again, mindful of the needle taped down to his skin.  Ankles next.  That’s easy enough.

He draws the blanket back and bends to work.

“There will be a security detail meeting him halfway, of course,” he says.  “But most of our opponents are, I believe, too preoccupied with matters at home to have spared a thought for Xing.  Even if they knew that Al was there, they wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to find him; they don’t have the resources yet.  He’s safe.”

He’s the safest of any of us sounds a touch too bitter for now.

Counterplay

[leroidenfer]

They have told him that he is under no circumstances to wake the not-a-boy, not-nearly-a-boy, lying pale and motionless between the mint-green sheets, on pain of a punishment so dire that they have not deigned to describe it.

Roy wouldn’t try to wake Ed even if he wanted to—sleep is probably the best thing for him; sleep is probably the only reprieve.

There are bandages everywhere, like a peeling second skin of gauze and plaster.  The circles under his eyes could hold pools of water; they’ve probably cupped more than their share of blood by now.  His eyelashes cast long shadows on his thinned, battered cheeks, and the one hand resting atop the blankets, trailing IV tubes like tiny telephone wires, bears more bruises and half-healed welts.  There are bandages around his fingertips as well—five little white caps like thimbles, gauze-taped down past the first joint.

Roy is trying very hard to think about the not-inconsiderable pile of paperwork in his hands, about the next speech, about the next move.  He is trying very hard to think of anything but grabbing Ed’s remaining shoulder and rousing him and demanding to know where those rat bastards made their fucking nest so he can stride into it and burn it to the ground—of anything but how the cinders of the men responsible would feel smeared into the lines of his fingerprints, crushed beneath the heels of his boots, scraping acrid at the corners of his eyes—

He lets his gaze flicker over the lank spill of Ed’s hair across the pillowcase—for just one second; he counts it out.  One moment of weakness: is he permitted that much?

Funny, too, that even dragged through filth and blood, Ed’s hair is still a purer gold than any that he’s ever seen gleaming in a medal or stretched across a shoulder mark.

He lowers his eyes to the report atop the stack on his lap—some drivel about power grids.  He flips over to the next—how exactly did a rash of burglaries in the southeastern side of town make it all the way to the Fuhrer’s desk?  Does Riza think there’s something more in this?

He’s squinting at the blurry photographs when the softly-beeping machine tracking Ed’s heartbeat goes haywire.  The mattress springs squeal, and Ed goes from stiller than a corpse to thrashing like a scared animal in the time it takes to blink—

And this, too—this incapacitates him; Roy can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t even think to make himself react—

Except for one thought.  Cold, crisp, premonitory:

Someday the half-second of hesitation is going to kill him.

Someday—not today.  Today it merely hurts like hell to be frozen in the fucking chair like he’s bound to the back, watching as Ed’s spine arches high off of the bed, and the IV trolley screeches as he tries to free his arm—and as he drops to the mattress, wild-eyed, breath catching on a broken sob—

And then his darting gaze lands on Roy, and his chest heaves once more, and he chokes out Mustang? like he doesn’t believe it.

The ice shatters, and Roy’s heart slams into his ribs; he is out of the chair—paper hisses as the sheets cascade down off of him and fan out on the floor—and at the bedside.  He reaches out to grip Ed’s forearm, to stop him tearing the needle straight out of his skin—and then stills his hand in midair.

Startling him would be worse, wouldn’t it?  But it’s a fucking trauma reaction, textbook-clear and all-too-familiar; and sometimes the only way that Roy can ground himself when the dreams try to drown him is with undeniable sensations of physical touch.  He favors the dresser drawer handles, most nights—the metal’s always cool, and the designs are intricate, and he knows his sleeping brain could not invent them.

Carefully, then—cautiously, gingerly, (don’t think) tenderly—he lays just his fingertips on Ed’s arm, in an attempt to anchor them both.

Give him more; give him something definite—something concrete.  Something he couldn’t imagine with self-deceptive vividness down in that hellhole; something he couldn’t possibly believe he’s taunting himself with.

Give him the real man underneath the masks.

“The one and only,” Roy says.  He swallows and tries at a very thin smile.  “Would it be too stupid altogether to ask how you feel?”

Counterplay

[leroidenfer]

It’s just like Edward to apologize with his last conscious breath, isn’t it?  It’s just like him to stagger back here two-limbed and barely conscious, beaten almost past recognition—to suffer injuries the likes of which will feed Roy’s nightmares for the better portion of forever, to accomplish the impossible and survive—and ask to be forgiven for the inconvenience.

He probably doesn’t realize just how much hope he gives Roy for the universe some days.

Roy looks at Riza.  She sets the glass aside and slides one arm underneath Ed’s hips, then nods at him briskly—they lift together and lay him out on the stretcher.

Roy is slated to deliver a pivotal speech in two minutes, and there is blood all over his hands.  If that doesn’t summarize the whole laughable little tragedy of his life—

“I said move out,” he says, a touch more sharply, and the frozen silence shatters, and his men startle into action.

As he drags himself upright—which is much more of a challenge these last several years—Riza’s eyes meet his again, to verify that their original plan is still in place.  They’d anticipated having more of the team backstage, which would free her to comb the crowd from the inside, just in case someone has taken into their head the bright idea of trying to assassinate the country’s first democratically-minded leader at the very moment that he offers them the opportunity to remove him bloodlessly.

He still wants her out there.  Even alone, Fuery can handle guarding his back.  One advantage he will always have—one that Hakuro’s like will never even understand to try to imitate—is that loyalty is a thousand times more reliable than service.  Service is bought; loyalty is born.  Hakuro’s best-paid lackeys wouldn’t die defending him if it ever came to that.

And they wouldn’t endure some two weeks in a filthy prison, grinding their teeth through a thousand sick and separate hells, without ever uttering a single word to jeopardize the man whose stupid choices sent them there.

The car engine rumbles outside, and then the doors slam, and then the sound fades away altogether.  Ed won’t die while Roy stands here parroting insipid promises to a gullible populace.  Ed won’t die—not that he can’t; he will not, because he is too damn stubborn by half, and it’s the half remaining.

Roy won’t get through this if he doesn’t believe that.

He inclines his head just slightly, and Riza mirrors the gesture and then moves silently towards the hall that will let her back out into the audience.  Roy has a handkerchief in his trouser pocket that he can clean his hands with, or so he hopes; but they’re shaking too much for his fingertips to find the hem.

“Here, sir,” Fuery says.  He catches the cuffs of Roy’s sleeves and draws his hands out away from him, then upends the water glass over Roy’s palms.  He’s got a handkerchief, too, bless him, with his damn initials embroidered on the corner, and now it’s scrubbing the Chief of Security’s blood off of the Führer’s hands, and Roy’s life is absurd.  It is absurd.  How does he ever sleep at night, in a life like this?

“Führer Mustang, sir?”  Ava, the perpetually smartly-dressed event planner for the hall, is waiting a respectful distance to the side.  Fuery’s handkerchief disappears back into his pocket with such swift grace that Roy can’t help being a bit impressed.  “I believe all the radio feeds are ready, sir.”

That’s the polite and subtle way of telling the leader of your country to hurry his ass up before people get bored and leave.

Roy looks at Fuery, who offers him a sincere attempt at a smile—it turns out more like a strained quirk of the mouth than anything else, but Roy appreciates the intention.

If he was just a touch more of an imbecile, he would say Wish me luck.  As it is, he squares his shoulders, smoothes his expression, draws a breath, and reminds himself that he tends to speak faster when his heart-rate rises, which he needs to be careful to counteract.

Ed will not die.  Not inside of two hours; not today.

Roy runs the back of his hand across his forehead to clear the sweat, drags another breath as deeply into his lungs as he’s able, and then follows Ava’s sharp suit along two turns of the claustrophobic hallway.  There’s an honest-to-goodness velvet curtain.  How delightfully melodramatic.

Ed will not die.

Roy fixes on his single most equable smile, parts the drape, and steps up to the microphones.

Counterplay

[leroidenfer]

Roy has taught himself to lie so well that crooks and killers think him genuine. It was never a talent—always a skill. It was honed and polished every day, every moment, into mirrors where he could see his own bland smiles and wide, unguarded eyes.

He needs it now.

Don’t you dare let him see how scared you are.

“Shut your mouth and save your strength,” he says, cutting sharply into the sputtering protests. “That’s an order. Tell me later. I’ll be there in—” Realistically? “—two hours.”

With any luck—not that they’ve ever had much between them—Ed’s system will be so flooded with morphine by then that he’ll be dreamlessly asleep.

Roy didn’t even notice Riza had moved, but she’s kneeling again, this time with one of the crystal glasses of filtered water that the concierge set aside for him—as though the Führer would have given a flying fuck about the quality of their stemware at a time like this, even before his Chief of Security staggered in here painted up and down with bruises, soaked in blood, and missing half of his limbs.

Roy meets her eyes, and she half-nods, which means she didn’t notice any spinal cord injuries that they’d exacerbate by moving Edward at this point.

He shifts over to situate his weight directly behind Ed’s head, so that he has leverage with both hands to lift to lift Ed’s torso (too light, too damn light, eerily insubstantial without the balance of the arm) just high enough off the staining hardwood for Riza to raise the glass to Ed’s lips.

She can take it from here as long as Roy doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even think about the harsh half-breaths of stifled pain sounds emanating from Ed’s chest.

They have three more minutes.

He looks up at Breda—who’s wearing his best chess-player’s mask now, but Roy knows how to pinpoint the terror flitting in the corners of his eyes.

Fuery used to get that look a lot, before Aerugo. He doesn’t anymore. Roy tries not to think about that, either.

“When you arrive,” Roy says, “call Lieutenant Ross and have her send everyone that the security team can spare. Put the whole place on lockdown. No one comes in without official business and a security escort; no one gets near Ed unless they are a registered medical practitioner at that hospital, whose records you have personally seen. Understood?”

“Sir,” Breda says.

Roy turns to Havoc. “You are at Edward’s side, come hell or high water, until the moment that I get there. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Havoc says.

Roy doesn’t want to move Ed onto that improvised stretcher, doesn’t want to lift him even into trusted hands—doesn’t want to let him out of sight for an instant; doesn’t want to shoulder the unbearable thought of his ragged, blood-choked breathing in the car—doesn’t want to dream of what might happen well before he gets there—

It’s reductionist and—frankly—weak to say he has no choice. He does. He always does; he always had.

It’s just that he already knows which one he’ll be making.

“Move out,” he says.

Counterplay

[leroidenfer]

There are some instincts you cannot change no matter how entirely you hate yourself in the aftermath.

When Roy is in control—when he is the aggressor, when he is advancing—he’s whip-quick with his hands and fast on his feet; thoughts flick through his mind with sharp distinction, shadow-play on bright walls, and he fills the outlines deftly, and he acts. When Roy is in control, he’s decisive; he’s intelligent; he feels like the man he’s always dreamt of being—like a leader worth following to the end of the line.

But when he’s shocked, he freezes.

It’s why Hughes had to pull him out of the way of a bullet he just couldn’t believe all those fucking years ago. There is a threshold somewhere in him—a delineation of what it is possible to accept, and what is so outlandish, so deeply wrong, that his whole being simply stops to give his brain some time to process.

The dial tone on his desk line; the wet-choked breath as Havoc tried to speak with two lances through the middle of his torso—boot heels on a stone floor and tinny laughter from a puppet that had never been a child, while Riza’s hair soaked red—

And the sound Ed’s tortured body makes as what remains intact of it collapses to the floor.

There’s too much blood crusted over every inch of him to see which wounds are new. His steel arm is gone, with broken wires trailing; likewise the leg, with a warped length of rust-mottled iron in place of it, a curved piece appended for a makeshift foot.

With a distant, curious acuteness, Roy can feel the rising heat of incandescent fury underneath his disbelief, but at this moment (he can almost feel himself breathing, almost feel the faint tap of his weak heart against his ribs), he cannot—cannot—bring himself to move.

Another point on the endless list of reasons he needs Riza Hawkeye near him to survive: she’s never in her life had this affliction.

She’s shrugging off her jacket as she crosses to Ed, and then she’s folding it with the accoutrements tucked inward and sliding it beneath his head and placing two fingertips against his throat, the other hand laid so carefully on his remaining arm. They both know that Ed’s been diagnosing his own injuries since long before they met him.

“Is there anything broken?” she asks, and her eyes are tight, flicking over all the damning evidence of more than any person in this room is cruel enough to think of—

But the crystallization of Roy’s whole body shatters with the words, and he thinks Move, Mustang so loudly that it’s strange the whole damn world can’t hear it.

There’s a coatrack off towards the side of this small room; three strides carry him to it; one clap of his hands and one churn of his thoughts turn it and his overcoat into a field stretcher. Somehow he’s never quite forgotten how they’re made.

He brings it back and lays it on the floor next to Ed; there is blood pooling on the hardwood, but he will not panic; he doesn’t have the time—

Riza would be brutally efficient at the hospital, but the populace recognizes her by now; Havoc’s almost as reassuring as a bodyguard, and Breda’s more than capable of talking them right into urgent care. In any case, a stretcher can’t be carried from one side.

He points them out and jerks his hand; they’re at his side in seconds—

“Central Hospital,” he says. “Take my car and two of the guards.” He gestures to Falman. “You’re stationed with the remaining two outside.” Fuery next. “Call Alphonse; tell him where.”

The branch of his ambition that tapers towards diplomacy with Xing is spindly yet; he’s had too many demons snapping at his heels at home. There is no train to carry Al across the desert—no recourse but upwards of a week on horseback in the sand.

The delay might be a mercy, of a fashion—if Ed survives that long.

“Then Rockbell Automail,” he says. “Tell Winry that the ports are damaged, and we don’t have any of the pieces.”

He looks down at Ed, and all the words in every language ever spoken leave him stranded. There’s no single syllable for sick-sad-raging-searing-cold relief.

Roy is going to find them, and it’s going to cost them double, triple, a thousand times what Ed has paid—but somehow I intend to kneel before you with the ashes and their blood streaked up my arms does not sound like the right kind of encouragement.

He curls his right hand not quite into the fist that it aspires to being—just hooked fingers, and he gently runs his knuckles over Ed’s bruised, swollen cheek.

“We’re going to put this right,” he says. “I promise.”

Counterplay

[leroidenfer]

Counterplay

In the past six months, the Führer of Amestris has developed a habit of cracking his knuckles. For the past two hours, he has been combining it with a much longer-standing habit of pacing like an animal in a cage. The combination of the rhythmic precision of his boot heels on the floor and the the highly irregular popping of his joints is probably driving Riza to the absolute edge of her sanity, and the fact that she hasn’t said anything is sobering, not a relief. She knows how close he is—how close they all are—to the verge of so many things at once that she’s letting him indulge his nasty little foibles in full. She doesn’t want to push him right now, because she isn’t sure how far he’d fall.

He can’t think about th—

Of course you ‘can’; it’s a physical possibility, Mustang; for such a touted master of semantics, you’re pretty damn dense sometimes.

Correction: he mustn’t. He mustn’t think about that. For the sake of his own self-preservation, he must not.

He’ll think about bad habits, then. He’ll think about the week that he took up cuticle-chewing—or, rather, the hour, at the end of which Riza gave him a look that could not have been clearer in stating I will chop your fingers off before I let you run the country with them covered in spit and blood and hangnails and bacteria.

He can’t, can’t, can’t think about Ed.

He can’t think of the fact that Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Elric, appointed five short (brief—brief, Ed) months prior as Chief of Security to the Führer, was supposed to call from one of the safehouses twelve and a half days ago. He can’t think of the waiting; can’t think of how the mild amusement at the failure to report drained out of him as hours passed; can’t think of how his whole chest cavity flooded slowly with the molten-iron dread. Can’t think of the fluttering of terror’s wings the moment He probably got caught up in a book melted right into Oh, God, where is he? Can’t think of dialing the number and listening, listening, fist clenched far too tight around the arched spine of the receiver, to the endless ringing of the line. Can’t think of the hour that his whole team spent grimacing and glued to telephones, trying every number that they had; can’t think of the lies and hedgings and excuses that they unfurled to cover up all the discreet investigations, all the searches, all the cautious nets they flung into the silence and drew back empty.

He can’t think of the fact that there have been no noticeable repercussions, which means that Ed gave them—them, them; the words that he relies on are so insufficient here; there is no way to twist language to contain his rage—nothing.

He can’t think of the fact that an intractable hostage is a useless one.

He can’t think of the fact that useless hostages end up dead.

He can’t think of the fact that most hostages end up dead.

He can’t think of the fact that there was never any ransom held before him, never any terms, never any whisper of a trace—nothing offered. No bargain to be made. Not even a chance; not even so much as a Step down and cancel the elections, and we’ll let you have the pieces that are left.

He can’t think of how loud the nothing buzzes in his ears when he can’t fill them up with other sounds.

You cannot negotiate with people who don’t want anything. You cannot track people who will not communicate. You cannot find people you cannot track; and if you cannot find people, you cannot tear them into shreds and grind the pieces to a bloody fucking pulp.

Six months ago, when—at long last, at achingly long last—he had the weight of the last stars balanced on his shoulders; six months ago, when the whole damn country slid into his carefully cupped hands; six months ago, when his name became synonymous with the word that used to drench his nightmares in his own blood and impale them on two sabers’ points—

Six months ago, when the mantle of the Führer did not fall so much as get laboriously wrangled onto Roy Mustang, he thought of forcing Ed to quit.

It wouldn’t even have been difficult. In the intervening years, with his own debts paid and his own guilts soothed (if still not settled), Ed’s legendary pigheadedness has metamorphosed into a rather quieter sort of tenacity. His priorities have shifted. He picks his battles now, and far less frequent are the skirmishes he wages against Roy. They’re on the same side—the same team—in every sense of the word, rather than just by the strictest definition and the necessity of a reluctant alliance. It has been a long time, an achingly long time, since Edward Elric was a tumultuous child with everything to prove. He is an adult now, with the maturity measured out in more than just the weights that he has carried in his soul.

(Roy always thinks is, not was—doggedly, deliberately; he will think is with everything that’s in him until he identifies a body with his own two eyes. As many times as it takes, he will relive the way the sick guilt twined with his burgeoning relief last week, when the yellow-haired body in the river turned out to be a girl. As many times as it takes, he will endure the dreams of gore and glassy yellow eyes, so long as they don’t turn out to be real—)

Six months ago, it was a clear thought—limpid and sharp-edged like a gemstone; utterly pristine. It would have been the simplest thing in the world to push Ed right back out the new office’s polished door. Simple is not a word Roy applies often to his life; he should have taken the opportunity for that novelty alone.

He could have had the papers prepared by the time he called Ed in. He could have lifted them and briskly tapped the bottom edges on the desktop and then turned them around, and he could have found a way to say You are too precious to me and to everyone you know for me to drag you into this last and deepest hellhole, and I don’t think I could bear to lose you now—a way that would have made it so abrupt and condescending that Ed would have walked out. Not I don’t think you can handle it, because that would be a challenge; something crueler. Something worse. He’s always had too many words at his disposal; he could have taken his time and run his fingertips along the spines of his collection, drawn out uncouth, uncultured, hardly suitable for politics, unsheathed embarrassing and driven it right between Ed’s ribs. He could have targeted every last little thing that makes Ed so vibrant and so beautiful; every single vestige of uniqueness; all the things he’s old enough to feel ashamed of now—the way the Eastern twang comes out just slightly when he’s angry or a little drunk; the way he doodles tiny dishwashing arrays atop his notes in Council meetings and doesn’t listen when they don’t have much to say; the way his automail won’t let him stand quite even in his unshined standard boots, and how his shoulders slant despite his struggling to hold them square.

I hope you’re old enough to understand that much of this is now a game of presentation, and I can’t afford to have any of my representatives look less than perfect. I might be able to indulge your sewer-mouth inside this office, but it’s really just too dangerous to have my reputation riding on your ability to stop yourself from cursing at a general who makes a comment on your height. It’s nothing personal, Edward. Just business—just politics. This is a perfectly honorable resignation letter. I’m not going to order you to sign, but I do hope that you’ll think about it. Otherwise I’m… well, I’m honestly afraid that everything I’ve worked for—everything we’ve all done, everything we’ve sacrificed, everyone who has died so you and I could sit here at this moment—is likely to be compromised. That hardly seems equivalent set next to what we’ve lost.

He would have stopped there. No apologies; no quarter given; he’d let the guilt fester and the insults stew. He would have sat back and let You’re too volatile and My cabinet has no room for a backwoods upstart kid and Haven’t you done enough damage to my mission and career? move in slow, faux-regretful circles on his face. He would have hurt Ed so badly—taken all of the earnest leaps and bounds of striving effort to fit into this wretched world and cast them all onto the carpet—that the not-a-boy who had emerged here would have turned around and walked out and never once looked back.

Oh, he would have hated himself for it, in moments of weakness—but it would have been the noble thing.

He thought about it. He thought about it often.

He couldn’t bring himself to follow through.

It wasn’t just one heart he would have broken; it wasn’t just one dose of misery. Ed is his left hand to balance Riza on the right; Ed is the voice of righteousness where she’s the voice of reason. For all his brazenness, Ed’s shockingly insightful; for all the tales of his reckless temper, he can be incredibly strategic. He’s grown up. He’s settled down. But the untainted, unassailable compassion remains, and it is sometimes the only thing that makes Roy think he’s capable of facing the day.

Riza is his guide, and Ed’s his inspiration. He would have been excising a part of himself.

There aren’t many diversions left to him—there’s little time to spare, and even less in the way of energy. The sniping banter that he shares with Ed has been perhaps the only pleasure that still hasn’t faded. He’s given up on friendships outside the mismatched family that he clothed in blue; he forfeited the dalliances long ago. The once-diverting newspapers spill out a spectrum of opinions on his so-called reign; the only real refuges he has left are aromatic coffee and the occasional dive into an alchemy book.

Besides. He wouldn’t subject a lover to the press even if she seemed to give a damn about the five minutes of his time that she got daily—even if she seemed to like to listen to him whine about the details and the sweeping goals at turns. Even if she liked old dogs with tired eyes. Even if she made him feel more like a man and less like a figurehead for those five minutes every day. He wouldn’t be able to trust her—not really. And she wouldn’t have anywhere to hide from the overarching shadow of his life.

It’s better this way. Loneliness is lousy, but it’s secure. This isn’t about him anyway; this is about the country, and the people that he serves. Amestris doesn’t care if his bed feels far too big at night.

He’s always been selfish. Ed’s always said bastard, but that’s far too kind.

He did the wrong thing, six months ago; he has done the wrong thing every day since, and sometimes he has almost been able to believe that he deserved it. He kept Ed. He kept Ed in the line of fire after everything that has been said and done and so, so carefully rebuilt.

And now he is the solitary reason that Edward Elric might very well be dead.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s killed better men.

The back room behind the stage at Central City Hall has a lovely parquet floor—fine hardwood (cherry?) and an intricate design. He walks three squares, turns on his right heel, and walks three squares back. He wonders how much taxpayer money poured into this place. He wonders if they look at him and think that he’s the same.

It took them six months to raze this government from the inside out—to rearrange the guts and bones and blood vessels one square centimeter at a time, leaving the skin as clean as they could manage, in secret for as long as they were able.

The secrets did not last long. Every single vein protested. They were grim-faced, spattered surgeons by the end, but in the shredded mess of it, they’ve made a difference.

The nation of Amestris is now, officially, becoming a democracy.

They are having an election—dozens of elections, really; he has dragged every last position to the precipice and put it in the people’s hands.

Including his own.

It is no surprise, after the mountains of resistance that they scaled one filthy foothold at a time, that he does not run uncontested.

The people will decide.

He has to believe in them. He has to believe that they will think, and think thoroughly; he has to believe that they will understand. He wants to grab them all by the shoulders and shake them, but he has to believe that they don’t need the help.

The only safe vote is for the man that gave it to you. All of the others will take it away again. If I lose, they will tell you that I’ve disappeared because I’m petulant, resentful—they’ll tell you I retired. That won’t be the reason. The only safe vote is for the man who will be silenced if he doesn’t win.

In eight more minutes, he will be delivering the opening speech of his campaign. In eight more minutes, he will begin the draggingly long process of begging them for their ballots, and his life.