Völuspá the Fourteenth and Epilogue

[anax]

Here you go, the end of the fic. Yes, I'm nervous about it ... as I have not been with the ending of any fic before. Cos so many of y'all got so worked up over this fic, and I really do think the fic is, overall, pretty good, and the only thing that can fuck up a good fic is a bad ending.

I hope this isn't a bad ending.

Final part and Epilogue being posted together cos ... well, y'all probably would have killed me if I hadn't done it this way.

I'm glad it's done, it's been fun to write, and it's been really enjoyable to know that other people have been enjoying it as much as I have. Question and answer sessions in the comments, and unlike Lightning, I will not refuse to answer things like "WTF is wrong with Al you nutjob?" :) All questions will be answered.

Previous parts, for those tuning in late:

wider and wider through all worlds I see
breath they had not, nor blood nor senses
what do you ask of me? why tempt me?
well, would you know more?
silence of the kith and kin of Heimdal
men will remember while men live
the planets knew not where their places were
faint, feeble, with no fate assigned them
burned in the hall of the high god
bursting his fetters, Fenris runs
out of the foam, fair and green
from the depths below a drake comes flying
red with blood the buildings of gods


Völuspá
a wind-age, a wolf-age till the world ruins

It was all but impossible not to look at the corpses. The fighting had been fairly light for much of the way up into the pass, but about halfway through a considerable resistance had been encountered. The signs of it littered the landscape: churned ground, discarded weapons, burning vehicles and vegetation, huge chips of stone taken out of cliffsides by cannon fire.

And, of course, the bodies. Some in Amestrian blue, some in Drachman brown, some so mangled they were unidentifiable. The stench of death was atrocious, cutting through the cold air, but there was already at least one squad moving through the pass, collecting corpses into a personnel carrier. The medical teams had already been through; at least there were no moans from the injured and dying, and the only bodies left in the snow were those beyond saving.

Seated behind Hawkeye in the middle jeep, Roy tried not to look. He had won, had punched through the Briggs Mountains and clawed out a foothold on the other side, but the sheer volume of death that it had taken to achieve that feat was sobering.

It was nothing that he hadn't seen before, and nothing he hadn't expected. But as the cavalcade escorting him through the pass crawled along the steep and narrow road, between trees destroyed by cannon and over blood crushed into the snow and frozen mud, Roy did not feel particularly inclined toward conversation.

This was technically still a battlefield, since there was fighting going on beyond the lethal transmutation in the second turn of the pass, so his escort was substantial. The cavalcade could move no faster than the armor both preceding and following his jeep, and Hawkeye in the front seat was armed with a rifle. Two more jeeps surrounded him, just in case one of the corpses turned out to be armed, he supposed.

Roy had expected Lust to be excited, since the homunculus always seemed to enjoy the prospect of fighting. The creature didn't appear to be all that interested this time, though, just crouching quietly on the rear of the jeep and flicking his extended talons back and forth. That was fine with Roy, really ... the prospect of having to deal with Lust's utterly inappropriate joy at the promise of human death was something he'd just as soon skip.

Over it all, the array was still glowing.

The twists of the pass between the mountains concealed the array from direct view, and in any case it was probably hidden behind an avalanche. That had been the plan, anyway, and although Roy had gotten no reports of it, he had no reason to think that Brandt had deviated from his orders. The strength of the reaction, however, drilled upward into the sky, and was cast back onto the ground by the clouds. It bathed a vast swath of the pass in ghostly red light, putting pink edges on the snow, and bringing red glitter out of the facets of the exposed granite of the mountainsides. Roy supposed that it could be considered beautiful, in the same way that a sword edged in blood could be beautiful.

He would almost have rather looked at the corpses.

A hand touched his shoulder, resting lightly, and Roy glanced that way. Lust didn't immediately seem to want anything, though ... the homunculus just smiled at him, swaying back and forth as the jeep navigated the rough terrain. Roy reached up to pat the creature's claws, a gesture of comfort that the homunculus probably didn't need.

Then, quite suddenly, Lust leaned down and whispered, "I love you."

Roy did not react for a moment, but then he turned slowly around to eye the homunculus; Lust returned his speculative look with a blank one. Moments passed with nothing further, and Roy asked, "What did you say?"

"I said I love you."

"... why are you saying that?" asked Roy.

Lust did not answer, only smiled brightly at him, and resumed looking at the scenery as it passed. After a long, hard stare, Roy turned around again to face forward.

What he'd done to Lust by sleeping with Edward ... well, he couldn't even begin to imagine it. The thing wasn't human, and never seemed to react the way he'd expect a human lover to react; there was really no way to know what Lust thought of his infidelity unless the homunculus himself chose to discuss it.

Could a homunculus even understand love? Was there enough humanity in Lust to know what love was? And why would Lust elect to say such a thing now?

Turning his head slightly to the side, Roy kept a watch on the creature out of the corner of his eye. Lust did nothing unusual, however. He was keeping a sharp look out, but that was to be expected in potentially dangerous territory - the bulk of the pass was nominally under Roy's control, and there had been no reports of fighting on this side of the array in over an hour, but there were no guarantees.

When he noticed Roy watching, Lust smiled again and flicked the braid on Roy's uniform with his talons. Then he went back to watching the surroundings. After a few minutes, Roy straightened again.

Twisting around slightly in the front seat, Hawkeye said quietly, "Sir? Is that ... array going to stop on its own?"

"It should," he said. "Eventually."

When it ran out of lives to consume.

After a brief, searching look, she said, "Yes, sir."

"Stop here," said Roy, as the jeep topped a rise. The other jeeps and the tank behind him stopped immediately along with his own; the tank in front of him took a few moments to realize that it was no longer being followed, and ground to a halt fifty yards away.

The avalanche was quite a sight, filling the pass like a spill of sugar. Cast in lurid red by the array still burning behind it, the snow didn't seem to be very deep at first glance, but appearances deceived. The edges of the snowfield created by the avalanche tapered down to the ground, and it looked like one could just drive across it ... but someone had already gotten that idea and turned back just a couple dozen yards in. The wheel tracks were visible as a ruffled dark line, and at their farthest extent into the snowfield had sunk perhaps four feet into the snow. And it doubtless got deeper yet in the middle. It seemed miraculous that the vehicle that had left the tracks wasn't still stuck there in the snow.

It was really quite a bit more snow than Roy had predicted. And as far as Roy could tell, there had been nothing done thus far to move any of the snow from the avalanche out of the way.

Beyond it, a good mile or so from the last visible rock, the light of the array shimmered. The array itself was not visible, but the hungry flickers of its energy spilled onto the far edges of the snowfield. From the center, that finger of light punched skyward, disappearing amongst the clouds.

There was no way to know how many Drachmen had been caught by the array when Brandt activated it, but Roy imagined it must have been quite a lot. Those who had been caught on the eastern side of the avalanche had never had a chance against Roy's attack, and those on the western side ... fed the array. It showed no signs yet of dying down.

The snowfield and the array had, however, stopped his own army dead. One of the attack group leaders had already radioed in to say that they were attempting to mop up the surviving Drachmen, but it was hard going. Roy would very much have liked to move the bulk of his army up the pass as fast as possible, but he hadn't expected quite this much snow, and he certainly hadn't expected the phoenix array to burn this long.

Amestrian soldiers loitered before the snowfield, smoking, cleaning weapons, and generally wasting time. There were an enormous number of them, filling the breadth of the pass before the avalanche, spilling up toward where Roy had decided to stop. What looked like an entire division of armor was lined up a short distance back from the avalanche, with the tank crews crawling over the armor like ants. Roy frowned. Aside from the one line of straggled wheel tracks dragged into the edge of the snowfield, it didn't look like anyone had made any effort at all to make a way to cross.

"What the hell is going on?" he said quietly to himself.

The original plan for clearing the pass involved transmuting the bulk of the snow, but there should have been at least an attempt at opening the pass in a more conventional way before he arrived. With all the other alchemists on the other side of the array with the attack groups, he'd have to do it himself, and this was a lot more snow than he'd anticipated having to move. Any amount of effort that could be put into the project prior to his arrival on the scene would have been helpful.

"Lieutenant Colonel," he said, and Hawkeye turned around again. "Get the division leaders up here. I need to know why everyone is just standing around."

"Sir," she said, and immediately got out of the jeep and went over to commandeer another one.

"Lust," said Roy, and raised a hand as he attempted to pull himself out of the jeep. As Hawkeye evicted the guards in the nearest escort jeep and began to drive it down the rise, the homunculus hopped down to the ground to take Roy's hand and help him.

Once out, Roy discovered that if he leaned most of his weight on the side of the jeep, he could do something that resembled standing on his own; when Lust experimentally released his arm, it didn't hurt too much to have no additional support.

That was better. He was leaning against the vehicle, but at least he was upright, and he felt more like himself when he wasn't sitting on his ass being ferried around like an invalid. Glancing around, he raised his voice slightly. "We're going to be here a while," he told his driver. "If you want to go have a cigarette, you may."

"Sir," said the driver, and got out of the jeep without questioning; he was enlisted, and seemed to know a dismissal when he heard one. He saluted and wandered off toward one of the tanks, where the tank crew was sitting on their vehicle, smoking and chatting.

"Now," said Roy, once everyone was out of earshot. "What's the matter?"

"Hmm?" Muddy yellow eyes glanced up at him, but there was nothing in them that Roy recognized, except a mild curiosity.

"What you said. That you ... love me."

"Oh." Lust shrugged slightly. "I love you. That's all." The homunculus looked away, losing interest again.

Incredulous, Roy eyed his companion, who apparently considered the conversation finished and was scrutinizing the side of the nearest mountain. "That's not all," he said after a moment. "Do you even know what you're saying?"

A familiar wicked smirk curved the creature's lips, and he cast Roy a mischievous look. "Hearing getting bad? Should we get you a horn to listen through?"

"Lust," said Roy sharply. "I know what you're saying, I'm asking if you do."

"They're simple words." Before Roy could get really annoyed, however, Lust continued, "Does it bother you that I love you?"

The abrupt turnabout broke Roy's train of thought. "... it depends on why you're saying it."

Would it bother him, if it turned out that Lust knew what he was saying and meant it? Roy wasn't sure he wanted to think about that yet.

It seemed manipulative, to confess love right after Roy had slept with someone else, especially while Roy should be doing something far more important than trying to decipher this dangerous creature's feelings. Was Lust trying to make him feel guilty, after practically throwing him at Edward? Roy thought that he felt guilty enough without that, and even the suspicion that Lust might be trying to manipulate him annoyed him.

Lust seemed to think it over. "I said it because it's true. Should I not have? You always used to say how you regretted not telling him that you loved him."

"You shouldn't say things like that unless you mean them, though," said Roy quietly. "You're ..."

No.

He broke off before the words could go any farther, but it seemed to be too late; Lust turned his head to give him a wistful smile. "I know that, Colonel. There are things that humans have that I never will. You take them for granted and never even think about them, and I will never have them and think about them all the time. But that doesn't mean I can't love you. That doesn't have anything to do with it at all."

"You heard what Edward said, didn't you?" Roy had known that Lust must have ... but he'd still hoped that the homunculus hadn't.

Lust nodded, and looked toward the mountain again. "He doesn't like me, but he spoke the truth about me."

"Lust ..." Roy raised a hand and touched his companion's shoulder. "Edward ... Edward might be wrong. He's a good alchemist, but he could still be wrong. We'll find another way."

"No ... he was right. It felt true, when he said that. If you gave me a soul, I would die. My body would live, and it would have a soul in it, but I would no longer be me."

The sheer blandness with which Lust said this was chilling. "We'll find another way," Roy told him.

"Even the original way would have killed me. He wasn't wrong. I know that now." Mildly stated, as if discussing something innocuous, and not important at all. "Maybe that's why I wanted it. I love you, though. I want you to know that."

"Lust." Roy pulled on the creature's shoulder, to force his companion to look at him. He recognized this kind of talk now, and cold dread was collecting in his belly. "Lust ... what have you done?"

"General Mustang!"

There was a jeep approaching from farther down the pass, and it wasn't Hawkeye's. One of the soldiers leaning against the most forward tank stepped forward to challenge the jeep, and it stopped in the armor's shadow. "General Mustang!" bellowed the jeep's driver once again, getting out of the vehicle and continuing toward Roy on foot. It was Colonel Hobbs.

"This isn't over," Roy told Lust quietly. The homunculus nodded.

"General," said Hobbs for a third time, as he approached closely enough that he no longer needed to yell. "I must have a word with you."

"Certainly," said Roy. He gave the colonel his most affable smile, although he was seething at the interruption. No matter how little he wanted to see Hobbs, there was a war to be handled; whatever was making Lust talk like that would have to wait. It would have to.

"Sir, I can't agree with this plan to clear the pass," said Hobbs, stopping at the end of Roy's jeep. The man's ears and nose were a bright scarlet, and Roy suspected that only part of it was due to the cold.

"Excuse me?" Roy had been unaware that Hobbs had any objections to Roy's original plan for moving the snow. Certainly there had been none voiced in the planning meetings.

"With all due respect, sir," said Hobbs stiffly, "while that thing of yours is still active, we should leave the snow as it is."

Thing? Roy blinked, and waited expectantly for further explanation, which came a moment later in the form of a jerked thumb over Hobbs' shoulder.

He realized that Hobbs must be talking about the array. That explained why there had been no apparent effort to move the snow thus far; Hobbs was in command of the forces who had stormed straight up the pass, and in Roy's absence would be the one to decide when and how to begin clearing the avalanche.

"We'll need to be mobile as soon as possible after the transmutation stops," said Roy, after getting control of his annoyance. "We need to move as much snow as we can, as soon as we can."

"Yes, sir," said Hobbs, the courtesy coming automatically, although the expression on the colonel's face was anything but agreeable. His voice was stiff and painfully formal. "However, I feel I must point out that that thing of yours is intentionally lethal, and to interfere with it while it's still active would not, in my opinion, be a wise move."

Roy raised his hand and said, "Colonel, it's a mile away."

"Yes, sir, but to clear this snow would require someone to get closer to it. Moving the snow manually would involve sending soldiers into needless danger, and I cannot in good conscious allow you yourself, General sir, to put yourself in danger in order to move it with your ... art. It's better to wait until the thing goes out before trying to clear the pass." He raised his chin slightly, waiting for Roy to agree with him.

Glancing toward the array, Roy had to admit that it did look awfully dangerous. The distance between this side of the avalanche and the array only made the thing that much more impressive ... it was huge. Knowing that it was so far away only made its size and power that much more apparent. It was still giving no signs of slowing down, burning as brightly as ever, sending the occasional flickering tendrils of transmutation energy in all directions.

Hobbs would back down if Roy ordered him to - grudgingly - and while he would never voice direct insubordination, an unhappy officer distrustful of his superior had other ways of expressing that distrust. Roy would much prefer the man agree. "I'm pretty sure I know the limits of that array, Colonel," he said casually. That was something Hobbs could never argue, since the man was not an alchemist himself, and to disagree would be to question Roy's competence as an alchemist.

But even that was not enough. "I'm sure you do, General, but I can't say the same for anyone else."

"So," said Roy slowly, "you propose that we sit here, doing nothing, and allow the attack groups on the other side of the pass to fend for themselves. For what would be, I must stress, an unnecessary period of time, time that we could have used clearing this snow and instead used arguing about it."

Straightening up, Hobbs said stiffly, "I'm only trying to prevent running what seems like a needless risk with a dangerous large-scale alchemy, General."

"I understand that," said Roy, and he smiled at Hobbs. "And I appreciate your concerns and your willingness to speak them. But we have to clear this pass."

For a moment, Hobbs looked like he was inclined to argue this point further.

Then something thudded, and kicked up a spray of dirt near Roy's foot.

When he wanted to, Lust could move rather fast. Roy was crashing down on the ground before he knew it, and he had enough time to be outraged before the report from the rifle echoed across the pass, bouncing between the mountainsides.

Another shot pinged off the jeep above him. Lust stood over him, half-crouched, black claws extended.

The guards in the other jeep were scattering, arraying out defensively between Roy and where the shots were coming from, weapons out.

"General!" said Hobbs. Roy glanced over toward his subordinate, who was half-crouched near the front of the jeep, and extending a hand toward him. Only moments had passed, but Roy knew roughly which direction the shots were coming from, and he was on the wrong side of the jeep.

He raised a hand and clasped Hobbs', and let the colonel drag him along the ground toward the front of the vehicle.

The homunculus followed, not assisting Hobbs, presumably to keep his hands free. Lust's claws shot out beside Roy, burying their tips in the ground just as another bullet kicked up dirt beside Roy's arm. Then Roy was dragged around the front of the jeep, and pulled up by Hobbs to sit on the other side.

Lust crouched beside him, and Roy glanced at his companion. The creature was trembling, and holding his flank with his left hand; red fluid dripped down from beneath his fingers. Roy wasn't surprised to see that the homunculus was wounded ... Lust could pick bullets out of the air with his talons if he saw them coming, and it wasn't like him to miss and hit the ground instead.

Crouching against the side of the jeep next to Roy, Hobbs said, calmly enough, "I'm sorry, General, I was told this area was secure."

"It's okay," said Roy. "We'll talk about court-martialing you later." Something warm trickled down his forehead, and he wiped at it; his fingers came back red. "My reflexes are getting terrible."

Hobbs glanced at him and started to say something, then frowned and roughly shoved back Roy's hair. Whatever he saw must not have been too serious, however, because the colonel let Roy's hair drop again with just a grunt. "That creature of yours is pretty quick."

"Yeah, he is." Reaching over to Lust, Roy tried to pry the homunculus' fingers away from the wound, but Lust only hissed and twisted away. The creature was shaking violently now. "Lust, let me see."

He was abruptly deafened by the firing of the armor behind the jeep. Lust, to Roy's total surprise, startled at the noise and pressed himself against Roy's side, burying his face in Roy's shoulder.

More gunfire sounded, drawing return fire from armor in front of the jeep now. Roy wiped more blood away as it dripped into his eye. This was damned inconvenient. Not to mention undignified, sheltering behind a jeep while an unknown group of snipers held control over territory that Roy had theoretically already taken.

"They must be up on the mountainside," said Roy, absently stroking Lust's back, the way he would a frightened pet.

"Yes, sir," said Hobbs. "Your creature seems to be injured there."

"I know." Lust's trembling was only getting worse, and Roy suspected that the homunculus was going to die of this injury. The flow of hot red fluid - not blood, but something analogous - was not slowing, as it would if the wound were healing itself.

"Is it going to be all right?" asked Hobbs. The man sounded vaguely concerned; Hobbs had never made a secret of his dislike of Lust, but that dislike apparently did not extend to wanting the homunculus dead.

"He dies a lot," said Roy. "He's reckless, and got himself killed once on a firing range. Lust, hey. Look at me." Putting fingers under the homunculus' chin, Roy pulled Lust's face up out of his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Colonel," said Lust weakly. "That was quicker than I'd thought."

"It's okay." He ducked instinctively as another shot ricocheted off the jeep, and was answered by cannon fire. Before he could say anything more, the pained tension went out of Lust's body, and the homunculus slumped against him, eyes losing focus.

Roy, who had seen the homunculus die dozens of times, sighed and continued to stroke the creature's hair. "Is anyone moving yet?" he asked Hobbs.

Going up onto his knees, Hobbs peered around the side of the jeep, and said, "Yes, sir. There are a couple of squads heading up toward the mountain now. That would be Vance."

"Good." There wasn't really much chance of the snipers escaping. It was a waste of time to sit here on this cold, hard ground, but he probably would have spent that time arguing with Hobbs anyway. "Once the area is secure again, I'd like to start working on clearing that snow."

"Sir ..." said Hobbs, but Roy raised a hand to forestall it.

"Really, Colonel, you know I always value your opinions, but in this case ..."

Abruptly, Lust made a choked sound, and the body leaning against Roy's shoulder suddenly curled up on itself, claws clenching. Roy looked down at the homunculus, waiting for him to wake up.

It was something he would see again in his dreams for years to follow.

Lust was so reckless with his own safety that he'd died many times ... so many that Roy couldn't count them. Roy knew the entire process of Lust's deaths extremely well, having watched it happen so many times, and by now Lust should be waking back up.

Instead, the world froze, because the creature's fingers were melting.

It was impossible to believe. It was impossible to believe what was happening right in front of him. The entire reality in which Roy existed was suddenly gone, whisked away by the red fluid that was beginning to cover Lust's skin ... that Lust's skin was becoming ... and he could do nothing but stare in disbelief.

"Lust," he whispered, sliding the homunculus off his shoulder and into his lap. Lust did not react and only stared sightlessly, eyes half-open and body locked into a near-fetal position, as his flesh melted like a candle held to a flame. It was happening so fast, so atrociously fast. The red fluid soaked into Roy's pants, slithering hotly over his flesh. Whatever had been inside Roy's belly a minute ago felt like it had been ripped out. The skin of his face tingled.

"What's happening to it?" asked Hobbs curiously.

"Lust!" Roy grabbed the creature by the shoulders and shook him, scrambling up onto his knees; a stab of pain from his gunshot wound drove up his thigh, and only served to ground him in the fact that this was real, this was happening, Lust was melting. Lust had to wake up ... whatever was going on, the creature had to wake up. Roy's hands slid through the red fluid that covered the homunculus' body, and he lost his grip.

As soon as the shapeless mass that had been Lust hit the ground, what was left of the homunculus collapsed in on itself and spread out into the pool beneath it. Clothing, golden hair, ouroborus and everything that had been Lust, everything that Roy had touched and held close at night and begged for forgiveness for seven years, everything that had been born out of the transmutation that had cost Alphonse his life lost its form and crumbled, soaking into Roy's pants and into the rocky ground.


Völuspá
Epilogue
two brothers set up their dwelling in wide Windhome

The warmth of the house was painful on Roy's half-frozen ears and nose. As he shook the snow off his coat and went to hang it up beside the door, words drifted out to him from the study.

"There's the General. I'd better get going."

"He doesn't bite, you know."

"I'm sure you're right, but I never know what to say to him."

"Tell him he's a bastard. He's used to that."

Roy smiled to himself as Lieutenant Brinson said, shocked, "... I can't do that, Major!"

With his coat hung up, Roy hobbled slowly into the study, cane clicking on the warm wood floor.

Walking was no longer painful, but it was difficult. The sensation had never returned to a broad patch on the outside of his right leg, and he lacked enough control over his right foot to keep it from dragging the ground. His gait was slow and awkward; if he attempted to walk at anything resembling a normal speed, he tended to trip over his own uncooperative foot.

It therefore took a little while for him to make it to the study, and neither of the occupants looked surprised at his appearance in the door. In his most formal tone, he said, "Good evening, Lieutenant, Major."

Edward scowled at him, leaning back from the card table that had been set up in front of the hearth; Lieutenant Brinson was hastily trying to straighten up the papers scattered across the table. At Roy's entrance, he took on a somewhat trapped look, and quickly snapped a salute. "S-sir!"

"At ease," said Roy, amused. According to Edward, it had taken Brinson over a month to get to the point where he could speak to Edward without stuttering; it was taking somewhat longer with Roy. The man resumed straightening up the pages on the table, and Roy limped over to snitch one to see what they were working on. The array sketched out on it wasn't complete - like any alchemist, Edward knew better than to draw a functional array that he didn't intend to actually use - but it was fairly complex and had a number of notes in the margins.

Skimming the notes, Roy turned the page toward Edward with a frown. Edward just shrugged. "It's my way," said the younger alchemist.

"If you say so." Roy handed the array back to Brinson, who was mumbling apologies and trying to make his escape. Sometimes it was all Roy could do to avoid forcing Brinson to stay and talk to him, just to try to grind this shyness out of the man, but that would be cruel.

"Thank you," said Brinson, and Roy couldn't tell if it was to himself or Edward. "I'll ... I'll just ... um ... good night."

"Good night, Lieutenant," said Roy graciously, and as Brinson retreated, he took a seat in the armchair across from Edward, where the lieutenant had just been sitting. Fresh wood had apparently just been thrown onto the fire, and it cracked and sent a shower of sparks across the hearth. "You're going to give him a complex about alchemy if you keep telling him things like that."

Folding up the card table and putting it back in its place next to the hearth, Edward said, "You don't like what I teach him, you teach him yourself."

"Where did you get this thing about souls anyway?"

Edward shrugged and made himself comfortable again. "It hardly matters, does it? It's the truth, and I know it's the truth. Where it came from doesn't change that."

Propping his cane against the side of his chair, Roy said, "I never would have expected an answer like that from you. You were always so ..."

"Naïve?"

"Scientific." When Edward frowned, Roy continued, "Saying that this is just the way things are ... that's not very scientific."

"I don't have to offer proof for the fact that the sky is blue, or that things fall when you drop them. Some things just are."

"Mmmm." Roy glanced toward the floor; Edward had three books stacked on top of one another near the foot of his own chair. The titles printed on their spines were in Draekin. Probably filched from the Velastok library. There was nothing in town printed in Amestrian, but that was no barrier to Edward, who spoke Draekin so well he occasionally spoke it in his sleep. Draekin wasn't the only foreign tongue to wake Roy in the night, and like this completely unscientific belief in the soul energy of alchemy, Edward would never tell him where those alien languages had been learned. "I'd say that gravity and the color of the sky are slightly more ... readily apparent observations than the notion that alchemy is powered by the souls of the dead. That sounds more like religion than science to me, and I wouldn't have expected that of you."

Edward just shrugged. "Believe what you want." The blonde stood up then, stretched and said, "There's tea if you want some."

"No coffee?"

"Not unless you want to transmute it. I looked everywhere for some this morning, but apparently the whole army is out of it until the next supply run gets through the pass. From the look of the snow, that might be March."

Roy waved at his lover, and said, "Tea's fine then."

He watched the fire crackle as Edward went into the kitchen to fetch the tea.

Lust would have been kneeling beside his chair, he decided. Head on his knee, saying sarcastic things about Roy's inability to go get his own damned tea. Perhaps tapping the floor with his claws, or licking his lips and casting significant looks toward Roy's groin.

As if on its own, his hand dropped to where that golden hair would have been if Lust had actually been present, doing that.

He'd thought that having Edward around would make it hurt less. It was Edward that he'd always wanted when he'd had Lust, after all, but somehow it didn't work that way. Even when Edward was present he occasionally caught himself looking around, checking for the location of someone who wasn't Edward, and was no longer there.

They'd found the array in Lieutenant Colonel Brandt's tent when pulling up the camp to move it from the farm on the southern side of the pass to Velastok. Roy hadn't recognized it; Edward had known what it was immediately. Roy had no idea when Lust had encountered that array in his reading, or when he'd learned to draw it.

With Brandt dead, killed by the phoenix array that he'd activated in the pass, there was no way to know precisely what had gone on between him and Lust ... but from the reassurances scratched into the corner of Brandt's floor, Roy could make a good guess.

I will show you how to make me yours.

Don't be alarmed when you activate the array.

The red stones that my alchemist had given to me must be removed first.

Don't stop.

Lust could never have been human, but apparently he could make himself mortal. Perhaps that had been enough.

Roy hoped it was.

"Here." A teacup was offered to him.

Roy reached up to take it, but it was abruptly withdrawn before his fingers could touch it. "Hey," he said.

"You don't look so good," said Edward, setting both Roy's teacup and his own on the hearth, and then swinging his leg over Roy's knees to sit in his lap. "What's the matter?"

"You're heavy," Roy told him, but made no effort to get Edward to back off. His hands slid up his lover's thighs and rested on Edward's hips. Edward didn't like to hear about Lust - Roy wasn't sure if it was a lingering hatred for the homunculus, or something else - so he pulled up a different excuse for his melancholy. "There was another attack today."

"I heard." Edward rested his arms on Roy's shoulders, flesh and metal fingers laced behind the back of Roy's neck. "I can't really blame them."

"Neither can I, but I can't tolerate it either."

"What are you going to do?" Edward's voice became cautious. He was always very, very careful not to say anything that could be construed as sympathy for the Drachmen, but Roy knew that Edward had lived in Velastok for three years, and furthermore Edward was just the kind of person who never wanted anyone to suffer. It would have seemed more odd to Roy if Edward didn't have some sympathy for the people whose town Roy's army was occupying. "If you retaliate, it's just going to piss them off more."

"I know that. I'm not sure yet what we're going to do. A couple of the company commanders are wanting to execute all the POWs."

"... what?" Edward's eyebrows swept down as he frowned at Roy. "You're not seriously going to do that, are you?"

Roy shrugged and rubbed one hand up and down Edward's hip. "I don't want to, but it's going to be a long winter, and they do eat."

At one time, Edward would have dissolved into rage at the suggestion of such a thing. The man in Roy's lap was old enough to see the horrible practicality of it, even though it made him recoil. "You know what that would make you, don't you?" he asked eventually.

"Yes," said Roy.

Cool steel fingers brushed down the side of his neck, and Roy turned his head to the side to permit it. "I don't want you to do that," said Edward. "It will make the Drachmen hate you more. It will make you hate yourself. I'd rather feed the POWs myself than make you do that."

Such an Edward thing to say, but Roy knew he couldn't promise his lover anything. He took Edward's good hand in his own and kissed the backs of the blonde's fingers. "We'll see." And then, to change the subject, he asked, "How is the teaching coming, anyway? I forgot to ask earlier."

The glint in Edward's eyes told him that that wouldn't be the end of the discussion, but Edward let it go for the moment anyway. Picking up Roy's tea from the hearth, he offered the cup once more and said, "Fine. He's picking it up pretty well."

Sipping the tea, Roy discovered it to be cool, but not yet cold, and laden with sugar the way Edward liked it; Edward must have handed him the wrong cup. It tasted like a liquid candy bar. As Edward took a sip from the other teacup and made a face, Roy handed his back and said, "What do you think he'll specialize in?"

"Hard to say," said Edward, switching the cups. The teacups had belonged to the mayor's family, who had lived in this house before the occupation; they were bone-white, patterned with a single stylized flower on each cup, and delicate as eggshells. "He seems interested in everything right now."

"I see." Looking toward the fire once again, Roy sipped his cool tea, and rubbed Edward's hip with his other hand.

After a long moment of companionable silence, Edward said softly, "You're all over the place tonight."

"Mmmm." Perhaps he was.

"... where did you go earlier?"

Edward didn't like to hear about Lust. He never wanted to talk about Roy's trips out to the vast cemetery outside the city gates, where both Drachman and Amestrian dead were buried in neat, segregated rows under the snow-laden earth. Not all of the headstones had been given a complete set of dates, and not all the graves contained complete bodies; some contained only those parts that could be found or, in the case of those caught in the array, only dog tags.

One grave contained nothing, and the headstone that stood over it was completely blank but for dates that spanned only seven years.

But Edward never liked to hear about Roy's visits there, so Roy volunteered nothing, and just looked into the fire. After a moment, Edward said, "I didn't want it to turn out that way."

Roy squeezed his lover's hip. "I know."

There was only silence from Edward after that, and Roy wasn't much in the mood to talk. Eventually Edward slid out of Roy's lap.

"I'm think I'm going to head to bed," said Edward, as he picked up the poker from the hearth and began to bank the fire. "You want to stay out here a little longer?"

In a way, Roy wanted to. He could sit out here, thinking about Lust and all the things his longtime companion would have said about this or that, all night if allowed. Instead, he groped for his cane, and began to push himself up to his feet. "No," he said. "I'll come with you."

When Roy had first commandeered the mayor's house, Edward had refused to stay in it at all, sleeping for the first two weeks elsewhere. When finally persuaded to move into the house, he'd slept in the children's room for a while, offering no reason for it. Roy had understood.

They slept together now, however. Edward did not help Roy limp down into the bedroom, but he did help Roy get his uniform off without comment. The master bedroom had its own fireplace, but it was cold, and neither of them moved to light it.

On the mantle over the fireplace, unguarded, the Philosopher's Stone that had been born in the array in the pass glowed like a lamp. It was not fully complete - the number of lives that had gone into its formation was insufficient to produce a flawless Stone - but the power of it radiated like the dawn.

Because of it, the room needed no other light. They slept and woke and had sex under its glow, and sometimes it reflected in Edward's eyes, and darkened them.

Once they were settled under the coverlet and Roy had his lover held tightly up against him, he murmured softly, "I love you, you know."

He could feel Edward's mouth, pressed against his chest, twist slightly. "You say that every fucking night."

"I know," said Roy. "I want you to know it."

"Mmmm," said Edward. "Whatever."

So there you are. Be as cruel as you want! I can take it.