Back Together Again: Roy/Maes fic, Chapter 14
TITLE: “Back Together Again”
GENRE: Yaoi/Drama
RATING: Overall Hard-R to light NC-17 (or just M, if you prefer) for violence, language, sexuality and adult concepts
WARNINGS: Violence. Grief/PTSD. Sexuality (including some borderline non-con). Angst/Darkfic. Hughesmunculus. And finally: THIS FIC MAY CONTAIN HETEROSEXUAL SEX. <-- consider yourself warned!
PAIRING(S): HUGHES/ROY!!!!! (with a dab of Hughes/Gracia and a pinch of Roy/Gracia - sorta)
SUMMARY: A still-grieving Roy Mustang is visited by a ghost made flesh - a ghost in the form of Maes Hughes! Did Roy actually succeed in bringing back his dead best friend using alchemy … or is he being haunted by a homunculus?
DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to Ms. Arakawa, I just take them out to play.
Chapter Fourteen: Where the Birds Always Sing
She walked out of the house and looked around at all the gardens that looked back at her house
(Like all the faces that quiz when you smile…)
And he was standing at the corner where the road turned dark
A part of shiny wet (like blood the rain fell black upon the street)
And kissed his feet she fell, her head an inch away from heaven
And her face pressed tight and all around the night sang out like cockatoos
“There are a thousand things” he said “I’ll never say those things to you again”
And turning on his heel he left a trace of bubbles bleeding in his stead
And in her head, a picture of the boy who left her lonely in the rain
(And all around the night sang out like cockatoos)
- “Like Cockatoos”, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (the Cure)
His note had said only:
Meet me at midnight. You know where.
She would never figure out, Gracia thought, how he knew which nights she had her family or Sciezka staying over to keep her and Elicia company. Unless … does he spy on me? Is that where he goes during the day?
As she descended her front steps, she couldn’t help looking around furtively. Nothing was out of the ordinary; the modest flower-beds she had cultivated in the last few years lay quiet and dormant. It was still too early for them to bloom. She smiled, thinking of her daughter. One of Elicia’s earliest memories was of Edward transmuting flowers for her when he came for a visit.
Was it really years ago? She thought as she walked. Has so much time really passed?
She passed the limits of the city proper, heading for Central Park, where he’d proposed to her on Midsummer’s Eve. So many memories. So much time. Which seemed so little after he was dead. She forced that thought away. I have him back. That’s what matters.
The night sang around her: the wind through the bare branches of the trees in the park, the gentle pattering of the rain, the quiet voices of the few night birds that serenaded the cars on the roads, the shhhh of tires on wet paving-stones. The park had few visitors during the colder months, but from farther away she could hear the sounds of people - music, laughter, voices raised in joy or consternation. The city was never quiet; not really. She liked that about living there. She really almost pitied people who lived out in the countryside, like Ed and Al.
It was raining again, splashing like dark blood on the already-shining street. She shivered and pulled her coat more tightly around her. Such morbid thoughts…
He was standing at the corner where the road turned dark, shaded by a huge evergreen tree. He was so still, but even cast in shadow like that, she knew it was him. She ran toward him like a giddy schoolgirl, then slowed and stopped when she saw he wasn’t even looking at her. His hand was extended out before him, raised as if in protest. As if to tell her, Stop. Don’t come any closer.
Her eyes widened. Why would he want her to keep away? Heedless, frantic, she rushed in again, no thought in her head but to get to him, to shake him, to make him see reason.
She stumbled in the dark and fell headlong onto the pavement. Her palms were scraped, probably bleeding; she started to push herself up and stopped when she saw she had literally fallen at his feet. And he just stood there. Glaring down at her. Making no move to help her up.
The tears came unbidden, hot salt in contrast to the cold rain; she threw her arms out and tried to grab him, to hold him in place, trying to kiss his feet like some pathetic slave. How far have I fallen, she thought sluggishly, that this is what it takes to get a man to notice me. At first she thought he was going to kick her away, but he didn’t move. She pulled herself up, grasping his legs, pressing her face tight into the damp cloth, her head an inch away from heaven … she was very dimly aware of the song of the city going on around her. The world didn’t stop, she thought, just because her world was ending.
And end it did. He placed a cold hand on her forehead, forcing her back, prying her away from him. He offered a rigid arm, helping her to her feet, then stepped away.
“It’s Roy, isn’t it,” she said. She wasn’t even aware she intended to speak until the words had left her mouth. “It’s him. I was wrong, all this time. It was really him.”
He did not bother to contradict her, but smiled. He spoke, each word falling like a hammer.
“There are a thousand things,” he said. “You know all those things I used to say. And you poor thing … you really thought I meant them.” He laughed outright, throwing his head back in an ostentatious display of mirth. “I’ll never say those things to you again.”
Turning on his heel, he left a trace of his scent bleeding in his stead, quickly absorbed and then erased by the rain.
She was so shocked she couldn’t even weep. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t call after him. It never once occurred to her that the retreating back did not, could not belong to her husband; it was not in Maes Hughes to be so cold, or so cruel. Her only thought was of betrayal, of being abandoned by the man she loved, being left lonely in the cold and rain.
And all around, the night continued its song as though nothing had happened. She had never felt so insignificant. So alone. He’d left her alone … alone, to raise her daughter … by herself. Again.
When she walked back through her front door, she threw her raincoat to the floor and strode purposefully to her bedroom. She took her handgun out of the nightstand, located the ammo, and loaded it.
She sat there, on the edge of her bed, staring at the shine of the lamp reflecting metal, at her still-bloody palms, for a very long time.
Alphonse sighed and got to his feet. He was grateful for the rain; he was sure it was part of what had kept him from being disturbed while he was working.
He wondered what he would tell Brother and Mustang when he got back. He wanted to just come clean, tell them everything, try to prepare them; but that hardly seemed wise. If they were supposed to know, they already would, his instinct told him - though his logical mind knew it made no sense, he couldn’t help it; it was what it was, and he could no more change it than stop the rain. If he told them, they’d want to know where his knowledge came from. “I just know” would hardly fly with two people as hard-headed as they were.
He thought fondly of a book he’d read, where a great scientist had asserted that if a conclusion was not poetically balanced, it couldn’t be scientifically true. At one time in his life, Al would have thought that was nonsense.
He knew better now.
His plan was coming together perfectly. He all but rubbed his hands together in delight as he strolled down the darkened streets. Just a few more hours to go.
Now that those meddlesome Elric brothers were involved, he wouldn’t be able to accomplish his goal in the same manner he’d originally planned to. He would still accomplish it, all right; he’d just have to use someone else. He smiled fiendishly, remembering her expression, transforming from confusion to understanding to horrible, inexpressible pain. He’d used his influence to the fullest in that moment; he knew exactly how strong her longing was, and exactly which buttons to push to make it even stronger, to drive her over the edge.
He stopped suddenly. He tried to take another step and faltered; stumbled. His legs buckled. He folded at the waist, pressing his hands to his face. Had anyone been observing him, they might have approached him then, asked him if he was all right.
No one was watching.
“What … what did I just do?” he murmured into his hands. It was not a rhetorical admittance of guilt, but an honest question. He was confused, bleary, as if he were drunk. In his mind’s eye were memories, memories of that same face, younger but still just as beautiful, those wide green eyes looking up at him through a veil of palest green, a veil that matched her elaborate gown. He remembered her lying on their couch, weak and exhausted but smiling after the ordeal that was Elicia’s birth: smiling at his obvious love for, and devotion to, the helpless object she had just brought into the world, entrusted into their care, to look after and train. He remembered seeing that same face reflected at him in the green innocence of his daughter’s eyes, in the pale brown color of her baby-soft hair styled in the pigtails she loved to twirl between her chubby fingers.
No. He was not Maes Hughes.
Unbidden, he remembered Roy, flushed and sweaty and panting beneath him on the hard bunk beds at the academy.
No. NO!
Again his Sensei’s voice: No one knows quite why. Not even I. But you will retain … echoes of the person the alchemist was trying to create.
Could it be the person’s soul?
Don’t be ridiculous. You aren’t human. You don’t have a soul. He took in a deep breath. I made you, she’d said matter-of-factly. You belong to me.
He straightened up. He had a job to do.
Yes, maybe he was a slave. A created not-quite-human. Nothing more than a pawn in Dante’s game.
But the reward would be more than worth it.
Onward to Chapter Fifteen
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