justifying the means - part 1
RIGHT.
This is the sequel to In Defiance of Reason. It is absurdly long, as you see. (Oh, God, 3 parts. *mortified*) After this, there will be one more chapter of Hughes POV, and then a chapter of Ed POV, and then...it will be done?
What I'm proposing to do, then, is take 23+ volumes of information, twist that information into strange shapes, and stuff it all into four chapters of fic. I SEE NO POSSIBLE WAY THIS CAN GO WRONG.
So many thanks to
zephy_magnum and sae. For the patience, for the beta, for demanding more Roy.
I continue to blame eiliem.
FMA continues to belong to Arakawa.
Justifying the Means
“Are you the guy?”
The voice came from immediately behind him, and it took all of Maes’s considerable training to keep from jumping a foot.
He turned to see a boy crouched on the ledge of a bricked-up window, staring down at him. Blond hair, cat-yellow eyes, metal arm. Visibly insane.
Well, Roy was right about something. He certainly does look feral.
“The guy?” he asked.
“The Colonel’s guy in Central,” snapped what had to be the Demon kid, hands twitching impatiently. He looked nervous, and nerves were never something you wanted to see in a person who might fly off the handle and kill everyone in sight, Maes reflected.
“I’m Maes Hughes,” he admitted.
“This is for you, then,” the kid said. He hopped off the wall and stalked practically toe-to-toe with Maes. He stared just long enough to make Maes extremely uncomfortable, then handed him a piece of paper and wandered away.
Away. Gone. Down an alley.
Maes read Roy’s note and found it not as helpful as it might have been.
* * *
“I warned you.”
“I didn’t feel warned!”
“Did you feel like screaming with terror? That’s usually how I feel.”
“This isn’t funny, Roy.”
“In a way, it really, really is.”
“How am I supposed to do anything for him if he wanders off after hello, anyway?”
“Oh, he’ll find you. Don’t worry.”
“This had better be part of the grand plan, Roy, or I’m going to be very annoyed.”
“…I’m worried that it might be bigger.”
“That was not the answer I was hoping for.”
* * *
“Lieutenant Colonel.”
Maes had been waiting for it this time. He did pretty well; his heart hardly stopped at all.
“You must be Edward Elric,” he said, smiling a big smile at the Demon kid, who was perched on the fence outside headquarters. He wondered if the kid liked high places for the psychological advantage, or just because he wanted gravity on his side when he tackled someone.
The kid looked mildly surprised. “You gonna call me by my actual name, too?”
“Ed’s a good name,” Maes said bravely.
Ed stared expressionlessly for a long, worrying moment. “Whatever,” he concluded at last. “You talk to the Colonel?”
“I work for the military, Ed,” Maes said, and noticed the slight twitch at the use of the name. “You’re going to have to specify which colonel you mean.” It seemed like a good idea to make his loved ones seem more like real people to the Demon Alchemist.
“Which fuckin colonel do you think?” Ed snarled.
Yikes, temper.
“Of course it’s obvious now, but if we’re working together, there will be all sorts of colonels, and-”
“Mustang, okay? Fucking Mustang, did you fucking talk to him, or are we going to sit here and waste my goddamn time all goddamn day?”
“He couldn’t tell me much; the line wasn’t secure,” Maes said.
“Right, fine, fuck. I’ll tell you, then. In the desert I saw this guy eating another guy, it was weird. Then I killed him and he didn’t die; that was weirder. Him and this lady had ouroboros tattoos, which stands for, whatever, eternal life, or-shit, do you know a fuckin’ thing about alchemy?”
Maes shook his head. His poor, reeling head.
“He sends me to a fucking non-alchemist. Unbelievable. Fine. You know about the Philosopher’s Stone at least?”
“I’ve…heard of it,” Maes said slowly. “I thought it was more legend than fact.”
“Yeah? Do they train you guys to all say the same stupid damn thing? I thought people not dying when you kill them was ‘more legend than fact’ too, but shit, I was wrong. These creeps are based in Central. And the best libraries are in Central, and I need you staff pukes to get into some of them. So it’s a two-for-one thing.”
“You want me to help you research the Philosopher’s Stone?” Maes guessed.
“I don’t give a shit about the Philosopher’s Stone. I just want to know what these guys are, where they are, and how I can kill them. Are you gonna be any use to me, or am I gonna have to find somebody who is?”
This, Maes reminded himself, was for Roy.
Besides, he had to admit this whole undying cannibal thing sounded pretty bad. Always assuming it was true and not some kind of hallucination. It was unsettling to think how much Roy believed in this wild-eyed child. It had been unsettling back when the Demon kid was only a series of scary statistics, and it was even worse now that Maes had a face to go with them.
“What do you want me to look for?” Maes asked. Because what the hell, humoring the homicidal maniac was probably the safest option.
“In East, they say there was some fucked up human experimentation going on during Ishbal. You know about this?”
“…Peripherally.” He’d tried not to think about it, actually. He was putting all of his energy into investigating ways to overthrow this regime, rather than worrying about every fiddling atrocity they’d committed.
“Well, to start, maybe you should find out more than peripherally. Got me? Because add freaky human experimentation to people that don’t die, and you pretty much come up with the military being evil.”
“This is news?” Maes asked without thinking, then bit his tongue. The fact that Roy had sent him this kid didn’t necessarily mean he shared their politics.
“Obviously not,” Ed said. Apparently he did share their politics. Good to have some of the crazy people on their side, for a change. “But I never believed they had a massive conspiracy going. I didn’t have that much faith in ‘em. To be honest, it’s kind of depressing me that they’re with it enough to handle a conspiracy. I liked the idea that you were all just massive fuck-ups. If you’re evil, then shit, I have to respect that.”
Maes did not like the way Ed had drifted from “them” to “you” in that little speech.
“Oh yeah, and look at Lab 5,” he went on.
“Lab 5?” Maes repeated, surprised. “Is that the lab out by the prison? It’s supposed to be abandoned.”
“Supposed to be, yeah. But people who think they’re gonna get sent to the jail over there, they’ll do some pretty crazy things to get out of it. Because of the rumors about the lab. Because it seems like there are a lot of people who get sent there, and they don’t ever show up again. More people than should fit in that jail, you got me?”
“People do crazy things to get out of it?”
“Crazy things. Like coming to me and confessing.”
Maes realized that this really shouldn’t be the part of the conversation that fascinated him most, but… “And do you kill them? These people who come to you and confess?”
Ed shrugged. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“On the fucking weather,” Ed snapped, face going hard. “Can you look into this or not? Don’t waste my time.”
“I can look into it.” Embrace the madness, why not. Enormous work backlog, what was that? “What are you going to do?”
Ed grinned, and it was very alarming. “Make trouble.”
* * *
“He’s claimed his first victim, Roy. I hope you’re happy.”
“Who was it?”
“The Axe.”
“…That’s prestigious. How did he find the Axe?”
“Well, I don’t know. He hasn’t shared that with me. What I want to know is what you two think I can do for him when he can find the Axe, a man I’ve been looking for for an entire year, in two days.”
“Don’t take it too hard, Maes. People who would never breathe a word to the military tell Elric all kinds of things. More than they would tell their neighbors, probably. He has a way about him.”
“A way, huh? That sounds like the voice of experience.”
“You have no idea. But this isn’t about field investigation. Elric wants access to military libraries and classified records, and he can’t get that without you.”
“And you want me to help him, knowing what a very bad idea it is. How likely is it that this man eating a guy in the desert story is true?”
“I’ve never known Elric to lie.”
“Heatstroke.”
“He’d have taken the possibility into account. I’m taking it as fact. And if it is fact, then it’s worth risking the possible court-martial. A creature like that should be alchemically impossible. And if Elric stumbled across two of them…”
“Then there are more. You’re magic to work with, Roy, have I told you that?”
“Hmm.”
“And another thing. He’s psychotic.”
“Yes, Maes. I believe that was the first thing I ever told you about him.”
“And yet you’re fond of him. You get that fond tone. I took that to mean there was something redeemable in him, but Roy. It doesn’t look promising.”
“…I realize that.”
“You sent him to me anyway.”
“It doesn’t look promising. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
“Your optimism never fails to be a pain in the ass.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
* * *
“So what have you got for me?” asked Roy’s psychotic little alchemist.
“Inconclusive,” Maes said briskly. “Almost everyone sent there is set to be executed anyway, and those who aren’t are under life sentences. It is a maximum security prison.”
Ed nodded, apparently not disappointed by this information. “So nobody’s been missing them,” he said. “Military can do whatever they want with them.”
“That would be the conspiracy theorist interpretation, yes,” Maes allowed.
“So all we got is a bunch of guys who nobody’d miss and a bunch of rumors about fucked up human experimentation. I guess I gotta go check the place out myself. Fat lot of help you are.”
The Demon Alchemist was a brat. Who knew? “Whereas you’re incredibly helpful. May I ask how hunting down the Axe was relevant to the investigation?”
Ed gave him a withering look. “Distraction,” he said.
“From what?” Maes asked.
“From you, dumbshit,” Ed snapped. “Think for a second if I am right, and this is a big government conspiracy, even though that’s the most depressing thought I’ve had all year. Guess what wouldn’t be a good idea? To have people notice you’re nosing around looking for stuff on Lab 5. For fuck’s sake. Thought you’d have a better chance of getting away with it if most of the military was trying to find me instead.”
The Demon Alchemist had been trying to protect him. The Demon Alchemist had been using himself as a decoy, for extra added surreal. “Oh,” said Maes. “Thank you.”
Ed eyed him suspiciously. “Whatever,” he muttered.
* * *
Insisting on going to Lab 5 with the Demon Alchemist had been unspeakably stupid. Maes could see that now. Actually, he’d had his suspicions in that direction ever since the idea had come to him, but he hadn’t appreciated the real depths of the stupidity.
He appreciated them now. Now that he was standing next to a crazy, snarling kid, facing a huge guy in armor holding a cleaver. There was a reason normal people shouldn’t tag along with alchemists-any alchemist, not just the wacky ones-and it was that things like this were always happening to them. They drew nutball situations like lightning rods of crazy. Maes had gone and chosen to stand next to a lightning rod.
At least he’d made sure to tell Gracia and Elicia he loved them before he left.
“You’re freaking insane if you think you can get by me,” chortled the guy with the cleaver. Of course, Ed was freaking insane, and Maes would have mentioned that to the armor man had he been slightly less horrified by his own stupidity. “Do you know who I am!?”
“The question is, do I care?” Ed asked, clapping his hands and transmuting his automail into a big, nasty-looking blade. Maes hadn’t known he could do that; what interesting information he was learning tonight. This must be what hell was like. “And the answer is, fuck no.”
“I’m Barry the Chopper!”
Apparently less like hell and more actually hell. Because, among other things, Barry the Chopper was dead. Ha ha.
“Who the fuck ever Barry the Chopper is,” Ed muttered. Of course, he was too young to remember. Otherwise, Maes was sure, Barry the Chopper would be every bit as dead as he was reported to be, because Ed probably would have killed him, and Ed didn’t seem the kind to do things by half-measures.
The Demon kid looked happy. Maes had a suspicion that he was always happiest in the midst of mayhem.
Meanwhile, Barry the Chopper was deeply offended that Ed didn’t know who he was. Amazingly, Ed allowed him to go on at some length on this subject.
Or maybe it wasn’t so amazing. Maybe Ed had let him talk because he’d been waiting for the end of the story; for the bit about how an allegedly dead criminal came to be running around in armor and wielding a cleaver. It turned out, Maes was unsurprised to hear, to be the fault of mad military experiments and alchemy.
When Barry the Chopper said the words, “bound my soul to the armor,” Ed finally interrupted-with a bloodcurdling snarl. Maes stepped away before he’d given it any conscious thought. Animal instinct.
“Show me the blood rune,” Ed growled, circling closer to Barry. “Show me.”
“Oh, you wanna see it?” Barry chuckled. Clearly he thought that being a soul in armor would save him from Ed. Maes was not at all sure he was right. “Sure, you can see it. Take a good look, kid. It’s gonna be one of the last things you see before I chop ya up.” He lifted his helmet. As he’d said, there was nothing inside. And yet it was still highly unsettling to actually see it.
Ed circled close, circled away, circled close, circled away, Barry turning to try keep him in sight. Or whatever sense it was Barry used to keep track of people. Looked like his confidence in the safety of the armor was slipping.
“C’mon kid,” he said. “Ain’t you the littlest bit freaked out?”
“No,” Ed hissed, possibly not in response to the question. “That’s what I did. It’s the same. It’s the same! It’s bullshit, it couldn’t work. You can’t bring the dead back to life.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Barry said, settling his helmet back in place, which caused Ed to twitch. “I wasn’t dead when they did it. None of us were. You’re too late if you wait ‘til after they’re dead. Cuz they’re dead then. Idiot.”
Ed abruptly stopped pacing in favor of holding completely, unnaturally still. Ice and death. “Are you telling me,” Ed asked softly, “that I was too slow?”
“What, you tried to tack somebody to armor, too?” Barry asked. “Oh, that’s a riot! What’re the odds, right?” He started to laugh.
And Ed laughed back. He laughed and laughed. He laughed long after Barry had stopped laughing and started edging away. He laughed and clapped, laughed and ran toward Barry, who stepped forward and raised the cleaver. He was still laughing when he narrowly dodged under the cleaver, hit Barry’s chest with both hands, and blew him to pieces. After that, he started screaming, hacking what was left of Barry the Chopper into ever-smaller chunks of scrap metal.
After a small eternity, he ran out of both breath and metal, and just knelt in the wreckage, gasping, staring at the last whole panel of the armor. The one with the rune on it.
“You can’t do this to me!” Barry the Chopper was shouting, had been shouting for some time. “Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am!? You’re nobody! I’m the terror of Central! I’m Barry the Chopper! You can’t do this to me!”
Ed studied the panel for a moment more, then, business-like, pulled his arm back and slammed the blade through the center of the rune. A last shriek of metal-on-metal, and the night went silent. It was the silence of post-hysteria exhaustion, and it held for a very long time.
“You,” Ed said roughly at last, turning from the scrap that had been Barry the Chopper to Maes, who was still there only because he hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself by running. “Get the fuck away from here. You’re just gonna be in my way.” There was blood running down Ed’s face where flying bits of metal had hit him, and his eyes were wide and empty. He didn’t look like he was in the mood for an argument. Luckily, Maes was not in a mood to argue.
He backed up all the way across the killing ground until he hit the wall they’d climbed over to get in. He turned and climbed it again, casting one last glance over his shoulder. Ed was still staring blankly after him.
Maes dropped down on the other side of the wall and got the fuck away from there.
* * *
“Roy, I just experienced one of the scariest nights of my life.”
“Maes? It’s 2 o’clock in the morning, what-”
“It was up there with a midnight attack. Sneaking into a building full of people who wanted to kill me. Watching you burn the world with a snap of your fingers. And so very unexpected.”
“…Maes?”
“Do you really know what you sent me?”
“What…?”
“I have to think you don’t know, Roy. I have to think that, because if you knew, and you sent him here anyway…”
“Is this about Elric? Maes, what happened?”
“What. Happened.”
“Wh-”
“Do you remember. Of course you do. Men who’ve just been fighting too long.”
“…Yes.”
“Too many years under too much pressure. And they snap. Like Armstrong if they’re lucky, like Leroy if they’re not. And even our stupid, soulless military sends them home at that point.”
“Section 239. It’s meant to be a punishment, Maes. Dereliction of duty.”
“The point is, they send you home. And Elric needs a Section 239 for his life, Roy. I don’t know what happens when you get people to that point and just keep pushing, but I have to think it’s going to be even more amazingly horrible with a boy. I don’t want to watch this happen.”
“He’s held on this long.”
“You didn’t see him.”
“I’ve heard the stories, and Maes, he’s pulled it back together every time. And there have been some very bad times. Don’t give up on him yet.”
“…I’ll try not to, for as much good as that’ll do. This is a bad scene, Roy. If he kills me, I’ll haunt the shit out of you. God, I can’t even dream up a way this could end well.”
“You’re just bad-tempered because you’re tired.”
“I hate you, Roy Mustang.”
* * *
“Sir?” said the perennially nervous Private Nelson, fidgeting in his doorway.
Maes was too exhausted and drained even to find the fidgeting annoying. A sad state of affairs. “What is it, Private?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and throwing his pen down in disgust. He’d gotten approximately nothing done this morning, and held out no great hope for the rest of the day, either. He’d be late getting home.
“There’s…” Fidget, fidget. How the hell were they training these puppies? “There’s someone at the gate asking for you. He’s…” Fidget, fidget. “Bloody?”
That would be Ed, then. Maes had been expecting him. Either alive and in person, or as a body identified among the rubble that had once been Lab 5.
Leave him alone for a few hours…
Maes rubbed his temples and sighed. He’d gotten almost two hours of sleep before the phone call at 4am, the phone call about the lab exploding and people screaming and no leads. Gracia’s worried face in the sickly, pre-dawn light.
“The West gate?” Maes asked.
Private Nelson nodded. Nervously.
Maes sighed again, and stood.
* * *
Ed was just on the other side of the fence, staring defiantly at the biggest and burliest of the gate guards. Who was staring right back at him. At some point, it had clearly turned into a pissing contest.
Maes never seemed to win any points in this kind of competition for manliest man. For example, he would never have dreamt of getting into a pissing contest with someone who looked the way Ed did, even if he hadn’t known another thing about him. Survival had always been his top priority. Gracia claimed this was one of the things she loved best about him.
“Ed,” he said. “You’ve been busy since last we spoke.”
Ed jerked his attention away from the guard, and turned his eerie yellow eyes on Maes. Eyes made far more eerie by the bruises and the blood and the ash on his face. He studied Maes for a moment, then turned and spat blood onto the road.
Without looking up again, he said, “Came to take you to lunch.”
He said, “Didn’t mean to drag you into the shit like that.”
He said, “Sorry things got kind of weird.”
Kind of weird, Maes thought, was one way to describe it. But it wasn’t the way Maes would have chosen. “I’m going to expect an explanation,” he said.
Ed’s eyes briefly flashed, and Maes thought he would argue, but apparently he thought better of it. He ducked his head. “Yeah,” he muttered, almost embarrassed.
Roy had mentioned this phenomenon, but it was the first time Maes had seen it for himself. Edward Elric, at this moment, looked exactly like what he was. A lonely, confused, fifteen-year-old boy. In its way, it was as upsetting as anything that had happened during the night.
“Right,” said Maes. “Let’s go.”
“Sir,” said the burly guard-Sergeant Lewis, five years of service, moderately happy marriage-in a horrified tone. “Should you really associate with this person? He’s-he’s-”
Fifteen years old and looks like he barely escaped ground zero? “He’s assisting me with an investigation, Sergeant.” It was almost true.
“Oh,” said the sergeant, and scowled at Ed with the scorn most military men had for informers. Ed scowled back with interest.
“We’re leaving before he starts an incident,” Maes informed everyone, marching out the gate and hoping Ed would follow. He really didn’t want another incident. He had had quite enough Demon kid-related incidents for one morning.
Ed did follow.
Ed, Maes noticed as they walked along, was not just covered in blood and ash. There was also mud, a fine dusting of what might have been shattered rock, and goop. Unidentifiable goop. He was also limping, but Maes suspected that any comment on that would not be taken well.
“Would you like to stop and change clothes?” Maes asked.
Ed eyed him. “No,” he said, in a you’re an idiot tone.
“You’ll traumatize the waitstaff,” Maes pointed out.
“So I’ll leave a good tip,” Ed snapped. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“Where to begin?” Maes mused. “The hostility? The unpredictable violence? The explosions, Ed?”
Ed sighed, clearly annoyed. “Well, pick one,” he said.
Pick one. Now what kind of strange code was that? “Pick one?”
“Yeah. You got hostility, random violence, and explosions, and I only got time to explain one today. I’d say go for the explosions, cuz that’s the one you actually need to know about. And I’m not explaining the hostility, you can figure that shit out on your own.”
“Does this mean you will explain the random violence?” Roy’s stories would seem to indicate that Ed didn’t part with that kind of information.
Ed huffed and shifted irritably. “I’m…you’re working with me. If you’re gonna be any use, you gotta know when I’m gonna flip my shit. That’s fair.” They’d reached Main Street by this time, and Ed scowled at the restaurants on offer. “I don’t work with anybody most of the time. I guess I forgot. People gotta know how you’re gonna act, or they’re no use to you.”
They’re no use to you, Maes thought. What an interesting way to say, They can’t trust you.
“But you can hear about that tomorrow,” Ed said, choosing a pasta place famous for its enormous servings without consulting Maes, and heading for the door. “It’s a long story, and the explosions, I admit that’s kinda important.”
“I’d really like to know about the random violence first,” Maes said. After all, Ed was less likely to change his mind about spilling information on the explosions; that seemed relevant to the investigation.
Ed was unimpressed with this decision. “Your funeral,” he muttered. “Dumbshit.”
It quickly became obvious why Ed had chosen this particular restaurant. He was apparently either a much-beloved or a much-feared customer. Possibly both. Given that Ed had been in Central for less than a week, Maes had to be impressed by how fast he worked. Perhaps this had something to do with the Axe.
As soon as Ed and Maes walked through the door, the waitress, without looking directly at either of them, led them to a poorly lit corner table not far from the kitchen, gave Maes a menu, and left. Silently. It was eerie.
“I take it,” said Maes, “that these people know you.”
Ed shrugged.
The waitress came back to take Maes’s order, glancing at Ed out of the corner of her eye, but still not looking at him straight-on. She then brought them both food, which meant that she had Ed’s food preferences as well as his seating preferences memorized.
This was a family restaurant, and the rest of the family was hovering-not intrusively, but hovering. In case Ed looked like he might, possibly, want something, Maes imagined.
Maes was having lunch with a celebrity serial killer. How special.
“About Barry the Chopper,” he said, thinking of celebrity serial killers.
“Sure, yeah. Like I said, it’s a long story. Boring.”
Maes tended to disagree.
Ed was a study in perpetual motion throughout the meal. He sat with his back to the corner, his eyes wandering all over the room. He ate, lost interest in eating in favor of staring around suspiciously, then remembered to eat again. He fiddled with his napkin. His metal fingers tinged against a water glass. He was also favoring his left arm; Maes didn’t comment.
He was making Maes tired. More tired. And that was without taking into account what he was saying.
“Equivalent exchange,” explained the Demon Alchemist, “is only a functional law of alchemy.” Pause for inexplicable sneer. “All sciences have them. They aren’t true, in the purest sense of the word, but they’re true enough to be useful in practice. Day to day. It’s only when you start dealing with extremes that they fall apart, and most people never deal with extremes.”
Maes thought it was very weird that Ed suddenly sounded like a textbook. He also wondered how he’d managed to inadvertently request a lecture on advanced alchemical theory.
“The extreme limit of alchemy,” Ed went on, “is the Gate. And once you’re at the Gate, all those rules you’ve lived by become bullshit. Equivalent exchange my ass, you’re lucky if you don’t get killed or driven straight-up insane. Conservation of Mass isn’t the problem, it’s Conservation of Natural Provenance. It’s so damn wishy-washy, nobody knows what they’re doing with it. I mean, natural provenance? Who the fuck can even really define that? Sure, it works out when all you’re doing is making sure that the elements you end up with are the same ones you started with. But what’s the natural provenance of a soul? That’s shit people have no business messing with.
“And my brother and I, we messed with it. That’s where I lost the leg. My brother lost a lot more than that. I tried to get his soul back; the Gate took my arm in exchange for it, let me figure out how it could be done. But it sounds like I was…too slow.”
He took a moment to stare straight ahead and breathe.
“You can’t bring the dead back to life,” he went on eventually. “That’s one law of alchemy that’s no fucking joke. We were trying to bring our mother back, obviously that didn’t work. And when I came to missing a leg, I didn’t even-I didn’t even think about him at first. I crawled over to see this thing we’d brought back, this thing that wasn’t our mother. I had to freaking touch it, I had to wait and watch it die, what the-”
He choked, paused, breathed.
“I always thought. I’d fucked up the rune, somehow. It was a thing when I was twelve, all year, I’d look up runes and try to figure out why. Why it hadn’t worked when it should have fucking worked. But it wasn’t that. I didn’t fuck up the alchemy. I guess people can’t live too long in the Gate, and I was just. Too slow.”
He closed his eyes briefly and shrugged. “Sorry I freaked. But you should know, any of this stuff comes up again-I’m gonna freak again. And if it happens, don’t wait around. Just get the hell out.”
Maes had absolutely no idea how to respond to this. Though Ed had held up his end: this certainly explained why he was so insane.
“Well,” Maes said, trying to keep his voice even. “That’s fair enough.” From what Roy had told him, all this loss of family and limbs had happened when Ed was about ten years old. If it had happened to Hughes, he wouldn’t have survived. No wonder Roy was convinced Ed could handle anything.
“Are you angry with the Gate?” he asked.
Ed gave him a surprised glance. “Uh, no. There’d be no fucking point. It’s not the Gate’s fault we didn’t know the rules.” He smiled a strange smile. “Can’t hate the truth.”
Right. Why would he hate the Gate when he could hate himself instead?
“You satisfied now?” Ed demanded, starting to regain his usual hostility. “Or are you gonna dump me cuz I’m nuts? This is way over your head anyway. You’re not an alchemist, and I’m not gonna be your fuckin bodyguard. You should get out while you’re still breathing.”
“I’m satisfied,” Maes said.
Ed gave him a dubious, sidelong look. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and stood. “You’re stupid. But I’ll stop by tomorrow and tell you about the lab. The explosions, right.”
“You’re not going to tell me now?” He was just going to leave it there? Tease.
“You picked,” Ed snapped. “I don’t have time to bullshit with you all day. I gotta go meet somebody, like I said.”
He marched out of the restaurant, and Maes trotted after him, somewhat disturbed by the way every eye in the place followed them. He noticed that no one had asked them to pay.
“Roy said you didn’t have anyone in Central,” Maes pointed out. He didn’t bother to point out that he himself was up to his neck in work, and didn’t really have time to be jerked around by psychotic adolescents. He figured that information wouldn’t meet with much sympathy.
“Yeah? I’m glad you’re fucking gossiping like old women over every damn thing I say.”
“Well, up until today, you’d said so little. We had to make the most of it. May I ask where you’re going?”
“Sure, you can ask ‘til you’re blue in the face.”
“Alternatively, I could follow you.”
“Um.” Ed eyed him and smiled a mocking little smile that Maes deeply wanted to smack off his face, in defiance of all sense of self-preservation. “You could try.” He limped off into an alley, still with that smile, then turned, clapped, and transmuted a wall to block the alley off from the street.
Maes added defacing public property to the list of Ed’s known crimes, sighed at the state of today’s youth, and pulled out a walkie-talkie he’d liberated from Kain Fuery the last time he’d been in East. “Jones.”
“I got him, boss,” came Jones’s crackly voice. Extremely crackly. Next time, Maes was going to be more careful about the quality of his filched equipment. “Damn, he moves like a weasel. This is gonna be fun.”
Maes approved of fighting fire with fire. Using one rooftop-loving, hyperactive brat to chase another. Besides, after last night, he hadn’t been about to spend time with Edward Elric without the comfort of backup.
It was good to learn that Ed wasn’t quite as all-seeing as Roy had led Maes to believe he was. Although he apparently moved like a weasel even with the limp, and that was unsettling. Had the limp been faked, or was this a scary level of mind over matter?
“You want I should grab him?” Jones asked eagerly.
The only problem with Jones was his tendency to be overenthusiastic. “No,” Maes ordered. He would feel so responsible for Jones’s messy death.
“You are such a spoilsport, old ma-boss.”
“Don’t worry. When you’re finished I have an entirely new set of Elicia photos to show you!”
“Boss!”
“Just follow him until he meets someone. Make sure it’s a meeting and not a random encounter, then report back.”
“I’m not following him all day?”
“No. I’m not interested in his daily routine.”
A staticky sigh. “Okay. Out.”
Maes sat on a bench, pulled out the new Elicia photos for comfort, and pondered the merits of subordinates who were actually, well, subordinate. He’d heard that some people enjoyed that sort of thing. Maes’s people, on the other hand, generally needed to be worked to the brink of exhaustion before they would follow simple orders.
Oh, well. He liked them with spirit, and he didn’t particularly mind working them to the brink of exhaustion. It was fun.
Maes paused over a photo of Gracia and Elicia leaning nose to nose over the kitchen table. Gracia had been explaining how eyes focus. It was, of course, utterly adorable.
Maes wondered what Edward Elric’s mother had been like. A woman so amazing that her children had been willing to risk their lives to have her back. His fingers tightened on the photo. He’d never considered the danger of allowing your children to love you too much. What would Elicia do if he died? Or, unspeakably worse, if he and Gracia both died? She would go to Gracia’s sister in West City, speaking purely physically. The Elrics must have had a guardian, too. But that hadn’t saved them.
“I got him, boss,” Jones crowed.
Maes carefully put the pictures away and shelved the fit of brooding for another day. “Where?”
“Whorehouse!”
Maes sighed. “I hate to spoil your innocence this way, Jones, but there are multiple brothels in this city. Which one?”
“What’s it matter?”
Truly, Maes thought, it must be something to have subordinates who could follow orders. “He’s a fifteen-year-old, obsessive, violent murderer, Jones,” he explained carefully. “I will be very surprised if he’s there as a customer. Which brothel?”
“Oh,” Jones said, light dawning. “Um. It’s that one that’s a bar, too. 16th and Del. Down in the warren. Damn, what’s the owner’s name? Something funny. Christer or Christy-”
“Christmas,” Maes said, voice blank with shock. “Madame Christmas.”
“That’s the one,” Jones agreed happily. Simple mind, Jones. Great for chases and stakeouts. “Can I go eat now? I’m starved, boss.”
“Yes. Eat something. Well done, Jones.” Ed and Madame Christmas had teamed up and neither one had told Roy. This boded ill. Apocalyptically ill, maybe. Jones might as well be allowed to eat before the country imploded.
Maes hated this week.
* * *
“You’re a lucky man, Roy.”
“…Am I?”
“Oh, yes. Today was a much better day than yesterday. Notwithstanding the work backlog and the massive sleep deprivation, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Nobody died, even.”
“I’m happy for you. I hear you call him Ed, by the way.”
“What? Where did you hear that?”
“He sent me a note complaining about it.”
“…Did he, now.”
“I can actually hear the scheming sound in your voice, Maes. Should I be terrified?”
“No, no. This is the good kind of scheme.”
“Hm. I’m glad you’re up to scheming, I suppose. You sound less…”
“Ed and I had a nice, long talk.”
“What about?”
“His personal history.”
“He doesn’t talk about his personal history.”
“Ah ha, that’s where we were wrong! He only talks about it when it’s relevant to the mission.”
“It was relevant? How was his personal history relevant?”
“This is an in-person conversation; you’ll just have to wait. But I’m fairly sure, now, that he’s not going to up and kill me with no warning, which had been my primary concern.”
“You really thought I’d send you someone that dangerous?”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d do it deliberately, but you can be a little…. Oh, and one more thing.”
“Hm?”
“Call your mother.”
“…What?”
“Ah ha ha!”
* * *
The dress code of Edward Elric, Demon Alchemist, was an interesting thing to observe. He always wore black on black, usually a black coat and gloves, usually a braid. That was when he was in a good mood. In a bad mood, the gloves and the coat came off. It was more than not hiding the automail; he was clearly displaying it.
If he was flaunting the automail, Hughes learned, that was a declaration of war, it was an invitation to throw down. It wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular; just at the world in general. Those were the days when all Ed wanted was an excuse to fuck somebody up.
This code must have been well-known in the southeast, and it quickly got to be known in Central, among a certain set. Maes could see it, as the weeks went by. The gloves came off, and the way people reacted to Ed on the street changed. Most backed away, others circled closer, gauging. They didn’t approach in front of Maes, but he wondered how many of those interested men ultimately went home with all their bones intact. How many went home at all.
On those days, Maes didn’t talk to Ed unless he absolutely had to. It was a lesson he learned the hard way, the day after their conversation about alchemy gone wrong. It was early October, the weather just starting to cool, and Maes found it strange that Ed had chosen this time to prance around without a jacket. He didn’t dwell on it. That was his first mistake.
To give him credit, he'd been too busy wondering why there was no sign of the limp at all.
“Ed,” he said, innocently thinking he was dealing with the same boy he’d dealt with the day before.
Ed whirled, lip curled into a snarl, before he realized who it was. Upon identifying Maes, he tried to calm down, tried to get himself under control.
Largely failed.
“What do you want?” he snapped, turning away and pacing in the direction he’d been going when Maes had called out to him.
Maes considered just walking away and leaving this conversation for another time. But no. He really did need to know; he should have found out the day before. But he’d definitely save the Madame Christmas talk for later.
“Explosions,” he said, hoping to tax Ed’s patience as little as possible.
Ed grimaced. “You can kill a homunculus, but it’s a fucking pain. I dunno how they roll, but it’s like I told the Colonel-they got a bunch of lives. Not their lives, though. There are people in ‘em.”
“People?” Maes asked, horrified.
Ed shrugged impatiently. “They make it sound like that’s what Philosopher’s Stones are. Essence of dead people. Gotta look some shit up, I’ll get back to that. You kill ‘em enough, though, and they die. Be easiest if you dropped ‘em in a fuckin volcano after all.”
“You killed a homunculus?” Maes was going to have to get used to Ed’s conversational style, sooner or later. Otherwise, he was running the serious risk of a heart attack.
“Ugly bastard. Envy, he called himself.” Ed rolled his shoulders. “Got nothing on me.”
Maes wasn’t entirely sure what was meant by that.
“Another one, Lust, she was hanging around. Seen her before; she was in the desert where the guy got eaten. Maybe hanging around and watching is her style, but Envy said he had me covered, and she went. They said they didn’t want me to die, which at least explains why they didn’t eat me last time, even if it’s fuckin weird. They called me a human sacrifice. Then I killed Envy and blew up the lab, sorry the mess. Fuck. I’m not sorry. And I’m out. Later. I can’t-”
He broke off and abruptly veered left, which was, as it happened, directly into traffic. Maes stared after him and listened to the curses, screams, and squealing tires.
Only much, much later would Maes come to understand the significance of the beginning of October to Edward Elric. At the time, he was stuck trying to make sense of Ed’s behavior and everything he’d said in an information vacuum that seemed emptier and more bewildering by the day.
Ed had just claimed-and Maes was surprised to find he had no trouble believing it-that he had killed a legendary immortal creature. Or not quite immortal, apparently. And just as Maes had no trouble believing Ed, so he had no trouble picturing what Ed would look like after about ten minutes of killing something that refused to die.
Terrifying. Murderous. Animal.
But Ed had sent Roy a note. A complaining note, like a kid would. There must still be something human there, after all. Somewhere. Buried deep. And Maes was going to cling to that with everything he had, because he knew Roy, and he knew that Roy didn’t know how to give up on anyone.
That was Ed accounted for, then: ally until proven otherwise. Which just left the problem of almost-immortal creatures running around Central for God knew what reason, made by God-knew-whom.
Shit.
* * *
“Maes, you look exhausted.” Gracia looked exhausted, actually, and Maes knew it was all his fault. “Sit down, poor man. I’ll get dinner-”
“Let’s order dinner,” Maes suggested, tugging her off balance and into his lap. “You’ve had just as long a week as I have.”
She smiled at him and framed his face with her hands. “But I got to spend all week with our perfect daughter. Whereas you…”
Maes sighed. “Well. With any luck you’ll never meet him.”
“This is Roy’s little alchemist?”
“If only I were sure he was Roy’s little alchemist, I’d feel better about the whole thing.”
She gave him a worried look. Wonderful. Now on top of depriving her of sleep, he was making her worry. Time for a distraction. “But speaking of our perfect daughter-”
“Papa!”
Gracia stood, scooped Elicia into her arms, and then dropped her, laughing, onto Maes’s lap.
“Beautiful daughter!”
“Was work bad, Papa?”
“Work was work, there was too much of it, and it took away hours and hours I could have better spent with you!”
“Papa! Your beard tickles!”
Elicia was a brilliant distraction; Elicia managed to make him think only of the best things in life for almost ten hours. She was a little ball of cheerful magic.
Then he went back to work, and everything went to hell. He was being sent to pick up a case of human transmutation in East, because apparently Roy couldn’t handle his own lunatics when Ed was away.
No, that was unfair. Central had a fondness for collecting people guilty of horrific abuses of alchemy and killing them cozily at home. It wasn’t Roy’s fault. Though, thinking of this tendency of Central’s in relation to what he now knew about Lab 5, Maes had to wonder whether this assignment was secretly evil.
But evil or not, it meant no Elicia and Gracia for days. And no one at all to keep an eye on Ed. Maes couldn’t even find him to tell him he was leaving town.
He did, however, find time to collect four of his favorite information soldiers and set them individual tasks, taking care that none of them knew about the others. One to look into records on Lab 5, one to look into execution records, one to look into the personal history of the fuhrer, just for kicks.
One to look into the use of alchemy in warfare.
And Maes hoped that no one would work out that all of these soldiers, nominally under other commands, were reporting back to him.
Part 2