rest for the wicked
Fullmetal Alchemist fic!
This is my best case scenario for FMA. I think I mostly wrote it to make myself happy, and also because I wanted a long telephone conversation between Roy and Ed. Yes. It was a break from that Cross fic that really, really doesn't want to be written.
Thank you to
zephy_magnum for tolerant betaing! :D
I don't own FMA. And this has spoilers up until...just about chapter 86. Or so.
Rest for the Wicked
You can always tell it’s Sunday by the yelling from the Elric house.
I don’t mean to say there isn’t yelling coming from the Elric house on a normal day, because there is, but I think they make a special effort on Sunday. Every Sunday. They’re reliable that way.
Mom generally thinks they’re unreliable. Then again, Mom doesn’t trust anyone who’s ever left Rizembool. “Flighty,” she says. She doesn’t like the Winry situation either, but she doesn’t really know what the Winry situation is. No one does. Is she with Ed? With Al? Just hanging around the place throwing wrenches? It’s a mystery. And if it’s a mystery, then everybody likes to decide on the most scandalous thing.
Whatever makes them happy, I guess. Ed and Winry haven’t noticed and Al thinks it’s funny, so no harm done.
Maybe they are flighty, the Elrics. It’s hard to tell. It could be that by their own standards, they’re totally dependable-whatever counts as dependable for people who think nothing of running off to Xing on a week’s notice. So they may be reliable, but sometimes it seems like they do things on purpose just to be confusing.
Today the shouting must really be something, because when I get within sight of the house, I can see that Al’s outside. Usually Al likes to watch and laugh (he’s brave), but now he’s sitting out front and doing that thing where he touches things.
Al gets on these kicks where he sits really, really still, and he just…touches things. Rocks and leaves. He runs dirt through his fingers. He rubs the material of his jacket. He can do this for hours. And nobody can ask him a thing about it, because every time someone starts to act like they might, Ed gets that big brother face. “Leave my little brother alone or I’ll slap a bitch,” that kind of face. No one wants to test Ed when he gets like that.
All I can think is that being in that armor for so long bothered Al a lot. And if it bothered him so much, I guess I don’t know why he stayed in it. But then, what I don’t know about the Elrics could fill a library in Central.
I don’t remember the armor too much; I was too young at the time. I remember it being really big, though. Al’s not a huge guy. When I’ve got nothing else to wonder about, I wonder how he managed to move around in it. Obviously I don’t ask.
Al looks up from his sand and notices I’m there, and he says, “Good morning, Charlie,” with his too-good-for-this-world smile. “You’d better sit down. It’s a good one.”
“What the fuck!?” comes the voice from the window before I can answer. “No! Fuck no! I am never fucking going back to East, I always hated East, what the hell does he think I owe him anyway? Blood, sweat, tears? I think I spilled all of those for the cause already.”
“Tears?”
“Metaphorical tears!”
I settle in next to Al. The Elric house on Sunday: better than radio, for sure.
“He says he wants you to watch a parade, or-look, I don’t know what he wants! You talk to him! In what world is any of this my problem?”
“I am not talking to that fucker until I vote for him. Tell him! Say, ‘Edward Elric does not want to hear your useless voice until he’s seen your name on a goddamn ballot.’ Oh, and ‘What the hell is taking you so long?’”
“Did you hear that, Roy? -He says he heard you. He says his ears are never going to recover and how will he run for office if he’s deaf? He says-okay, you know what, Roy? Don’t you start. I’m not your go-between!”
“That’s right, asshole, don’t treat Winry like that!”
“Edward Elric, if a person could die of hypocrisy-”
And then, suddenly, silence. Al and I both hunker down a little, hoping we don’t get noticed.
“Roy. If you just said what I think you said, I will tell Riza.”
More silence. I don’t know who Riza is, but Winry just said her name the same way she says wrench.
“Oh, thank you, Roy,” and now it’s the sweet voice, which is actually scarier. “That was a beautiful apology. Why, anyone would say you should be in politics.”
Ed snorts, and Al has his head down on his knees and is shaking from trying so hard not to laugh out loud.
Obviously this Roy guy is in politics, but the one time I asked Al what kind of politician he was, Al laughed. And laughed and laughed.
I decided it would be best not to ask any more or to ever think about it again, actually.
“No, you can’t talk to Al,” Winry’s saying. “He took off out the door as soon as you called. I don’t suppose you have an explanation for that? I see. Well, I can tell you how he is, if you really want to know. He’s fine. He hasn’t done anything all that interesting since you called last week. He-”
“Give me that,” Ed snaps. “And don’t think I don’t know what you did there. Roy, hey.”
Al and I grin a little, because even one side of a conversation between Ed and this Roy guy is pretty much the best entertainment in Rizembool.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to talk to you, but Winry was telling lies about Al, and-she does not own me!”
Winry snickers.
“Yeah, yeah, this coming from you, anyway. But Al’s great. He was looking at the new arrays last week, and he thinks that since water is still water and air is still air, we can still use the Vela array for combustion as long as you remember that the sun glyph is all weird now. We’re gonna test it tomorrow. No, then you turn water 90°, because it doesn’t get pulled down anymore, and air, remember, air has to be-look, I’ll show you when I see you. I know, right? Al’s a genius. I can’t believe it took us goddamn four years, though, that’s embarrassing. Hey, don’t act like this shit is my fault! I didn’t tell the bastard to fuck up all of alchemy, okay? What!? He saved your ass, too! No, look, shut up. Here’s why it’s cool: I think this means we can fix your gloves, since the Vela array is basically-
“Oh my God, you are a freaking pyromaniac. Yeah, you are. Don’t deny what’s obvious, that just makes you look dumb.
“Anyway, what about you, how’ve you been? I don’t care, but Al’s gonna ask me later. Huh. Yeah, yeah, lies. No. No, and you know I’m serious about the voting thing, right? What the hell is the holdup? You’re not coming over Greelin on me, are you, because seriously-
“Well then, read Yao’s, whatever, essays on politics, whatever they’re called. It’s not my job to know what they’re called, asshole. I’m an alchemist. You’re the dipshit who wanted to be a politician. I dunno, some guy from Xing. How should I know if it’s been translated from Xingian? I’ve heard of it because it’s classic. Well, that and he’s some relative of Lin’s. Yao. Obviously. Yeah, I know Xing is an empire. I noticed that. That’s why I figured Xingian essays on a peaceful switch from an empire to a democracy might be useful to you. But what the fuck do I know?
“I’m worried about it because you could get shot, moron, and then what would happen? There are tons of people who don’t like you, I don’t know if you noticed. And you know what happened to the last guy. You happened to the last guy. There’s a long line of people waiting to happen to you.
“…Was that a short joke? You do know that I’m taller than you now, right? Some of us actually grew when we hit our growth spurts, you barely-taller-than-Hawkeye tiny person. It is more than an inch! And don’t blow me off, bastard. Huh. So you say.
“Anyway, what’s up with the call? Yeah, you call every week, but every week Al doesn’t go haring out the door when you do, which means you warned him I wasn’t gonna like something. And it pisses me off when you do that, by the way. It’s like a goddamn family conspiracy. Yeah, you are family. You’re like the asshole cousin no one can stand. Oh my God, spit it out already.”
And then there’s a long silence. Ed doesn’t do long silences; it’s worrying. And Al’s not making me feel any better, because he has his forehead on his knees and his hands covering his head, like he’s trying to protect himself from a bomb.
“Uh huh,” Ed says neutrally.
Al hunches smaller.
“What’s he saying, Ed?” Winry asks. Even she sounds worried. She never sounds worried.
“It’s nothing. He’s just being a-yeah, I heard you, Roy. What do I think about it? I don’t know. What am I supposed to think about it? That it’s fucking weird that you’re naming buildings after me? That you’re obviously crazier than I realized? I guess it’s cool that you’re rebuilding First Branch. It took you long enough. There was kind of no point to Central without it. Whatever. Sheska’ll be happy.
“If you thought I’d be pissed, then why the hell did you do it? Oh, hang on, what are you getting out of this? Popular support? But…wait a…”
I don’t think Al can actually smush himself into a smaller ball at this point.
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?”
Al whimpers.
“No! No, no, no, what the fuck is wrong with your head!? I’m retired, asshole. Yeah, I did retire at twenty. You were there. I freaking earned it. And even if I were willing to do anything for you, it sure as shit wouldn’t be this. In fact, what the hell would you get out of this? D’you think I’d be your goddamn puppet or something? FUCK NO. No one would vote for me anyway, stupid, I’m practically a kid, and have you ever heard me talk? Shit.”
“Does this Roy guy want Ed to be in politics?” I whisper incredulously to Al. Al makes a tiny horrified noise to his knees.
“Anyway, why the hell wouldn’t you be running, if you’re actually finally going through with this? Is this some plot? I don’t know, because you’re a pathological schemer and you’ve been setting up some of your insane plans longer than I’ve been alive, so excuse me if I’m a little… You think it’ll bias the-are you-oh my God, read your Yao. Idealism is only cute when it’s not stupid, Roy. Yeah, you are being stupid, and I know-I know-Hawkeye told you not to call me about this. Yeah. That’s what I thought.
“Give the phone to Hawkeye. Why? Because you’ve lost your goddamn mind and it’s a waste of my time talking to you, that’s why. Anyway, Hawkeye has your life scheduled out until you die, and you don’t even know where you’re going to be tomorrow. Oh yeah? So where are you going to be tomorrow? Central? Wait, was that a correction I heard behind you? Cuz I’m pretty sure I heard-
“Hawkeye, hey. Has he really lost it, or is he just messing with me? He’s lost it. Did you explain to him that-
“Man, I don’t have time for this. I have research to do! Did he not notice that we’re relearning basic alchemy right now? What the hell is this? Midlife crisis? Do I need to, I don’t know, blow shit up someplace urban to remind him what I’m like?
“Uh huh. You think? Okay. Okay. Shit, East? Is this all some freaky punishment for not wanting to go to East in the first place? No, I’ll do it. Yeah, definitely. And I’m gonna have Lin send him a translation of this political book some Yao guy wrote, so make sure he reads it, okay? No, I didn’t read it, but Lin-Greelin, you know?-spent like an hour angsting to me over whether Xing shouldn’t ‘embrace the voice of the people’ after he read it, so I figure it must be awesome.
“So, okay, I’ll go tell Al. Uh huh. Thanks, Hawkeye.”
“I want to talk to Riza!”
“Oh, hang on-Winry wants to talk. Yeah. Uh huh. See ya.”
“Riza! How’ve you been? Oh, I’m fine. Well, as much as can be expected, what with…whatever that was all about. What was that all about? You know Ed can’t tell a story.”
“Hey! I can tell a story!”
“Really? I’ve never seen you try. Now get out, go find Al. I’m talking to Riza.”
Feet stomp, doors slam, and Ed’s definitely making his way toward us. Al carefully straightens up and fixes his face so that he looks like he hasn’t heard a single thing and is as innocent as the day is long besides. It’s downright unsettling how he does that.
When Ed bursts out the front door, Al looks up at him with polite interest and nothing else. It’s too bad I’m not as good at this as Al is.
“Oh my God, creepy stalker kid,” Ed says when he spots me. “What the hell are you doing in front of my house? Again?”
He always tells me to come over on Sunday, and then he always calls me a creepy stalker kid when I do. It’s a quirk of his.
“He was keeping me company, Ed,” Al says with mild amusement, which is how he usually talks to Ed. Unless he’s being fond, or pissed. You’d never know that five minutes ago he was practically hiding under the porch.
“Oh, yeah?” Ed says with wide, disbelieving eyes. “Keeping you company? What about last week? And the week before that? What about last month, huh, when I found him hiding in the fucking bushes outside Winry’s?”
“You were hiding in the bushes?” Al asks, aiming that mild amusement at me.
“He told me to come to Winry’s,” I explain. “And then he was an hour late, so I fell asleep in the bushes by the front door.”
“Call her Miss Rockbell, stalker kid,” Ed instructs me.
“Call me Winry!” drifts a voice from the house.
“Don’t listen to her, kid. She doesn’t know what she wants.”
“Where’s the nearest wrench, Ed?”
“Shit.” Ed dodges out of the doorway just before a wrench flies through it. “You are going to fucking kill me someday, you psychotic woman!”
“At least I can console myself in my grief with the knowledge that you had it coming. Sorry, Riza. You were saying…”
Her voice fades away, but everybody knows she’s still listening. She can listen to three conversations at once over great distances, no trouble. Somehow it seems like cheating.
“Anyway,” Ed says, carefully closing the door and making sure he’s not in throwing range of any open windows. “I guess you knew about this already, Al.”
“Knew about what?” Al asks, and Ed and I both stare at him. After a second, Ed shakes his head in disbelief.
“Okay, so I knew,” Al admits, and Ed rolls his eyes.
“So you tell me,” Ed demands. “Has he just lost it? Hawkeye says he’s having an insecurity attack. I think he’s getting soft in the head with age. What do you think? You always claim to understand him.”
Al sighs and glances over at me, then back at Ed.
“He had to figure it out sometime,” Ed says, shrugging impatiently. “I was starting to wonder if he was stupid, it’s taken him so long. Hey, stalker kid, Roy’s last name is Mustang.”
That was pretty much what I was afraid of when I stopped asking questions, see. I don’t think I could explain something like that to Ed, though. Ed always wants to know everything.
“…Mustang? …Fuhrer Mustang?”
Al gives me an encouraging smile. It’s a bad sign when Al tries to be encouraging.
I turn and stare at Ed, and think of all the reasons I was really hoping the guy on the phone wasn’t the Fuhrer. “You called the Fuhrer an asshole,” I point out. That’s high up there on the list of reasons.
“He is an asshole,” Ed explains.
“You call the Fuhrer an asshole every week.”
“And he is an asshole every week. Funny how that works.”
There are other reasons. Roy calls Ed every week. Ed treats Roy like an idiot. Winry treats Roy like an annoying older brother. They all agree that Roy’s a pyromaniac. And so on. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear what Ed has to say about any of those things, though, so I’m just gonna skip them.
“The Fuhrer wants you to run for…something?”
“President of Amestris, kid.”
Okay, that was unexpected.
“Although I admit it’s really, really cool that he’s finally getting around to making that an elected position. He’s made everything else an elected position by now, bastard.”
I should probably stop staring. It’s getting rude by now.
“Hey, don’t make that face at me, kid, I’m not the crazy one here. Al!”
“Brother, I don’t think you understand how much he actually listens to you,” Al says, sounding tired of this talk already. “Winry and I once made a game of how many of the new laws we could pick out as being something you said on a Sunday, only with the swearing taken out. I’m telling you, many of the laws.”
Edward Elric is controlling my country. If Mom knew this, we would be living in Drachma.
“What the hell is he doing listening to me?” Ed’s asking resentfully. Mom would agree. “I don’t know sweet screw-all about politics. And I don’t want to. Anyway, Hawkeye says that if we come and show our support or whatever, he’ll knock this shit off, which would be nice. And he’ll be in East next week on some kind of tour, I don’t know. I still think this is a plot to get us in East.”
“Why did he want us in East?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know.”
“I don’t know, Brother. It’s not like he told me everything. He just mentioned the…um…”
“The part where he wants me to run the country instead of doing my research?”
“Well.”
“He wants us in East to be figureheads for some goddamn anniversary parade thing, and we are not going.”
“I’d kind of like to be in a parade,” Al remarks wistfully.
Ed turns and studies him. “Are you messing with me?” he demands.
“How is it, brother mine, that you never had to ask the armor that question?”
“The armor couldn’t distract me with its lying face, that’s why.”
“I don’t have a lying face!” Al says, even though he kind of does.
“You do have a lying face,” Ed insists.
“I don’t!”
“You do!”
“Don’t fight,” comes the ominous voice from inside the house. Ed and Al go quiet. It’s the power of the Wrench.
“If we’re going to be in East anyway, we might as well be in the parade,” Al says finally, in a calm, reasoned tone.
“Or I would shoot Roy myself before I let him put me in a parade,” Ed replies in an equally calm tone.
“You would like being in a parade, Brother. You just don’t know yourself.”
“I know that I hate being stared at. Obviously I’m going to hate a parade.”
“They would be staring at you with love and admiration, Brother. You liked it when we were being bait for Scar, and everyone was staring then. You’d like a parade, trust me.”
“Trust you? Trust you, you I run away when Roy calls traitor!?”
“Should I come back next week?” I ask, because this is looking like it could go on all day.
“Oh…yeah. Sorry, kid, I guess that’d be-shit, no. You can’t come back next week, I’m gonna be in East and-Winry!”
“I’m talking to Riza!”
“I know, but are you going to be around next week, or-”
“Rush Valley!”
“Okay, sorry!”
“Is it her Rush Valley weekend already?” Al asks.
“Apparently. And you know she can’t disappoint her-”
“-devoted customers,” they finish together, smiling proud little smiles.
“Anyway, this kind of sucks, kid,” Ed says, turning and looking at me like he wishes he could transmute me right. It’s not my favorite look of his. “I’ll give you books for while I’m gone? Yeah. You don’t study enough from books anyway.”
“You said that was because all the books were wrong, teacher,” I point out.
“Ugh, don’t call me teacher!” he yelps, and he and Al both give a little shiver. “God, it reminds me of my teacher. Gives me nightmares.”
But it’s weird to call him Ed when he’s being…teachy. It’s. Disrespectful or something.
Not that that argument’s ever gotten me anywhere with Ed.
“But this is an okay book,” Ed’s saying. “It’s new; I know the guy who wrote it. It’ll be okay.”
“Ed wrote it,” Al explains, dodging when Ed tries to kick him.
“When...did you have time to write a book?” I ask. I’m starting to feel like what little I thought I knew about the Elrics was actually all wrong. Or at least really, really incomplete.
I thought they were just crazy alchemists who had gotten up to crazy things and gone to crazy places. Really good alchemists, but still. And then it turns out that Ed wrote a book on the sly. Ed knows the Fuhrer. The Fuhrer listens to Ed all the time. The Fuhrer wants Ed to be president and run the country. Al and Winry both chat with the Fuhrer every week and don’t think this is in any way a big deal.
I swear, I swear they’re confusing on purpose.
“I don’t know, I made time,” Ed says uncomfortably. Is he being shy? Is the world ending? “Anyway,” he continues gruffly, “I’m going to get your book and stuff, and then you can leave since we’re just gonna spend the rest of the day sorting this shit out. Okay?”
“Okay,” I answer, maybe sounding kinda dazed, and Ed disappears into the house like lightning. Or like a really embarrassed person.
“He wrote a book?” I ask Al blankly, and Al laughs.
“In the chapters where he managed not to inject his opinion, it’s actually really professional,” Al tells me, with that same proud smile he had when they were talking about Winry’s customers. “I think the opinion chapters may be more worth reading, though. Brother formed those opinions based on a lot of experience, after all.”
“You guys know the Fuhrer?” If I get out anything but questions for the next week, it’ll be amazing.
“Roy was Ed’s commanding officer, back in the old days,” Al says, and that’s the end of that conversation. The old days. The Elrics don’t talk about the old days. Not ever, not to anyone.
It’s funny. I don’t talk about the old days either. They still know everything about me, though. It comes of staying in one place all my life, while they kept moving. I don’t need to talk about anything-everyone saw everything.
Everyone saw my little sister die when I was twelve, and everyone saw me refuse to leave the graveyard for two days until Ed dragged me out. Everyone saw that Ed started teaching me after that. Doesn’t mean that anyone knows why. Sometimes I think I don’t even know why.
But maybe I do.
The Elrics seem to know a lot of stories about trying to bring people back from the dead. They know a lot of stories about nothing coming back, but lots of people dying, or something coming back, but not the right person, or maybe the right person made all wrong. They tell me a lot of those stories. I guess I do know why.
Sometimes I wonder if they’ve told me every story they know except for one. They don’t talk about the old days.
They’ll answer questions about right now, though.
“Is Ed really going to be the president, Al?” I ask, and the day’s been surreal enough that I have no idea what the answer’s going to be.
“Hm, no,” Al says, getting his version of the don’t-mess-with-my-brother look. It doesn’t show as often as Ed’s does. Maybe that’s why it’s so damn scary. “Roy seems to have forgotten that Ed paid all of his debts. And then some. I’ll have to remind him about equivalent exchange.”
Fuhrer or not, I have to feel bad for anyone Al makes that face at.
“So, you and…you and the Fuhrer…you think that Ed could do this? Be president? I mean, he really doesn’t like politics. You think he could do it anyway?”
Al looks at me like I just asked if the sun could rise in the East.
“My brother can do anything,” he says blankly, with perfect, little-kid faith. Only he’s not a little kid. He’s Al, and usually Al questions everything.
“Here, kid,” Ed says, and I jump about a foot because he appeared behind me again. I hate it when he does that. “We’ll be back in, I dunno, like a week, maybe two? So when we get back, come ask me questions about the book or whatever. And Winry’s not leaving for Rush Valley for a couple days, so if you’ve got any questions while she’s here, you can ask her. She’s picked up a lot of theory from hanging around with us. Just don’t expect her to transmute anything. Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay,” I say, feeling like the world’s gone all screwy.
“Right. So why are you still here? Get lost, go home. See ya.”
“Um, right.” I stagger to my feet, and look down at Al, who’s wearing an innocent face that I don’t believe for a second. I look up at Ed, who’s raising an eyebrow at me like I’m starting to piss him off.
“Have a good trip,” I say.
“What could possibly go wrong?” Al mutters, not really to me, and this time Ed makes contact when he kicks.
I walk off and leave them to it. I have enough to wrap my head around as it is. Edward Elric is some kind of adviser to the Fuhrer. Important people want him to run the country. He’s…practically controlling my home.
In a really weird way, I guess I feel good about that.
Now I just need to keep Mom from finding out.
This is my best case scenario for FMA. I think I mostly wrote it to make myself happy, and also because I wanted a long telephone conversation between Roy and Ed. Yes. It was a break from that Cross fic that really, really doesn't want to be written.
Thank you to
zephy_magnum for tolerant betaing! :D
I don't own FMA. And this has spoilers up until...just about chapter 86. Or so.
Rest for the Wicked
You can always tell it’s Sunday by the yelling from the Elric house.
I don’t mean to say there isn’t yelling coming from the Elric house on a normal day, because there is, but I think they make a special effort on Sunday. Every Sunday. They’re reliable that way.
Mom generally thinks they’re unreliable. Then again, Mom doesn’t trust anyone who’s ever left Rizembool. “Flighty,” she says. She doesn’t like the Winry situation either, but she doesn’t really know what the Winry situation is. No one does. Is she with Ed? With Al? Just hanging around the place throwing wrenches? It’s a mystery. And if it’s a mystery, then everybody likes to decide on the most scandalous thing.
Whatever makes them happy, I guess. Ed and Winry haven’t noticed and Al thinks it’s funny, so no harm done.
Maybe they are flighty, the Elrics. It’s hard to tell. It could be that by their own standards, they’re totally dependable-whatever counts as dependable for people who think nothing of running off to Xing on a week’s notice. So they may be reliable, but sometimes it seems like they do things on purpose just to be confusing.
Today the shouting must really be something, because when I get within sight of the house, I can see that Al’s outside. Usually Al likes to watch and laugh (he’s brave), but now he’s sitting out front and doing that thing where he touches things.
Al gets on these kicks where he sits really, really still, and he just…touches things. Rocks and leaves. He runs dirt through his fingers. He rubs the material of his jacket. He can do this for hours. And nobody can ask him a thing about it, because every time someone starts to act like they might, Ed gets that big brother face. “Leave my little brother alone or I’ll slap a bitch,” that kind of face. No one wants to test Ed when he gets like that.
All I can think is that being in that armor for so long bothered Al a lot. And if it bothered him so much, I guess I don’t know why he stayed in it. But then, what I don’t know about the Elrics could fill a library in Central.
I don’t remember the armor too much; I was too young at the time. I remember it being really big, though. Al’s not a huge guy. When I’ve got nothing else to wonder about, I wonder how he managed to move around in it. Obviously I don’t ask.
Al looks up from his sand and notices I’m there, and he says, “Good morning, Charlie,” with his too-good-for-this-world smile. “You’d better sit down. It’s a good one.”
“What the fuck!?” comes the voice from the window before I can answer. “No! Fuck no! I am never fucking going back to East, I always hated East, what the hell does he think I owe him anyway? Blood, sweat, tears? I think I spilled all of those for the cause already.”
“Tears?”
“Metaphorical tears!”
I settle in next to Al. The Elric house on Sunday: better than radio, for sure.
“He says he wants you to watch a parade, or-look, I don’t know what he wants! You talk to him! In what world is any of this my problem?”
“I am not talking to that fucker until I vote for him. Tell him! Say, ‘Edward Elric does not want to hear your useless voice until he’s seen your name on a goddamn ballot.’ Oh, and ‘What the hell is taking you so long?’”
“Did you hear that, Roy? -He says he heard you. He says his ears are never going to recover and how will he run for office if he’s deaf? He says-okay, you know what, Roy? Don’t you start. I’m not your go-between!”
“That’s right, asshole, don’t treat Winry like that!”
“Edward Elric, if a person could die of hypocrisy-”
And then, suddenly, silence. Al and I both hunker down a little, hoping we don’t get noticed.
“Roy. If you just said what I think you said, I will tell Riza.”
More silence. I don’t know who Riza is, but Winry just said her name the same way she says wrench.
“Oh, thank you, Roy,” and now it’s the sweet voice, which is actually scarier. “That was a beautiful apology. Why, anyone would say you should be in politics.”
Ed snorts, and Al has his head down on his knees and is shaking from trying so hard not to laugh out loud.
Obviously this Roy guy is in politics, but the one time I asked Al what kind of politician he was, Al laughed. And laughed and laughed.
I decided it would be best not to ask any more or to ever think about it again, actually.
“No, you can’t talk to Al,” Winry’s saying. “He took off out the door as soon as you called. I don’t suppose you have an explanation for that? I see. Well, I can tell you how he is, if you really want to know. He’s fine. He hasn’t done anything all that interesting since you called last week. He-”
“Give me that,” Ed snaps. “And don’t think I don’t know what you did there. Roy, hey.”
Al and I grin a little, because even one side of a conversation between Ed and this Roy guy is pretty much the best entertainment in Rizembool.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to talk to you, but Winry was telling lies about Al, and-she does not own me!”
Winry snickers.
“Yeah, yeah, this coming from you, anyway. But Al’s great. He was looking at the new arrays last week, and he thinks that since water is still water and air is still air, we can still use the Vela array for combustion as long as you remember that the sun glyph is all weird now. We’re gonna test it tomorrow. No, then you turn water 90°, because it doesn’t get pulled down anymore, and air, remember, air has to be-look, I’ll show you when I see you. I know, right? Al’s a genius. I can’t believe it took us goddamn four years, though, that’s embarrassing. Hey, don’t act like this shit is my fault! I didn’t tell the bastard to fuck up all of alchemy, okay? What!? He saved your ass, too! No, look, shut up. Here’s why it’s cool: I think this means we can fix your gloves, since the Vela array is basically-
“Oh my God, you are a freaking pyromaniac. Yeah, you are. Don’t deny what’s obvious, that just makes you look dumb.
“Anyway, what about you, how’ve you been? I don’t care, but Al’s gonna ask me later. Huh. Yeah, yeah, lies. No. No, and you know I’m serious about the voting thing, right? What the hell is the holdup? You’re not coming over Greelin on me, are you, because seriously-
“Well then, read Yao’s, whatever, essays on politics, whatever they’re called. It’s not my job to know what they’re called, asshole. I’m an alchemist. You’re the dipshit who wanted to be a politician. I dunno, some guy from Xing. How should I know if it’s been translated from Xingian? I’ve heard of it because it’s classic. Well, that and he’s some relative of Lin’s. Yao. Obviously. Yeah, I know Xing is an empire. I noticed that. That’s why I figured Xingian essays on a peaceful switch from an empire to a democracy might be useful to you. But what the fuck do I know?
“I’m worried about it because you could get shot, moron, and then what would happen? There are tons of people who don’t like you, I don’t know if you noticed. And you know what happened to the last guy. You happened to the last guy. There’s a long line of people waiting to happen to you.
“…Was that a short joke? You do know that I’m taller than you now, right? Some of us actually grew when we hit our growth spurts, you barely-taller-than-Hawkeye tiny person. It is more than an inch! And don’t blow me off, bastard. Huh. So you say.
“Anyway, what’s up with the call? Yeah, you call every week, but every week Al doesn’t go haring out the door when you do, which means you warned him I wasn’t gonna like something. And it pisses me off when you do that, by the way. It’s like a goddamn family conspiracy. Yeah, you are family. You’re like the asshole cousin no one can stand. Oh my God, spit it out already.”
And then there’s a long silence. Ed doesn’t do long silences; it’s worrying. And Al’s not making me feel any better, because he has his forehead on his knees and his hands covering his head, like he’s trying to protect himself from a bomb.
“Uh huh,” Ed says neutrally.
Al hunches smaller.
“What’s he saying, Ed?” Winry asks. Even she sounds worried. She never sounds worried.
“It’s nothing. He’s just being a-yeah, I heard you, Roy. What do I think about it? I don’t know. What am I supposed to think about it? That it’s fucking weird that you’re naming buildings after me? That you’re obviously crazier than I realized? I guess it’s cool that you’re rebuilding First Branch. It took you long enough. There was kind of no point to Central without it. Whatever. Sheska’ll be happy.
“If you thought I’d be pissed, then why the hell did you do it? Oh, hang on, what are you getting out of this? Popular support? But…wait a…”
I don’t think Al can actually smush himself into a smaller ball at this point.
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?”
Al whimpers.
“No! No, no, no, what the fuck is wrong with your head!? I’m retired, asshole. Yeah, I did retire at twenty. You were there. I freaking earned it. And even if I were willing to do anything for you, it sure as shit wouldn’t be this. In fact, what the hell would you get out of this? D’you think I’d be your goddamn puppet or something? FUCK NO. No one would vote for me anyway, stupid, I’m practically a kid, and have you ever heard me talk? Shit.”
“Does this Roy guy want Ed to be in politics?” I whisper incredulously to Al. Al makes a tiny horrified noise to his knees.
“Anyway, why the hell wouldn’t you be running, if you’re actually finally going through with this? Is this some plot? I don’t know, because you’re a pathological schemer and you’ve been setting up some of your insane plans longer than I’ve been alive, so excuse me if I’m a little… You think it’ll bias the-are you-oh my God, read your Yao. Idealism is only cute when it’s not stupid, Roy. Yeah, you are being stupid, and I know-I know-Hawkeye told you not to call me about this. Yeah. That’s what I thought.
“Give the phone to Hawkeye. Why? Because you’ve lost your goddamn mind and it’s a waste of my time talking to you, that’s why. Anyway, Hawkeye has your life scheduled out until you die, and you don’t even know where you’re going to be tomorrow. Oh yeah? So where are you going to be tomorrow? Central? Wait, was that a correction I heard behind you? Cuz I’m pretty sure I heard-
“Hawkeye, hey. Has he really lost it, or is he just messing with me? He’s lost it. Did you explain to him that-
“Man, I don’t have time for this. I have research to do! Did he not notice that we’re relearning basic alchemy right now? What the hell is this? Midlife crisis? Do I need to, I don’t know, blow shit up someplace urban to remind him what I’m like?
“Uh huh. You think? Okay. Okay. Shit, East? Is this all some freaky punishment for not wanting to go to East in the first place? No, I’ll do it. Yeah, definitely. And I’m gonna have Lin send him a translation of this political book some Yao guy wrote, so make sure he reads it, okay? No, I didn’t read it, but Lin-Greelin, you know?-spent like an hour angsting to me over whether Xing shouldn’t ‘embrace the voice of the people’ after he read it, so I figure it must be awesome.
“So, okay, I’ll go tell Al. Uh huh. Thanks, Hawkeye.”
“I want to talk to Riza!”
“Oh, hang on-Winry wants to talk. Yeah. Uh huh. See ya.”
“Riza! How’ve you been? Oh, I’m fine. Well, as much as can be expected, what with…whatever that was all about. What was that all about? You know Ed can’t tell a story.”
“Hey! I can tell a story!”
“Really? I’ve never seen you try. Now get out, go find Al. I’m talking to Riza.”
Feet stomp, doors slam, and Ed’s definitely making his way toward us. Al carefully straightens up and fixes his face so that he looks like he hasn’t heard a single thing and is as innocent as the day is long besides. It’s downright unsettling how he does that.
When Ed bursts out the front door, Al looks up at him with polite interest and nothing else. It’s too bad I’m not as good at this as Al is.
“Oh my God, creepy stalker kid,” Ed says when he spots me. “What the hell are you doing in front of my house? Again?”
He always tells me to come over on Sunday, and then he always calls me a creepy stalker kid when I do. It’s a quirk of his.
“He was keeping me company, Ed,” Al says with mild amusement, which is how he usually talks to Ed. Unless he’s being fond, or pissed. You’d never know that five minutes ago he was practically hiding under the porch.
“Oh, yeah?” Ed says with wide, disbelieving eyes. “Keeping you company? What about last week? And the week before that? What about last month, huh, when I found him hiding in the fucking bushes outside Winry’s?”
“You were hiding in the bushes?” Al asks, aiming that mild amusement at me.
“He told me to come to Winry’s,” I explain. “And then he was an hour late, so I fell asleep in the bushes by the front door.”
“Call her Miss Rockbell, stalker kid,” Ed instructs me.
“Call me Winry!” drifts a voice from the house.
“Don’t listen to her, kid. She doesn’t know what she wants.”
“Where’s the nearest wrench, Ed?”
“Shit.” Ed dodges out of the doorway just before a wrench flies through it. “You are going to fucking kill me someday, you psychotic woman!”
“At least I can console myself in my grief with the knowledge that you had it coming. Sorry, Riza. You were saying…”
Her voice fades away, but everybody knows she’s still listening. She can listen to three conversations at once over great distances, no trouble. Somehow it seems like cheating.
“Anyway,” Ed says, carefully closing the door and making sure he’s not in throwing range of any open windows. “I guess you knew about this already, Al.”
“Knew about what?” Al asks, and Ed and I both stare at him. After a second, Ed shakes his head in disbelief.
“Okay, so I knew,” Al admits, and Ed rolls his eyes.
“So you tell me,” Ed demands. “Has he just lost it? Hawkeye says he’s having an insecurity attack. I think he’s getting soft in the head with age. What do you think? You always claim to understand him.”
Al sighs and glances over at me, then back at Ed.
“He had to figure it out sometime,” Ed says, shrugging impatiently. “I was starting to wonder if he was stupid, it’s taken him so long. Hey, stalker kid, Roy’s last name is Mustang.”
That was pretty much what I was afraid of when I stopped asking questions, see. I don’t think I could explain something like that to Ed, though. Ed always wants to know everything.
“…Mustang? …Fuhrer Mustang?”
Al gives me an encouraging smile. It’s a bad sign when Al tries to be encouraging.
I turn and stare at Ed, and think of all the reasons I was really hoping the guy on the phone wasn’t the Fuhrer. “You called the Fuhrer an asshole,” I point out. That’s high up there on the list of reasons.
“He is an asshole,” Ed explains.
“You call the Fuhrer an asshole every week.”
“And he is an asshole every week. Funny how that works.”
There are other reasons. Roy calls Ed every week. Ed treats Roy like an idiot. Winry treats Roy like an annoying older brother. They all agree that Roy’s a pyromaniac. And so on. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear what Ed has to say about any of those things, though, so I’m just gonna skip them.
“The Fuhrer wants you to run for…something?”
“President of Amestris, kid.”
Okay, that was unexpected.
“Although I admit it’s really, really cool that he’s finally getting around to making that an elected position. He’s made everything else an elected position by now, bastard.”
I should probably stop staring. It’s getting rude by now.
“Hey, don’t make that face at me, kid, I’m not the crazy one here. Al!”
“Brother, I don’t think you understand how much he actually listens to you,” Al says, sounding tired of this talk already. “Winry and I once made a game of how many of the new laws we could pick out as being something you said on a Sunday, only with the swearing taken out. I’m telling you, many of the laws.”
Edward Elric is controlling my country. If Mom knew this, we would be living in Drachma.
“What the hell is he doing listening to me?” Ed’s asking resentfully. Mom would agree. “I don’t know sweet screw-all about politics. And I don’t want to. Anyway, Hawkeye says that if we come and show our support or whatever, he’ll knock this shit off, which would be nice. And he’ll be in East next week on some kind of tour, I don’t know. I still think this is a plot to get us in East.”
“Why did he want us in East?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know.”
“I don’t know, Brother. It’s not like he told me everything. He just mentioned the…um…”
“The part where he wants me to run the country instead of doing my research?”
“Well.”
“He wants us in East to be figureheads for some goddamn anniversary parade thing, and we are not going.”
“I’d kind of like to be in a parade,” Al remarks wistfully.
Ed turns and studies him. “Are you messing with me?” he demands.
“How is it, brother mine, that you never had to ask the armor that question?”
“The armor couldn’t distract me with its lying face, that’s why.”
“I don’t have a lying face!” Al says, even though he kind of does.
“You do have a lying face,” Ed insists.
“I don’t!”
“You do!”
“Don’t fight,” comes the ominous voice from inside the house. Ed and Al go quiet. It’s the power of the Wrench.
“If we’re going to be in East anyway, we might as well be in the parade,” Al says finally, in a calm, reasoned tone.
“Or I would shoot Roy myself before I let him put me in a parade,” Ed replies in an equally calm tone.
“You would like being in a parade, Brother. You just don’t know yourself.”
“I know that I hate being stared at. Obviously I’m going to hate a parade.”
“They would be staring at you with love and admiration, Brother. You liked it when we were being bait for Scar, and everyone was staring then. You’d like a parade, trust me.”
“Trust you? Trust you, you I run away when Roy calls traitor!?”
“Should I come back next week?” I ask, because this is looking like it could go on all day.
“Oh…yeah. Sorry, kid, I guess that’d be-shit, no. You can’t come back next week, I’m gonna be in East and-Winry!”
“I’m talking to Riza!”
“I know, but are you going to be around next week, or-”
“Rush Valley!”
“Okay, sorry!”
“Is it her Rush Valley weekend already?” Al asks.
“Apparently. And you know she can’t disappoint her-”
“-devoted customers,” they finish together, smiling proud little smiles.
“Anyway, this kind of sucks, kid,” Ed says, turning and looking at me like he wishes he could transmute me right. It’s not my favorite look of his. “I’ll give you books for while I’m gone? Yeah. You don’t study enough from books anyway.”
“You said that was because all the books were wrong, teacher,” I point out.
“Ugh, don’t call me teacher!” he yelps, and he and Al both give a little shiver. “God, it reminds me of my teacher. Gives me nightmares.”
But it’s weird to call him Ed when he’s being…teachy. It’s. Disrespectful or something.
Not that that argument’s ever gotten me anywhere with Ed.
“But this is an okay book,” Ed’s saying. “It’s new; I know the guy who wrote it. It’ll be okay.”
“Ed wrote it,” Al explains, dodging when Ed tries to kick him.
“When...did you have time to write a book?” I ask. I’m starting to feel like what little I thought I knew about the Elrics was actually all wrong. Or at least really, really incomplete.
I thought they were just crazy alchemists who had gotten up to crazy things and gone to crazy places. Really good alchemists, but still. And then it turns out that Ed wrote a book on the sly. Ed knows the Fuhrer. The Fuhrer listens to Ed all the time. The Fuhrer wants Ed to be president and run the country. Al and Winry both chat with the Fuhrer every week and don’t think this is in any way a big deal.
I swear, I swear they’re confusing on purpose.
“I don’t know, I made time,” Ed says uncomfortably. Is he being shy? Is the world ending? “Anyway,” he continues gruffly, “I’m going to get your book and stuff, and then you can leave since we’re just gonna spend the rest of the day sorting this shit out. Okay?”
“Okay,” I answer, maybe sounding kinda dazed, and Ed disappears into the house like lightning. Or like a really embarrassed person.
“He wrote a book?” I ask Al blankly, and Al laughs.
“In the chapters where he managed not to inject his opinion, it’s actually really professional,” Al tells me, with that same proud smile he had when they were talking about Winry’s customers. “I think the opinion chapters may be more worth reading, though. Brother formed those opinions based on a lot of experience, after all.”
“You guys know the Fuhrer?” If I get out anything but questions for the next week, it’ll be amazing.
“Roy was Ed’s commanding officer, back in the old days,” Al says, and that’s the end of that conversation. The old days. The Elrics don’t talk about the old days. Not ever, not to anyone.
It’s funny. I don’t talk about the old days either. They still know everything about me, though. It comes of staying in one place all my life, while they kept moving. I don’t need to talk about anything-everyone saw everything.
Everyone saw my little sister die when I was twelve, and everyone saw me refuse to leave the graveyard for two days until Ed dragged me out. Everyone saw that Ed started teaching me after that. Doesn’t mean that anyone knows why. Sometimes I think I don’t even know why.
But maybe I do.
The Elrics seem to know a lot of stories about trying to bring people back from the dead. They know a lot of stories about nothing coming back, but lots of people dying, or something coming back, but not the right person, or maybe the right person made all wrong. They tell me a lot of those stories. I guess I do know why.
Sometimes I wonder if they’ve told me every story they know except for one. They don’t talk about the old days.
They’ll answer questions about right now, though.
“Is Ed really going to be the president, Al?” I ask, and the day’s been surreal enough that I have no idea what the answer’s going to be.
“Hm, no,” Al says, getting his version of the don’t-mess-with-my-brother look. It doesn’t show as often as Ed’s does. Maybe that’s why it’s so damn scary. “Roy seems to have forgotten that Ed paid all of his debts. And then some. I’ll have to remind him about equivalent exchange.”
Fuhrer or not, I have to feel bad for anyone Al makes that face at.
“So, you and…you and the Fuhrer…you think that Ed could do this? Be president? I mean, he really doesn’t like politics. You think he could do it anyway?”
Al looks at me like I just asked if the sun could rise in the East.
“My brother can do anything,” he says blankly, with perfect, little-kid faith. Only he’s not a little kid. He’s Al, and usually Al questions everything.
“Here, kid,” Ed says, and I jump about a foot because he appeared behind me again. I hate it when he does that. “We’ll be back in, I dunno, like a week, maybe two? So when we get back, come ask me questions about the book or whatever. And Winry’s not leaving for Rush Valley for a couple days, so if you’ve got any questions while she’s here, you can ask her. She’s picked up a lot of theory from hanging around with us. Just don’t expect her to transmute anything. Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay,” I say, feeling like the world’s gone all screwy.
“Right. So why are you still here? Get lost, go home. See ya.”
“Um, right.” I stagger to my feet, and look down at Al, who’s wearing an innocent face that I don’t believe for a second. I look up at Ed, who’s raising an eyebrow at me like I’m starting to piss him off.
“Have a good trip,” I say.
“What could possibly go wrong?” Al mutters, not really to me, and this time Ed makes contact when he kicks.
I walk off and leave them to it. I have enough to wrap my head around as it is. Edward Elric is some kind of adviser to the Fuhrer. Important people want him to run the country. He’s…practically controlling my home.
In a really weird way, I guess I feel good about that.
Now I just need to keep Mom from finding out.