kashiwrites (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kashiwrites) wrote2008-11-04 04:29 pm
kashiwrites) wrote2008-11-04 04:29 pm
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NaNoWriMo 2008 - Fullmetal Alchemist Fanfic - Chapter 2 (part one)
(See Chapter 1)
Maes stepped into the office doorway and briefly observed the people busy at their work: Warrant Officer Vato Falman bent over a couple of files, totally absorbed, Second Lieutenant Breda on the phone (feet up on his desk), Master Sergeant Kain Fuery busily making calculations on a large notepad, and Havoc and Hawkeye conferring quietly at her desk, the man leaning against one corner of it, arms folded across his chest.
Fuery was the first to see the newcomer, setting down the pencil and greeting him with only a slightly diminished degree of cheerfulness. He obviously knew about the latest case of arson, and was aware that Maes would have just come from there. “Good morning, Lieutenant Colonel Hughes,” said the young man. “Good to see you. How is Elysia?”
Maes beamed at him, even while inwardly chuckling at the way Breda grimaced and tossed an eraser at his co-worker at the next desk. Pulling out a sheaf of photographs. “Good morning, Fuery,” Maes enthused, “I can tell you exactly how my little ambassador of sweetness is. See?” He walked over to Fuery’s desk, leaning over it and fanning the photos out on its surface. “Look at this one, on her tricycle. Her pigtails are just bouncing, you can tell even in a picture. Isn’t that the cutest thing ever?”
He continued babbling enthusiastically, chattering happily about each photo. It wasn’t hard to go on at length, since he sometimes did it quietly to himself even when alone back at his own desk and looking through the pictures. He’d pretty much memorized every detail they contained by now. And why shouldn’t he? Elysia was unbelievably cute, every strand of brown hair, every sparkle in her eye, every touch of her hands, and every little breath and giggle that came out of that smiling, adorable mouth.
But even while he favoured Fuery and everyone else in earshot with a recitation of the adorableness of his daughter, he watched with half an eye as Hawkeye pushed back from her desk, stood up, and walked toward the door of the inner office. She knocked twice, then opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it behind her.
“Oooh, and look at this one!” he went on, not missing a beat. “She’s being held by her mother here, just after eating a piece of blueberry pie. Little pretty girl still looks pretty with blue lips, but she needs a big bubble bath!”
“She certainly is cute, Lieutenant Colonel,” Fuery agreed dutifully. He looked up with a smile, eyes twinkling behind the round frames of his glasses. “In fact, both ladies in that picture are quite beautiful.”
“Aww, Master Sergeant, I agree. I could kiss you for that!” Maes puckered up, leaning further across the desk, enjoying the way Fuery jerked himself away, pushing his chair back.
“Um…Lieutenant Colonel…I..that is…” The younger man was so funny when he was flustered. Maes always knew how to push his buttons, and poor Fuery never quite caught on.
“Hughes!” A sharp voice from the inner office door heralded the emergence of Roy Mustang. “When you’re quite through torturing my men, I want you in my office. And put those pictures away or I’ll lock you out.”
Maes straightened up, tucking the photos into an inner pocket of his uniform jacket, winking over at the chuckling Falman (the man had seen Maes pulling this sort of thing before, when he’d been in Investigations himself). Fuery laughed a little nervously, but waited till Maes had begun to walk toward the inner door before pulling his chair close to the desk again.
Roy certainly didn’t look any more cheerful than he had at the scene of the fire. He said to the outer room in general, “Carry on, people, I’ll occupy him for a while so you can get something done.” Then he turned and strode back into the office toward his own desk. Hawkeye stood aside as Maes entered the room, then began to shut the door. Roy stopped her, “Lieutenant, that will be everything for now. You can leave us alone.”
“Of course, sir,” she began, but Maes put a hand on her shoulder.
“Actually, lieutenant, I need you to stay.”
“Really, Hughes, is that necessary?” Roy grimaced. “Why don’t you invite all of them in here, so we can waste the entire morning?”
“Sorry, Roy, but I’m afraid this really is necessary.” Maes himself drew the woman out of the doorway, and closed the door behind her, noting first how everyone in the other room had been watching the exchange. He turned and leaned back against the door, saying brightly, “Well, isn’t this cosy!”
Roy, standing beside his desk with arms folded, made no answer, but just stared darkly back at his friend. Maes wondered just how much Roy already guessed about what he had to say.
He sighed, his smile fading. “All right, I’ll come to the point. Obviously you’ve already considered the fact that whoever is setting these fires may be using alchemy.”
“Obviously,” came the terse response. And nothing else.
Dammit, the guy was going to make this as difficult as possible. He must really be worried, or he wouldn’t be shutting down quite this badly. “Look,” Maes said softly, “can we sit down?” He indicated the two couches at one side of the office, facing each other across a wide coffee table. “This isn’t any sort of official interrogation or anything.”
“Isn’t it?” Roy demanded. “You pretty much commanded us to be waiting here for your arrival. Coming from someone in Investigations, that sounds pretty official to me.”
“It’s not coming from Investigations, it’s coming from me, Roy. Me. Now, will you lighten up just a little?”
He recognized the merest slump of Roy’s shoulders that indicated he’d relented a bit. “Sorry, Maes,” the man said softly. “It’s just…a shock, that’s all. That it’s started up again, after I’d hoped…” He turned his head away for a moment.
“I know, Roy, believe me. We all want to get this stopped once and for all. And I know why this is hitting you more than the rest of us.”
“Do you really?” came the drawled sarcasm. “Excuse me if I doubt that.”
“Sir,” Hawkeye put in, “why don’t you and the Lieutenant Colonel sit down, and I’ll pour us all some coffee?”
Roy moved to one of the couches: the one with the better view of the doorway. He always needed to be able to watch the exits or entrances of a room, never quite able to relax while he was on the job. Maes took the couch directly across from him. In a moment, Hawkeye had gone to the credenza near the desk, and set up a tray with the carafe of coffee, three cups, a pitcher of cream, a container of sugar, and three spoons. Bringing the tray over and setting it on the coffee table, she poured the freshly brewed, hot coffee into the cups, then seated herself on the couch beside Maes. While her boss watched the door, she was obviously going to watch him.
Maes dumped a spoonful of sugar into his own cup, breathing deeply of the strong, bracing aroma. “Now this,” he said appreciatively, “is what I’ve been missing all morning.” He stirred for a moment, then took as big a sip as he could stand. “Ouch. Still a bit too hot. But it’s worth it.”
Roy leaned back into the couch, crossing one leg across the other. Balancing his own cup on his knee with one hand, he stretched the other arm along the back of the couch, making an obvious effort to relax. “All right, let’s start over,” he said. “Sorry I’ve been such a grouch. Tell us what’s on your mind, Maes.”
“Well, it’s the question of alchemy. I suppose you’ve reached the same conclusion I have: that since we haven’t been able to find a single sign of incendiary devices in the previous seven fires – and I suspect we’ll have the same result this time – it means that there probably weren’t any to begin with. Which means,” Maes raised a rueful eyebrow, “that we might be looking at alchemy here. Much as I know how depressing the idea is to you.”
“It shouldn’t bother me as much as it has,” Roy admitted slowly, “since we’ve had other alchemists do destructive things before. But this hits too close to home, for the obvious reasons.”
“I know. It’s got to be disconcerting, at the very least.” Maes took another hot sip of his drink. “Gosh. That feels so good. Anyway, I know Ed started looking around pretty early on, to see if he could find signs of the use of alchemy. From what he said earlier, I think he’s pretty convinced we’re dealing with an alchemist rather than an ordinary arsonist. Have you and he talked about this?”
“Not in so many words,” Roy shook his head.
Maes paused. He found that a little hard to believe, considering how urgent the matter was. Still…this was fire. And Roy would find that problem hard to talk about with anyone, let alone Edward.
Well, he’d have to talk about it now.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that we need to operate on two tracks. Investigations will keep looking for the normal tools of an arsonist, just in case it’s just someone who’s really good at what he does. But you and I, and maybe Edward, are going to have to treat this as though we’re actually dealing with an alchemist.”
“Fine,” Roy responded. “But can I ask for one thing?” He peered at his friend, an unusual anxiety filling his eyes. “Can we keep this just between us, until we get more information? Even if the other Investigations people have their suspicions, don’t let on that we’re doing a parallel investigation until we really have something concrete. People are nervous enough about alchemists as it is. Can you at least grant me that, Maes?”
“Sure, I don’t see a problem with it, for the moment. But now I have to ask something else. Lieutenant Hawkeye, if I remember correctly, it was your father who taught Roy his flame alchemy. Is that right?” He was looking at Hawkeye, and she nodded, but he didn’t miss Roy’s alarmed look from one of them to the other.
“Yes, sir, that’s right. Colonel Mustang studied with my father for several years before he went to the academy.”
“And you already know the answer to that anyway, Maes,” Roy reminded him. “You knew that’s where I had been, before we were roommates at the academy. Why are you asking about it now?”
“I’d like you both to think back,” Maes answered. “Roy, I know you told me that all the research and teaching materials for flame alchemy were destroyed after Riza’s father died. And I know the intention was to prevent anyone else from ever learning that technique and using it in a destructive way. But after what we’ve seen the last few months, I’m starting to wonder…is there any possible way that some of that information survived? Could it still exist out there somewhere, and could someone else have found it?”
“So you really think,” Riza raised her eyebrows, “that this isn’t just a kind of alchemy that uses fire as a tool somehow – but that it’s actual flame alchemy?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Maes set down his cup and leaned back, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “I mean, look at what we’re seeing. Fires set with no clear tools, no fire-starting fuel, nothing. The few eyewitnesses we have say that the flames just seemed to burst into existence spontaneously, all at once, even though they started at different places in the buildings. To be that precise, they’d either need a timer – in which case we’d surely find wires and other devices – or – “
“Or,” Roy finished grimly, “they’d need to have been started simultaneously by alchemy.”
“I can’t think of a third possibility,” Maes shrugged. “Can you?”
Roy looked down into his cup. “No.”
“But it’s just not possible, Lieutenant Colonel,” Hawkeye protested.
“Look, proud as I am of the promotion, that’s an awful mouthful,” Maes put in suddenly. “We’re alone here. Just call me Maes till we open the door again, okay?”
A little smile. “All right. Maes. But I mean what I said,” the woman went on, “we destroyed my father’s research and all his writings. I made sure everything was included. We gathered it all together and burned it in the fireplace, over a period of several hours.”
“Everything? You’re absolutely sure about that? I mean – and sorry if this sounds like I’m grilling you – did he ever write letters to other alchemists, talking about his work? Did he share the research with anyone? Could there have been communications you weren’t aware of?”
Hawkeye shook her head. “No, I’m very certain of that. He knew how this skill could be used if it fell into the wrong hands. He was extremely careful about who he revealed it to.”
“And even with those precautions it was still used to murder and destroy,” Roy murmured, continuing his contemplation of the interior of his coffee cup.
Maes’s heart sank as he shared a disturbed glance with Hawkeye. There it was again – the tortured memory his friend returned to, over and over, and could never escape. Of course he was going to make the connection now, as he watched someone use a skill much like his own flame alchemy to burn buildings down, right here in Central. But it hadn’t helped that Roy had been sent back to Ishbal, not quite six months ago, to help quell the activities of a marauding band of rebels who were robbing caravans sent through that country.
He’d asked – almost pleaded, Maes remembered – that someone else be sent instead. But Roy knew Ishbal almost better than anyone who still held a position of authority in the military, and he was the choice of the big shots. And so he’d gone, grim-faced, at the head of a large contingent of soldiers. Maes had pulled some strings and managed to get himself assigned to the same operation, and had seen first-hand how the assignment wore on his friend’s mind and self-control. Roy had absolutely refused to “fix the problem” via the use of alchemy – especially his own – but fortunately Maes and some of his operatives had managed to discover the main hideout of the rebel band, and had helped bring the problem under control within three weeks. The bulk of the rebels had been arrested, and most of their followers had dispersed. And Roy hadn’t had to snap his fingers once.
The two men hadn’t really spoken about it once they got back to the city. But instead of being able to go home right away to Gracia, Maes had spent their first night back in Central in a tavern with his friend, watching Roy try to drink himself into staggering oblivion. It hadn’t worked, of course; no matter what Roy tried to do, to make himself forget, he would always remain the Flame Alchemist, who had done what he had done.
When he’d woken up in the morning, Maes having kept vigil at his bedside all night, he’d lain there in silence for a long time, meeting his friend’s eyes. At last he’d managed a faint smile, and said softly, “I think I’m better now. As better as I can be, anyway.” Maes had fixed him breakfast, and before he’d left, Roy had grabbed him at the door, pulling him into a tight embrace and whispering a fervent “Thank you.”
But that hadn’t entirely been the end of it, for it had only been about three weeks later that the fires had started. And Roy’s nerves, already jangling from the sojourn in Ishbal, stretched thinner and thinner and became more and more frazzled, until he himself, in an uncharacteristic admission of weakness, had requested a leave of absence. He’d gone to a retreat in Xing, hoping to regain his equilibrium and attain a little peace.
He’d seemed much better when he’d returned. But Ishbal would always remain foremost in his thoughts. And unfortunately, Maes sighed to himself, Ishbal might actually be playing a role in what was happening now. And he hadn’t even gotten to that part yet.
(Cont'd - Chapter 2 part 2)
Maes stepped into the office doorway and briefly observed the people busy at their work: Warrant Officer Vato Falman bent over a couple of files, totally absorbed, Second Lieutenant Breda on the phone (feet up on his desk), Master Sergeant Kain Fuery busily making calculations on a large notepad, and Havoc and Hawkeye conferring quietly at her desk, the man leaning against one corner of it, arms folded across his chest.
Fuery was the first to see the newcomer, setting down the pencil and greeting him with only a slightly diminished degree of cheerfulness. He obviously knew about the latest case of arson, and was aware that Maes would have just come from there. “Good morning, Lieutenant Colonel Hughes,” said the young man. “Good to see you. How is Elysia?”
Maes beamed at him, even while inwardly chuckling at the way Breda grimaced and tossed an eraser at his co-worker at the next desk. Pulling out a sheaf of photographs. “Good morning, Fuery,” Maes enthused, “I can tell you exactly how my little ambassador of sweetness is. See?” He walked over to Fuery’s desk, leaning over it and fanning the photos out on its surface. “Look at this one, on her tricycle. Her pigtails are just bouncing, you can tell even in a picture. Isn’t that the cutest thing ever?”
He continued babbling enthusiastically, chattering happily about each photo. It wasn’t hard to go on at length, since he sometimes did it quietly to himself even when alone back at his own desk and looking through the pictures. He’d pretty much memorized every detail they contained by now. And why shouldn’t he? Elysia was unbelievably cute, every strand of brown hair, every sparkle in her eye, every touch of her hands, and every little breath and giggle that came out of that smiling, adorable mouth.
But even while he favoured Fuery and everyone else in earshot with a recitation of the adorableness of his daughter, he watched with half an eye as Hawkeye pushed back from her desk, stood up, and walked toward the door of the inner office. She knocked twice, then opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it behind her.
“Oooh, and look at this one!” he went on, not missing a beat. “She’s being held by her mother here, just after eating a piece of blueberry pie. Little pretty girl still looks pretty with blue lips, but she needs a big bubble bath!”
“She certainly is cute, Lieutenant Colonel,” Fuery agreed dutifully. He looked up with a smile, eyes twinkling behind the round frames of his glasses. “In fact, both ladies in that picture are quite beautiful.”
“Aww, Master Sergeant, I agree. I could kiss you for that!” Maes puckered up, leaning further across the desk, enjoying the way Fuery jerked himself away, pushing his chair back.
“Um…Lieutenant Colonel…I..that is…” The younger man was so funny when he was flustered. Maes always knew how to push his buttons, and poor Fuery never quite caught on.
“Hughes!” A sharp voice from the inner office door heralded the emergence of Roy Mustang. “When you’re quite through torturing my men, I want you in my office. And put those pictures away or I’ll lock you out.”
Maes straightened up, tucking the photos into an inner pocket of his uniform jacket, winking over at the chuckling Falman (the man had seen Maes pulling this sort of thing before, when he’d been in Investigations himself). Fuery laughed a little nervously, but waited till Maes had begun to walk toward the inner door before pulling his chair close to the desk again.
Roy certainly didn’t look any more cheerful than he had at the scene of the fire. He said to the outer room in general, “Carry on, people, I’ll occupy him for a while so you can get something done.” Then he turned and strode back into the office toward his own desk. Hawkeye stood aside as Maes entered the room, then began to shut the door. Roy stopped her, “Lieutenant, that will be everything for now. You can leave us alone.”
“Of course, sir,” she began, but Maes put a hand on her shoulder.
“Actually, lieutenant, I need you to stay.”
“Really, Hughes, is that necessary?” Roy grimaced. “Why don’t you invite all of them in here, so we can waste the entire morning?”
“Sorry, Roy, but I’m afraid this really is necessary.” Maes himself drew the woman out of the doorway, and closed the door behind her, noting first how everyone in the other room had been watching the exchange. He turned and leaned back against the door, saying brightly, “Well, isn’t this cosy!”
Roy, standing beside his desk with arms folded, made no answer, but just stared darkly back at his friend. Maes wondered just how much Roy already guessed about what he had to say.
He sighed, his smile fading. “All right, I’ll come to the point. Obviously you’ve already considered the fact that whoever is setting these fires may be using alchemy.”
“Obviously,” came the terse response. And nothing else.
Dammit, the guy was going to make this as difficult as possible. He must really be worried, or he wouldn’t be shutting down quite this badly. “Look,” Maes said softly, “can we sit down?” He indicated the two couches at one side of the office, facing each other across a wide coffee table. “This isn’t any sort of official interrogation or anything.”
“Isn’t it?” Roy demanded. “You pretty much commanded us to be waiting here for your arrival. Coming from someone in Investigations, that sounds pretty official to me.”
“It’s not coming from Investigations, it’s coming from me, Roy. Me. Now, will you lighten up just a little?”
He recognized the merest slump of Roy’s shoulders that indicated he’d relented a bit. “Sorry, Maes,” the man said softly. “It’s just…a shock, that’s all. That it’s started up again, after I’d hoped…” He turned his head away for a moment.
“I know, Roy, believe me. We all want to get this stopped once and for all. And I know why this is hitting you more than the rest of us.”
“Do you really?” came the drawled sarcasm. “Excuse me if I doubt that.”
“Sir,” Hawkeye put in, “why don’t you and the Lieutenant Colonel sit down, and I’ll pour us all some coffee?”
Roy moved to one of the couches: the one with the better view of the doorway. He always needed to be able to watch the exits or entrances of a room, never quite able to relax while he was on the job. Maes took the couch directly across from him. In a moment, Hawkeye had gone to the credenza near the desk, and set up a tray with the carafe of coffee, three cups, a pitcher of cream, a container of sugar, and three spoons. Bringing the tray over and setting it on the coffee table, she poured the freshly brewed, hot coffee into the cups, then seated herself on the couch beside Maes. While her boss watched the door, she was obviously going to watch him.
Maes dumped a spoonful of sugar into his own cup, breathing deeply of the strong, bracing aroma. “Now this,” he said appreciatively, “is what I’ve been missing all morning.” He stirred for a moment, then took as big a sip as he could stand. “Ouch. Still a bit too hot. But it’s worth it.”
Roy leaned back into the couch, crossing one leg across the other. Balancing his own cup on his knee with one hand, he stretched the other arm along the back of the couch, making an obvious effort to relax. “All right, let’s start over,” he said. “Sorry I’ve been such a grouch. Tell us what’s on your mind, Maes.”
“Well, it’s the question of alchemy. I suppose you’ve reached the same conclusion I have: that since we haven’t been able to find a single sign of incendiary devices in the previous seven fires – and I suspect we’ll have the same result this time – it means that there probably weren’t any to begin with. Which means,” Maes raised a rueful eyebrow, “that we might be looking at alchemy here. Much as I know how depressing the idea is to you.”
“It shouldn’t bother me as much as it has,” Roy admitted slowly, “since we’ve had other alchemists do destructive things before. But this hits too close to home, for the obvious reasons.”
“I know. It’s got to be disconcerting, at the very least.” Maes took another hot sip of his drink. “Gosh. That feels so good. Anyway, I know Ed started looking around pretty early on, to see if he could find signs of the use of alchemy. From what he said earlier, I think he’s pretty convinced we’re dealing with an alchemist rather than an ordinary arsonist. Have you and he talked about this?”
“Not in so many words,” Roy shook his head.
Maes paused. He found that a little hard to believe, considering how urgent the matter was. Still…this was fire. And Roy would find that problem hard to talk about with anyone, let alone Edward.
Well, he’d have to talk about it now.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that we need to operate on two tracks. Investigations will keep looking for the normal tools of an arsonist, just in case it’s just someone who’s really good at what he does. But you and I, and maybe Edward, are going to have to treat this as though we’re actually dealing with an alchemist.”
“Fine,” Roy responded. “But can I ask for one thing?” He peered at his friend, an unusual anxiety filling his eyes. “Can we keep this just between us, until we get more information? Even if the other Investigations people have their suspicions, don’t let on that we’re doing a parallel investigation until we really have something concrete. People are nervous enough about alchemists as it is. Can you at least grant me that, Maes?”
“Sure, I don’t see a problem with it, for the moment. But now I have to ask something else. Lieutenant Hawkeye, if I remember correctly, it was your father who taught Roy his flame alchemy. Is that right?” He was looking at Hawkeye, and she nodded, but he didn’t miss Roy’s alarmed look from one of them to the other.
“Yes, sir, that’s right. Colonel Mustang studied with my father for several years before he went to the academy.”
“And you already know the answer to that anyway, Maes,” Roy reminded him. “You knew that’s where I had been, before we were roommates at the academy. Why are you asking about it now?”
“I’d like you both to think back,” Maes answered. “Roy, I know you told me that all the research and teaching materials for flame alchemy were destroyed after Riza’s father died. And I know the intention was to prevent anyone else from ever learning that technique and using it in a destructive way. But after what we’ve seen the last few months, I’m starting to wonder…is there any possible way that some of that information survived? Could it still exist out there somewhere, and could someone else have found it?”
“So you really think,” Riza raised her eyebrows, “that this isn’t just a kind of alchemy that uses fire as a tool somehow – but that it’s actual flame alchemy?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Maes set down his cup and leaned back, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “I mean, look at what we’re seeing. Fires set with no clear tools, no fire-starting fuel, nothing. The few eyewitnesses we have say that the flames just seemed to burst into existence spontaneously, all at once, even though they started at different places in the buildings. To be that precise, they’d either need a timer – in which case we’d surely find wires and other devices – or – “
“Or,” Roy finished grimly, “they’d need to have been started simultaneously by alchemy.”
“I can’t think of a third possibility,” Maes shrugged. “Can you?”
Roy looked down into his cup. “No.”
“But it’s just not possible, Lieutenant Colonel,” Hawkeye protested.
“Look, proud as I am of the promotion, that’s an awful mouthful,” Maes put in suddenly. “We’re alone here. Just call me Maes till we open the door again, okay?”
A little smile. “All right. Maes. But I mean what I said,” the woman went on, “we destroyed my father’s research and all his writings. I made sure everything was included. We gathered it all together and burned it in the fireplace, over a period of several hours.”
“Everything? You’re absolutely sure about that? I mean – and sorry if this sounds like I’m grilling you – did he ever write letters to other alchemists, talking about his work? Did he share the research with anyone? Could there have been communications you weren’t aware of?”
Hawkeye shook her head. “No, I’m very certain of that. He knew how this skill could be used if it fell into the wrong hands. He was extremely careful about who he revealed it to.”
“And even with those precautions it was still used to murder and destroy,” Roy murmured, continuing his contemplation of the interior of his coffee cup.
Maes’s heart sank as he shared a disturbed glance with Hawkeye. There it was again – the tortured memory his friend returned to, over and over, and could never escape. Of course he was going to make the connection now, as he watched someone use a skill much like his own flame alchemy to burn buildings down, right here in Central. But it hadn’t helped that Roy had been sent back to Ishbal, not quite six months ago, to help quell the activities of a marauding band of rebels who were robbing caravans sent through that country.
He’d asked – almost pleaded, Maes remembered – that someone else be sent instead. But Roy knew Ishbal almost better than anyone who still held a position of authority in the military, and he was the choice of the big shots. And so he’d gone, grim-faced, at the head of a large contingent of soldiers. Maes had pulled some strings and managed to get himself assigned to the same operation, and had seen first-hand how the assignment wore on his friend’s mind and self-control. Roy had absolutely refused to “fix the problem” via the use of alchemy – especially his own – but fortunately Maes and some of his operatives had managed to discover the main hideout of the rebel band, and had helped bring the problem under control within three weeks. The bulk of the rebels had been arrested, and most of their followers had dispersed. And Roy hadn’t had to snap his fingers once.
The two men hadn’t really spoken about it once they got back to the city. But instead of being able to go home right away to Gracia, Maes had spent their first night back in Central in a tavern with his friend, watching Roy try to drink himself into staggering oblivion. It hadn’t worked, of course; no matter what Roy tried to do, to make himself forget, he would always remain the Flame Alchemist, who had done what he had done.
When he’d woken up in the morning, Maes having kept vigil at his bedside all night, he’d lain there in silence for a long time, meeting his friend’s eyes. At last he’d managed a faint smile, and said softly, “I think I’m better now. As better as I can be, anyway.” Maes had fixed him breakfast, and before he’d left, Roy had grabbed him at the door, pulling him into a tight embrace and whispering a fervent “Thank you.”
But that hadn’t entirely been the end of it, for it had only been about three weeks later that the fires had started. And Roy’s nerves, already jangling from the sojourn in Ishbal, stretched thinner and thinner and became more and more frazzled, until he himself, in an uncharacteristic admission of weakness, had requested a leave of absence. He’d gone to a retreat in Xing, hoping to regain his equilibrium and attain a little peace.
He’d seemed much better when he’d returned. But Ishbal would always remain foremost in his thoughts. And unfortunately, Maes sighed to himself, Ishbal might actually be playing a role in what was happening now. And he hadn’t even gotten to that part yet.
(Cont'd - Chapter 2 part 2)