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kashiwrites(See Chapter 2)
Ed glanced sideways as he danced, watching the colonel a few feet away twirling Devra near the phonograph. One of the two dark-skinned women who lived and worked here, she had taken the long red scarf the man had given her and tied back her voluminous curly black hair. The ends of the scarf whirled about her brown dress as she turned, like ribbons around a may pole.
“Pay attention to your partner, Ed.” Jasmine’s fingers tightened slightly on his left hand. “When you’re just learning, you could end up kicking her in the shins if you aren’t attentive. Which could be disastrous with that metal foot.”
He jerked his head back, smiling sheepishly, and looked up at the woman currently teaching him some elementary dance steps. “Sorry about that,” he said. “There’s so much going on around here, I’m getting distracted.” He judiciously neglected to mention the after-effects of the glass of wine he’d gulped, rather too quickly, while the presents were being opened.
“But there’s always a lot going on, on a dance floor,” she reminded him. “Though in this place, things do get a bit...overwhelming sometimes.”
Nearby, ranged in front of the wide, frosted picture window with its two curved garlands of aromatic pine branches, several other young women had begun dancing with each other for lack of male partners. Which was why Jasmine, a dance instructor in training, had grabbed Ed for some quick preliminary lessons so that Mustang wouldn’t be the only man available.
Lily’s new earrings (courtesy of Mustang) glittered with light captured from the lamps and the candles as she danced beside Ed and Jasmine, in time with the phonograph music Jasmine had put on after the present opening. Following Lily’s initial dance with the colonel, she had dragged Laney into this space at the end of the room near the phonograph.
Laney. The brown-haired woman who had leapt from the couch and into Mustang’s arms, exclaiming, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, my darling Roy!” after opening his gift of high-quality chef’s knives. Ed had gathered, from the other women’s excited comments, that she had one more short internship before she’d begin her career as a certified chef.
He glanced again at the colonel, now laughing at something Devra had said. The man’s amused eyes flickered to Ed’s face, and Ed looked away, his stomach tightening. He didn’t want to look at the guy. Or even think about him right now.
He was going to have fun for the rest of the evening if it killed him. With grim resolution he returned his attention to his feet, and to Jasmine’s instructions. Even if he couldn’t really feel the warmth of her skin through the dress under his automail hand, he could sense the curve of her waist. And when she leaned forward to murmur instructions, her black hair fell free of her shoulder and tickled his cheek. It was nice.
“There you go,” she murmured, almond eyes smiling. “You’re already learning.”
“Alchemists tend to pick things up quickly,” he told her.
“Then I think you’re ready to try a dance with someone else,” she nodded as the song drew to an end with a flourish of horns. “Lily, how would you like to give Ed a try for the next number?”
The blond girl came over, saying enthusiastically, “I’ve been waiting for my chance at him all evening.”
“Don’t ride him too hard, girls,” Mustang cautioned, and Lily laughed as she pulled Ed’s automail hand to her waist.
If he could just stop blushing, this would be a lot more fun. And it would help if the colonel would shut up. As Ed turned away with a scowl, he caught the surprise in the man’s eyes, but ignored it.
The pace of the music picked up in the next song, but Lily kept her own steps simple, and Ed was surprised that he did so well. She was obviously very adept at adjusting her movements to fit the needs of the man she was with.
Another thought Ed wanted fervently to avoid.
In quick glances over his shoulder, he saw that Mustang had begun dancing with another woman – Asha, wasn’t that her name? – who stood tall and elegant in a white, figure-hugging floor-length dress, her long blond hair rolled up and caught at the back of her head in a gold filigreed clip.
They made a striking couple, Ed mused. If you forgot certain things.
“Look at you, frowning,” Lily teased, drawing his attention back as she smoothed a lock of hair away from his eyes with her soft fingers. “You’re just as handsome as Roy is, you know.”
“What are you – I wasn’t even thinking of that,” Ed retorted. He slowly steered her around, moving in time to the music, until his back was to the colonel and he could relax. The last thing he wanted, he growled to himself, was to be compared with that man, favourably or not.
“What, then?” Lily wondered. “Do you want to dance with Asha next? She’s a very good dan – "
“How long have you worked here?” Ed blurted.
She regarded him in astonishment. She set her hand on his shoulder, a pleasant weight against his neck, and he could feel her fingers toying with his thick braid as they swayed together. “Let me think...eight years, I guess. Since I was thirteen.”
Ed misstepped and almost stomped his automail foot on her toes. Thirteen.
He didn’t – he didn’t – want to ask. But the words seemed to fall out of his dry mouth. “And how...how did you come here?”
“Roy brought me, of course. Like he brought almost all the girls. The youngest ones, anyway. We’re so lucky.”
Thirteen. The youngest ones. Lucky.
Ed wanted to be sick. He swung Lily around a bit too quickly, so he could glare at his superior officer, currently facing away from him. The man had the nerve, he thought indignantly, not to notice anything. Meanwhile the young woman’s navy dress swirled and she laughed breathlessly. “I think you’re getting more confident,” she gasped.
The music rose to a loud conclusion. The colonel, after holding Asha’s hand above her head and twirling her around, stretched out one leg, leaning down and dipping the woman above his bent knee, his arm securely under her back. They looked like a couple of ballroom dancing champions.
That smug, arrogant, self-satisfied show off –
Ed clenched his jaw and threw his automail arm around Lily’s waist. He swung her around one more time and dropped her backwards over his braced knee, his chest and shoulder muscles tightening to compensate for the extra weight lying across the arm. She gave a shocked whoop and then, as the metal arm held her firm, she kicked out a dramatic leg and flung her head back, laughing in delight, her own arm encircling his neck.
“You are full of tricks,” she cried, flushed with pleasure as he lifted her back onto her feet. “I’m so glad you came tonight, Ed.”
He cupped her face in both hands and planted a kiss on her full, smiling lips. “I need a drink,” he announced, and stalked out of the living room.
The lamps had been turned down in the dining room, only a couple of candles left nearly guttering amidst the centrepieces in the middle of the long table. While the aroma of roast goose and ham still lingered in the room, all of the food and most of the dishes had been cleared away. In the faint, flickering light from the candles and the illumination slanting from the doorway on the floor along one side of the room, he could see the glitter of a few wine glasses still scattered on the white linen tablecloth. Scooping up a glass, he grabbed a partially empty bottle that remained from dinner. The wine poured in a gurgling stream of shadowed bronze, and he flung his head back and almost chugged it, his free hand leaning on the arm of his chair to support him. The tart liquid went down his throat, immediately triggering a delicious warmth in his stomach and chest.
So there, he thought, not quite sure what he meant. Maybe another glass would help him think. Or help him not think. An even better idea.
He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and the light diminished. He wasn’t surprised, as he turned, to see the soft outline of Mustang’s silhouette in the doorway. The candlelight created an occasional glint in the man’s eyes, but wasn’t bright enough to illuminate his face.
“Ed...?” the other man ventured softly. “Are you all right?”
“You,” Ed growled, thrusting his glass in the colonel’s direction and slopping what was left of his drink. “Don’t you even talk to m—“
“Roy, I need you.” Another silhouette: Madam Chris coming up behind her foster son, a hand on his shoulder. “I’d like you to look over a couple of books in the office – oh.” Her head turned. “Edward? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt if you two were talking.”
Ed couldn’t see her expression any more than he could see the colonel’s, but he favoured them both with a narrow grin. “No, we’re fine,” he pronounced brightly, finishing off the last drops of wine and waving the glass around for emphasis. “Go ahead, take him, he’s all yours.”
Both Madam Chris and the colonel remained as they were for a moment, regarding him in silence. Eventually the man moved, half-turning away. “Okay, I’ll look at those books,” he said, adding over his shoulder, “I’ll be right back, Ed. You might want to think about switching to water for a while. Or ask one of the girls for some coffee.” And once again the doorway was empty, the light from the other room slashing across the floor into the darkness of this one.
Switch to water. Or coffee. Ed snorted in derision, poured himself another glass, and drank it in a few gulps. There. Nobody was going to tell him what to do, especially a man like Colonel bloody Roy Mustang.
Thirteen. The youngest ones. Lucky.
He walked back into the living room, watching himself placing his feet very carefully. Near the end of the couch, one of the double doors into the front part of the house had been left slightly ajar.
“Edward!” Lily called, waving from her perch on the arm of Madam Chris’s chair by the fireplace. “Come back and dance some more. You’ve just started; you haven’t danced with all of us yet.”
Jasmine, once again bending to change the record on the phonograph, smiled over. “If he plans to do that, it will take him till dawn at this rate.” The music began as she straightened: something symphonic, it sounded like. But Ed could dance to anything now. If Roy Mustang could do it, he certainly could. Even if the floor was getting a bit...wobbly.
As he approached the arm chair, another young woman came into view, hidden behind Lily. The young lady – hardly more than a girl, really – had sat through both dinner and the present-opening almost in silence. Her thick auburn hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back, glistening with subtle flame in the lamplight.
He should remember her name. They had made much of the fact that her present from Mustang had been a stethoscope, of all things.
Taking his cue from Lily’s wink, he looked down at the girl and held out his hand. “Hi, Alison,” he smiled, remembering just in time. “I’d like to dance if you want to.”
The girl cast him a quick glance, eyes of emerald darting uncertainly to his face. “Would you really?” It was almost a whisper.
“I’d really like to,” he nodded.
She took his hand and stood, following him past the fireplace to the other end of the room. When he turned to embrace her, he discovered to his pleasure that she was slightly shorter than he was, even in low heels. Finally, a girl who fitted him just right.
Except, he thought uneasily, glancing around and remembering exactly where he was, he didn’t mean it like that...
Ed placed his metal hand on the girl’s slender waist as gently as he could, the gauzy green material rustling slightly at his touch. She wasn’t just smaller than the rest of the women here, she looked quite a bit younger too. He’d need to be more careful. And for some reason, his feet didn’t feel quite as steady as they should.
But he smiled and began to move slowly with her, carried on the rise of violins.
“We’re very glad to have you here tonight, Mister Elric,” Alison murmured, eyes downcast, speaking so quietly that he had to lean closer to catch her words. The faint wisp of perfume made him think of some kind of flower. “Roy’s told us a lot about you,” she added.
Ed just bet he had. “Yeah, well,” he smirked, “don’t believe everything you hear. And did he tell you to call me Mister Elric? Don’t listen to him. I’m just Ed, okay?”
Her startled eyes lighted on his face again. “But everything Roy told us was good,” she assured him. “We all think you’re a hero. You don’t want us to stop thinking that, do you?” she added with the slightest mischievous glint in her eyes, a tinge of colour touching her pale cheeks.
Ed grinned. “Well, okay, if that’s what you think, I’m sure I can put up with it.”
“That’s very gracious of you,” she laughed. Glints of subdued flame sparked from her hair as her head moved.
Glancing aside at Lily, Ed returned a smirk at her encouraging wave. He’d noticed how everyone seemed very protective of Alison; he remembered how gently Mustang had smiled when she’d approached him to thank him for her present.
But at the reminder of his superior officer, Ed’s stomach tightened again, and his flesh hand tightened of its own accord around the girl’s soft fingers. He wished to goodness he just didn’t have to think about Roy Mustang at all.
And yet he couldn’t help but ask, trying to force a casual tone into his voice, “So, Alison...how long have you lived here?”
“Just three years,” she answered. “Since I was twelve.”
Oh dear god. Twelve. She really was a lot younger than all the other women who worked here.
“A-and,” he faltered, “how did you...come to be here?”
Except, he thought with sinking heart, he already knew the answer, didn’t he? “Roy brought me here,” Alison replied, for once looking straight into his eyes, her own green eyes shining. “I was very – “
“Don’t tell me,” Ed muttered, averting his gaze. “You were lucky.”
“Yes. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
This small, slender girl with her heart-shaped face and light step. Who was so shy she could hardly look into his face…
Who would go upstairs tomorrow evening when the holiday was over and – and – with the men –
Twelve.
Ed wasn’t sure he could define all the things swirling through his mind: rage, alcohol, maybe grief. He wanted to scream. Or cry. It was none of his business.
Roy brought me here.
He stumbled with a gasp, and forced himself to concentrate, remembering Jasmine’s admonitions. If he kicked Alison with the wrong foot, he’d probably break her leg. But she smiled and murmured, “You’re doing just fine, Ed.” Trying to make him comfortable, when it was her own foot that had almost been stepped on.
Accommodating him? The way the women in a House like this were supposed to?
Twelve, dammit.
He swallowed hard. He didn’t care. He wasn’t supposed to care. These things happened all the time, in every town and city in the country. That was the way the world worked. He didn’t care. He and Alphonse had been off by themselves doing adult things, terribly dangerous adult things in fact, since they were ten or eleven. This sort of thing happened in the world.
But Mustang – Ed’s roiling thoughts crystallized at last on the one thing he’d been trying not to think about, the thing that made his throat tighten with unexpected tears – Roy Mustang was supposed to be better than this –
And Ed was the Fullmetal Alchemist, and he did care, and what was more, he went around the country changing things like this.
Didn’t he?
He’d hardly been able to hear the music around the cacophony of thought howling through his mind, but he realized now that it was slowing down, fading to nothing. The song was over. It was possible that a lot of things were over.
He smiled at Alison, doing his best to mask his inner tumult, and led her back to the chair where Lily still waited, legs curled so her finely pedicured bare feet hung over the edge of the arm. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he told the two of them. “I need to get something out of my coat pocket.”
“Hurry back, Ed,” Lily responded. “You’re leaving us with no men at all.”
Hurry back. He wasn’t even sure he was going to survive the next few minutes. But he couldn’t just stand back tonight and say nothing, do nothing. No matter what consequences he faced.
I just have to do this, Al, he thought.
He heard the next song begin, and glanced over his shoulder as he walked toward the door that had been left ajar. Lily had begun to dance with Alison by the fireplace, Jasmine was currently paired with Devra, Petra and Asha were dancing near the phonograph, and several other pairs near the window, while Jheun and two more women were huddled on the couch, giggling as they compared presents. The soft murmur of conversation underlaid the melody filling the room.
Just one large, happy family.
All those women coupled together as they danced. Some men, Ed had heard, really liked that sort of thing.
With a shudder of distress and embarrassment he turned away and, his stomach tightening afresh, he swallowed nervously and pulled the door open, stepping into the hallway, seeking his confrontation.
(Chapter 4)
Ed glanced sideways as he danced, watching the colonel a few feet away twirling Devra near the phonograph. One of the two dark-skinned women who lived and worked here, she had taken the long red scarf the man had given her and tied back her voluminous curly black hair. The ends of the scarf whirled about her brown dress as she turned, like ribbons around a may pole.
“Pay attention to your partner, Ed.” Jasmine’s fingers tightened slightly on his left hand. “When you’re just learning, you could end up kicking her in the shins if you aren’t attentive. Which could be disastrous with that metal foot.”
He jerked his head back, smiling sheepishly, and looked up at the woman currently teaching him some elementary dance steps. “Sorry about that,” he said. “There’s so much going on around here, I’m getting distracted.” He judiciously neglected to mention the after-effects of the glass of wine he’d gulped, rather too quickly, while the presents were being opened.
“But there’s always a lot going on, on a dance floor,” she reminded him. “Though in this place, things do get a bit...overwhelming sometimes.”
Nearby, ranged in front of the wide, frosted picture window with its two curved garlands of aromatic pine branches, several other young women had begun dancing with each other for lack of male partners. Which was why Jasmine, a dance instructor in training, had grabbed Ed for some quick preliminary lessons so that Mustang wouldn’t be the only man available.
Lily’s new earrings (courtesy of Mustang) glittered with light captured from the lamps and the candles as she danced beside Ed and Jasmine, in time with the phonograph music Jasmine had put on after the present opening. Following Lily’s initial dance with the colonel, she had dragged Laney into this space at the end of the room near the phonograph.
Laney. The brown-haired woman who had leapt from the couch and into Mustang’s arms, exclaiming, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, my darling Roy!” after opening his gift of high-quality chef’s knives. Ed had gathered, from the other women’s excited comments, that she had one more short internship before she’d begin her career as a certified chef.
He glanced again at the colonel, now laughing at something Devra had said. The man’s amused eyes flickered to Ed’s face, and Ed looked away, his stomach tightening. He didn’t want to look at the guy. Or even think about him right now.
He was going to have fun for the rest of the evening if it killed him. With grim resolution he returned his attention to his feet, and to Jasmine’s instructions. Even if he couldn’t really feel the warmth of her skin through the dress under his automail hand, he could sense the curve of her waist. And when she leaned forward to murmur instructions, her black hair fell free of her shoulder and tickled his cheek. It was nice.
“There you go,” she murmured, almond eyes smiling. “You’re already learning.”
“Alchemists tend to pick things up quickly,” he told her.
“Then I think you’re ready to try a dance with someone else,” she nodded as the song drew to an end with a flourish of horns. “Lily, how would you like to give Ed a try for the next number?”
The blond girl came over, saying enthusiastically, “I’ve been waiting for my chance at him all evening.”
“Don’t ride him too hard, girls,” Mustang cautioned, and Lily laughed as she pulled Ed’s automail hand to her waist.
If he could just stop blushing, this would be a lot more fun. And it would help if the colonel would shut up. As Ed turned away with a scowl, he caught the surprise in the man’s eyes, but ignored it.
The pace of the music picked up in the next song, but Lily kept her own steps simple, and Ed was surprised that he did so well. She was obviously very adept at adjusting her movements to fit the needs of the man she was with.
Another thought Ed wanted fervently to avoid.
In quick glances over his shoulder, he saw that Mustang had begun dancing with another woman – Asha, wasn’t that her name? – who stood tall and elegant in a white, figure-hugging floor-length dress, her long blond hair rolled up and caught at the back of her head in a gold filigreed clip.
They made a striking couple, Ed mused. If you forgot certain things.
“Look at you, frowning,” Lily teased, drawing his attention back as she smoothed a lock of hair away from his eyes with her soft fingers. “You’re just as handsome as Roy is, you know.”
“What are you – I wasn’t even thinking of that,” Ed retorted. He slowly steered her around, moving in time to the music, until his back was to the colonel and he could relax. The last thing he wanted, he growled to himself, was to be compared with that man, favourably or not.
“What, then?” Lily wondered. “Do you want to dance with Asha next? She’s a very good dan – "
“How long have you worked here?” Ed blurted.
She regarded him in astonishment. She set her hand on his shoulder, a pleasant weight against his neck, and he could feel her fingers toying with his thick braid as they swayed together. “Let me think...eight years, I guess. Since I was thirteen.”
Ed misstepped and almost stomped his automail foot on her toes. Thirteen.
He didn’t – he didn’t – want to ask. But the words seemed to fall out of his dry mouth. “And how...how did you come here?”
“Roy brought me, of course. Like he brought almost all the girls. The youngest ones, anyway. We’re so lucky.”
Thirteen. The youngest ones. Lucky.
Ed wanted to be sick. He swung Lily around a bit too quickly, so he could glare at his superior officer, currently facing away from him. The man had the nerve, he thought indignantly, not to notice anything. Meanwhile the young woman’s navy dress swirled and she laughed breathlessly. “I think you’re getting more confident,” she gasped.
The music rose to a loud conclusion. The colonel, after holding Asha’s hand above her head and twirling her around, stretched out one leg, leaning down and dipping the woman above his bent knee, his arm securely under her back. They looked like a couple of ballroom dancing champions.
That smug, arrogant, self-satisfied show off –
Ed clenched his jaw and threw his automail arm around Lily’s waist. He swung her around one more time and dropped her backwards over his braced knee, his chest and shoulder muscles tightening to compensate for the extra weight lying across the arm. She gave a shocked whoop and then, as the metal arm held her firm, she kicked out a dramatic leg and flung her head back, laughing in delight, her own arm encircling his neck.
“You are full of tricks,” she cried, flushed with pleasure as he lifted her back onto her feet. “I’m so glad you came tonight, Ed.”
He cupped her face in both hands and planted a kiss on her full, smiling lips. “I need a drink,” he announced, and stalked out of the living room.
The lamps had been turned down in the dining room, only a couple of candles left nearly guttering amidst the centrepieces in the middle of the long table. While the aroma of roast goose and ham still lingered in the room, all of the food and most of the dishes had been cleared away. In the faint, flickering light from the candles and the illumination slanting from the doorway on the floor along one side of the room, he could see the glitter of a few wine glasses still scattered on the white linen tablecloth. Scooping up a glass, he grabbed a partially empty bottle that remained from dinner. The wine poured in a gurgling stream of shadowed bronze, and he flung his head back and almost chugged it, his free hand leaning on the arm of his chair to support him. The tart liquid went down his throat, immediately triggering a delicious warmth in his stomach and chest.
So there, he thought, not quite sure what he meant. Maybe another glass would help him think. Or help him not think. An even better idea.
He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and the light diminished. He wasn’t surprised, as he turned, to see the soft outline of Mustang’s silhouette in the doorway. The candlelight created an occasional glint in the man’s eyes, but wasn’t bright enough to illuminate his face.
“Ed...?” the other man ventured softly. “Are you all right?”
“You,” Ed growled, thrusting his glass in the colonel’s direction and slopping what was left of his drink. “Don’t you even talk to m—“
“Roy, I need you.” Another silhouette: Madam Chris coming up behind her foster son, a hand on his shoulder. “I’d like you to look over a couple of books in the office – oh.” Her head turned. “Edward? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt if you two were talking.”
Ed couldn’t see her expression any more than he could see the colonel’s, but he favoured them both with a narrow grin. “No, we’re fine,” he pronounced brightly, finishing off the last drops of wine and waving the glass around for emphasis. “Go ahead, take him, he’s all yours.”
Both Madam Chris and the colonel remained as they were for a moment, regarding him in silence. Eventually the man moved, half-turning away. “Okay, I’ll look at those books,” he said, adding over his shoulder, “I’ll be right back, Ed. You might want to think about switching to water for a while. Or ask one of the girls for some coffee.” And once again the doorway was empty, the light from the other room slashing across the floor into the darkness of this one.
Switch to water. Or coffee. Ed snorted in derision, poured himself another glass, and drank it in a few gulps. There. Nobody was going to tell him what to do, especially a man like Colonel bloody Roy Mustang.
Thirteen. The youngest ones. Lucky.
He walked back into the living room, watching himself placing his feet very carefully. Near the end of the couch, one of the double doors into the front part of the house had been left slightly ajar.
“Edward!” Lily called, waving from her perch on the arm of Madam Chris’s chair by the fireplace. “Come back and dance some more. You’ve just started; you haven’t danced with all of us yet.”
Jasmine, once again bending to change the record on the phonograph, smiled over. “If he plans to do that, it will take him till dawn at this rate.” The music began as she straightened: something symphonic, it sounded like. But Ed could dance to anything now. If Roy Mustang could do it, he certainly could. Even if the floor was getting a bit...wobbly.
As he approached the arm chair, another young woman came into view, hidden behind Lily. The young lady – hardly more than a girl, really – had sat through both dinner and the present-opening almost in silence. Her thick auburn hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back, glistening with subtle flame in the lamplight.
He should remember her name. They had made much of the fact that her present from Mustang had been a stethoscope, of all things.
Taking his cue from Lily’s wink, he looked down at the girl and held out his hand. “Hi, Alison,” he smiled, remembering just in time. “I’d like to dance if you want to.”
The girl cast him a quick glance, eyes of emerald darting uncertainly to his face. “Would you really?” It was almost a whisper.
“I’d really like to,” he nodded.
She took his hand and stood, following him past the fireplace to the other end of the room. When he turned to embrace her, he discovered to his pleasure that she was slightly shorter than he was, even in low heels. Finally, a girl who fitted him just right.
Except, he thought uneasily, glancing around and remembering exactly where he was, he didn’t mean it like that...
Ed placed his metal hand on the girl’s slender waist as gently as he could, the gauzy green material rustling slightly at his touch. She wasn’t just smaller than the rest of the women here, she looked quite a bit younger too. He’d need to be more careful. And for some reason, his feet didn’t feel quite as steady as they should.
But he smiled and began to move slowly with her, carried on the rise of violins.
“We’re very glad to have you here tonight, Mister Elric,” Alison murmured, eyes downcast, speaking so quietly that he had to lean closer to catch her words. The faint wisp of perfume made him think of some kind of flower. “Roy’s told us a lot about you,” she added.
Ed just bet he had. “Yeah, well,” he smirked, “don’t believe everything you hear. And did he tell you to call me Mister Elric? Don’t listen to him. I’m just Ed, okay?”
Her startled eyes lighted on his face again. “But everything Roy told us was good,” she assured him. “We all think you’re a hero. You don’t want us to stop thinking that, do you?” she added with the slightest mischievous glint in her eyes, a tinge of colour touching her pale cheeks.
Ed grinned. “Well, okay, if that’s what you think, I’m sure I can put up with it.”
“That’s very gracious of you,” she laughed. Glints of subdued flame sparked from her hair as her head moved.
Glancing aside at Lily, Ed returned a smirk at her encouraging wave. He’d noticed how everyone seemed very protective of Alison; he remembered how gently Mustang had smiled when she’d approached him to thank him for her present.
But at the reminder of his superior officer, Ed’s stomach tightened again, and his flesh hand tightened of its own accord around the girl’s soft fingers. He wished to goodness he just didn’t have to think about Roy Mustang at all.
And yet he couldn’t help but ask, trying to force a casual tone into his voice, “So, Alison...how long have you lived here?”
“Just three years,” she answered. “Since I was twelve.”
Oh dear god. Twelve. She really was a lot younger than all the other women who worked here.
“A-and,” he faltered, “how did you...come to be here?”
Except, he thought with sinking heart, he already knew the answer, didn’t he? “Roy brought me here,” Alison replied, for once looking straight into his eyes, her own green eyes shining. “I was very – “
“Don’t tell me,” Ed muttered, averting his gaze. “You were lucky.”
“Yes. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
This small, slender girl with her heart-shaped face and light step. Who was so shy she could hardly look into his face…
Who would go upstairs tomorrow evening when the holiday was over and – and – with the men –
Twelve.
Ed wasn’t sure he could define all the things swirling through his mind: rage, alcohol, maybe grief. He wanted to scream. Or cry. It was none of his business.
Roy brought me here.
He stumbled with a gasp, and forced himself to concentrate, remembering Jasmine’s admonitions. If he kicked Alison with the wrong foot, he’d probably break her leg. But she smiled and murmured, “You’re doing just fine, Ed.” Trying to make him comfortable, when it was her own foot that had almost been stepped on.
Accommodating him? The way the women in a House like this were supposed to?
Twelve, dammit.
He swallowed hard. He didn’t care. He wasn’t supposed to care. These things happened all the time, in every town and city in the country. That was the way the world worked. He didn’t care. He and Alphonse had been off by themselves doing adult things, terribly dangerous adult things in fact, since they were ten or eleven. This sort of thing happened in the world.
But Mustang – Ed’s roiling thoughts crystallized at last on the one thing he’d been trying not to think about, the thing that made his throat tighten with unexpected tears – Roy Mustang was supposed to be better than this –
And Ed was the Fullmetal Alchemist, and he did care, and what was more, he went around the country changing things like this.
Didn’t he?
He’d hardly been able to hear the music around the cacophony of thought howling through his mind, but he realized now that it was slowing down, fading to nothing. The song was over. It was possible that a lot of things were over.
He smiled at Alison, doing his best to mask his inner tumult, and led her back to the chair where Lily still waited, legs curled so her finely pedicured bare feet hung over the edge of the arm. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he told the two of them. “I need to get something out of my coat pocket.”
“Hurry back, Ed,” Lily responded. “You’re leaving us with no men at all.”
Hurry back. He wasn’t even sure he was going to survive the next few minutes. But he couldn’t just stand back tonight and say nothing, do nothing. No matter what consequences he faced.
I just have to do this, Al, he thought.
He heard the next song begin, and glanced over his shoulder as he walked toward the door that had been left ajar. Lily had begun to dance with Alison by the fireplace, Jasmine was currently paired with Devra, Petra and Asha were dancing near the phonograph, and several other pairs near the window, while Jheun and two more women were huddled on the couch, giggling as they compared presents. The soft murmur of conversation underlaid the melody filling the room.
Just one large, happy family.
All those women coupled together as they danced. Some men, Ed had heard, really liked that sort of thing.
With a shudder of distress and embarrassment he turned away and, his stomach tightening afresh, he swallowed nervously and pulled the door open, stepping into the hallway, seeking his confrontation.
(Chapter 4)
