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kashiwrites(Continued from Chapter 1)
Chapter 2
Roy leaned back in his chair and surveyed the remains of his bowl of stew on the table. Most people who travelled in higher social circles had no idea that some of the best meals they would ever eat could be found in these small country inns. Never mind the posh restaurants – people in smaller places like this really knew how to cook, and most of their ingredients had been on the trees, in the ground, or in the barns no more than a couple of days ago. Nothing equaled good home cooking, with local foods.
He took another sip of his mug of ale and surveyed the rest of the clientele. They were pretty much as he expected: mostly farmers, a few local merchants, and a couple of others whose professions were not immediately visible. Only two women at the tables, probably having supper with their farmer husbands. And three women and two men serving the tables and going back and forth with trays of drink and food.
The walls were punctuated by heavy wooden posts at perhaps five-foot intervals, so that even though the walls themselves were painted white, the posts and the low, heavily beamed ceiling made the atmosphere rather dim and cozy. Off in a corner, someone had sat down and started to play piano. A couple of people had begun to sing along. As Roy well knew, soon the dinner atmosphere would turn to the more energetic singing and drinking typical of later evening. Which meant…
He drained the last of his ale and stood up, tossing some extra coins onto the table for the server; he’d already paid for his food and drink. The server, leaning against the long counter of the bar across the room, took note of his action and offered a smile and nod. Roy returned both, and walked out into the main lobby of the inn.
He paused in front of the sign-in desk, glancing between the stairs to his second-floor room and the double doors leading to the street. It might be a bit too early to head off to bed, whatever the atmosphere in the tavern suggested. He walked to the door and stepped out onto the broad porch that fronted the little inn.
It had rained last night, but the day had warmed up nicely, letting the new leaf buds on the trees and the flowers just beginning to open get a nice burst of refreshment. They had responded today by seeming to grow to twice the size they’d been in the morning. Roy had been so busy, the past few years, that he’d rarely had time to notice such things. But he’d been doing a lot of watching as he travelled.
The inn stood at one end of the main street of the town – or, actually, more of a village. A few stores stood on the other side of the street, with the inn owner’s house to one side of the inn and a flower shop on the other side. Roy had been here two days, just looking around, sometimes strolling through the streets and greeting people he met, and other times walking to the outskirts and doing some exploring. He’d spent a little time today wandering through the stalls of the farmer’s market at the other end of the main street, gathering a few supplies for his next train ride in the morning –
Havoc should have the papers by now.
Roy breathed sharply in as the thought intruded without warning. Yes, Jean would probably have received the deed by now. He’d be well taken care of. All of them would; Roy had made sure of that by putting them in charge of the new department. They believed in what they were doing. They would be happy.
And she – someday maybe she would forgive –
He turned on his heel and headed back in through the double doors. Never mind all that. Everything was behind him now. They were his past. Time to let go of them and head off in another direction, to discover instead the long future that awaited him.
Roy smiled at the person behind the registration desk as he walked toward the stairs, and the young woman called out her goodnight. Maybe he’d read, after all, by the fire in his room. That was what he’d brought some of his books for, after all. And if he had to get up early, maybe it was better to turn in early as well.
He took the steps two at a time. It shouldn’t have surprised him, how vigorous he felt these days, but it still did, despite everything he knew. But never mind that. Just another couple of days of travel and he’d get to where he was going. Whether he’d stay there, as he’d originally planned, was another story. But he’d decide that when he finally arrived.
“Goodnight, Mr. Hawkeye!” the young woman had called to him as he’d passed the desk.
Roy pressed his forehead against the door of his room as he paused with his hand on the doorknob. No, he thought, wearily closing his eyes. She’ll never actually forgive me.
Riza bent over the piles of paper partially spread out in front of several other binders of paper on the round table in one corner of her office. Havoc, who was more familiar with their contents than she was, leaned back against the wall beside the table, arms crossed over his chest as he murmured quietly to Breda, who stood at his side. Fuery bent beside Riza, also peering at the papers, and Falman leaned over him, reading the more distant sheets.
“I suppose,” Riza murmured, “that we should each take a binder or two and go over them.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Havoc nodded. “I’ve been reading the first binder for a day and a half, and I’ve only just finished it.”
Passenger lists, schedules, and destination lists, for every train that had left Central in the ten days since Roy Mustang had disappeared. Borrowed from the stationmaster on pain of severe consequences if so much as a single sheet were lost. Riza shook her head at the thought of the task ahead of them. But it seemed to be all they had left, since every other inquiry they’d made in the city had led to nothing but dead ends.
“Very well, Jean,” Riza began, “since you’re more familiar with them, tell us how we should divide – “
And the door burst open with a crash, splitting the doorjamb and banging into the wall behind it. Edward Elric stood in the doorway, positively beaming a smug smile at the occupants of the office.
“Trying to lock people out, are you?” he said, flipping his blond braid back off his right shoulder. “Well, you didn’t take this into account. Can’t keep me out of anywhere I want to be.” He held up his right hand, where a gleam of metal showed between his shirtsleeve and his glove.
Riza straightened. “Actually, I wasn’t trying to keep you out, Edward. I had no idea you were in town.”
“I wasn’t in town,” Ed replied, “until – “
“Until I called him,” Alphonse supplied, his own tawny head appearing around the cracked doorjamb. “Sorry about that, Riza. I thought I could call and tell him, because I didn’t think he’d just decide to show up here.”
“Of course I was going to come,” Ed retorted, stepping into the room. “If Mustang’s in trouble, he might need us to rescue him.”
“Well, that’s the problem, chief,” Havoc said. “We don’t even really know if he’s in trouble.”
“Of course he is, or he’d never have pulled this vanishing act. I know it and you know it. So what are those?” the young man wondered, peering beyond Fuery and Falman to the binders and papers.
But before anyone could reply, a third person walked in behind Alphonse. And this time, all of Mustang’s people were struck dumb. Ed’s and Al’s father, Hohenheim, stood in the doorway, taking in the scene, his blue eyes narrowed in appraisal behind his glasses. “Good morning,” he said. “I hope my son didn’t startle you too much.” He pressed his hands together and then ran one hand along the doorjamb, almost absently melding the wood back together with his alchemy.
Riza swallowed. This whole scene was suddenly careening out of control. “He…well, sir…even if Ed startled us, I think we’re more startled by your being here.”
For a moment, a glint of humour flashed in the man’s eyes. “Oh, you mean because I’m dead? Or was supposed to be? I’m afraid I got better.”
“That’s for sure,” Ed said, raising his eyebrows at his father. “He only showed up in Risemboul a couple of weeks ago, and shocked everyone. Well, except Granny Pinako. She seemed to be expecting him. She said he was late.”
“I was,” Hohenheim nodded agreeably. “It took me a couple of years to recover from that last battle. I would have given you some time to settle down and get used to the new way of things, anyway, before I came back. But once I recovered,” he shrugged, “oh, I just felt like wandering for a while. Seeing if there were any effects of Father’s work that had gone farther than the borders of Amestris. I didn’t want to leave any leftovers simmering any longer than I already had.” He smiled at Ed. “I would have come back eventually. I always will.”
“Well, you sure could have warned me,” Alphonse muttered. “Instead of shocking me and Mei at breakfast this morning.”
Ed grinned over his shoulder at his brother. “Sorry. But I couldn’t resist. I just had to see your face when you saw him.” Again he turned toward the table. “Is someone going to tell me what you’re all looking at?”
The new arrivals moved closer to the table, so Riza sidled around it, standing between it and the wall. “These are passenger lists and train schedules,” she explained as Ed picked up a few of the sheets and peered at them. “We’re quite sure he didn’t leave the city by some other means, and we’re fairly certain he isn’t still in Central.”
“So he had to have left by train,” Ed nodded, frowning. “But not necessarily on the day everyone thought he was leaving.”
“Exactly.”
“So it’s our job,” Falman put in, “to read every name on the passenger lists to see if we can find him.”
Ed glanced up at the man. “You’re not looking for the name ‘Roy Mustang’, are you? There’s no way he’d have used his real name if he wanted to give everyone the slip.” His quick eyes moved down the top sheet of the sheaf in his hand, and he flipped to the next one.
Fuery snorted. “We’re not stupid, Ed. I think we’ll go through systematically and try to eliminate unlikely names first. People listed as children. Mothers. Fathers traveling with families. That sort of thing.”
Al looked over Ed’s shoulder at the page his brother was currently reading and mused, “That takes care of names he wouldn’t be using. But I wonder if there’s a way to guess the sorts of names he would use.”
“Like trying to guess how he might have disguised himself?” Breda asked. “I don’t know. He’s pretty creative. That would leave the door wide open for all sorts of names.”
“Well,” Falman put in, “I doubt he’d have chosen something too outlandish. He’d have to know we’d spot that too.”
Al nodded. “That’s true. But still, I wonder…” He glanced across the table at Riza. “Even a couple of days before he left, he was still checking up on me. That shows that he wasn’t leaving because he didn’t care about me – or the rest of you – any more. It shows he does still care, a lot.”
“So why did he leave, then?” Fuery blurted, and then lowered his eyes, his cheeks stained with a light colour.
“I don’t know,” Al murmured, patting the other man’s shoulder. “But we’ll find out when we find him. Because we will find him,” the young man added, a most Elric-like glint in his grey eyes. Again he peered at the page, and then leaned an arm over Ed’s shoulder, pointing at a name. “I think that’s the sort of name we’re looking for, don’t you?”
Ed read slowly, “’R. Hughes’? You think he’d use Maes Hughes’s name?”
“No, silly. I think he’d use the kind of name that means something important to him. Like the name of one of his friends.”
“In fact,” Hohenheim said quietly, “he’ll go farther than that, if he didn’t really want to leave everyone behind. And everything I know about the man leads me to suspect he didn’t. So he won’t just use a familiar name. He’ll use a name that comforts him.”
In the end, they didn’t all just take a binder home and read it that way, as Riza had first intended. Ed wanted to get down to business almost as soon as he’d arrived, and she herself was beginning to feel the same urgency. So she sent Breda and Falman out to find a few more chairs and maybe a couple of small folding tables, and then began to organize which people would get which binders.
“We’ll look for the names first,” she decided. “Everyone make a list of any they find that look interesting. We’ll compare those to the train destinations and the stops along the route.”
“And what if we don’t find anything that way?” Fuery wondered gloomily.
“Then we’ll start over with the train routes and destinations themselves,” Riza said.
“I get it,” Havoc nodded. “Try to figure out the sorts of places he might choose to go.” He shook his head. “That one will be tougher, I think.”
“Maybe not,” Hohenheim remarked. “I also suspect he’ll have chosen a destination that’s significant to him.”
“Another sort of ‘comfort’ thing?” Fuery asked.
“Something like that.”
“But I don’t get it,” Ed said. “I mean, the idiot had everything he’d ever worked for. Why would he need ‘comfort’ in the first place?”
“Commander Mustang had just stepped down from everything he’d worked for,” Hohenheim reminded him. “In one real sense, he had lost it all.”
“So wouldn’t that be a reason to stick close to his friends? I just don’t get it,” Ed shook his head.
Riza handed a folding table to him and arranged a couple of chairs while he set it up. “How are Winry and the baby?” she asked quietly.
“Oh, they’re great,” Ed smiled. He opened up the table and set it down, pressing on it to make sure it was stable. “Winry wanted to come with us, but she thought Trish would be too fussy. She’s teething right now, you know. And she lets us know when she’s not happy.”
“Sounds like an Elric to me,” Riza returned his smile.
Once the extra tables and chairs had been arranged, everyone settled down to scan their assigned lists. Riza sat behind her desk, with Havoc pulled up to it on the other side. Breda and Falman shoved some of the route/destination binders to one side of the round table in the corner, and spread their own papers over it. Ed had one of the smaller tables, where Hohenheim joined him, mostly for support, since he wasn’t as familiar with names that might mean something to Roy. And Al shared the other smaller table with Fuery.
Alphonse disappeared for a few minutes right at the beginning, but the explanation was soon apparent. He walked back into the office carrying a tray with a big pot of coffee and some cups. And behind him came an assistant from down the hall, another pot and two hot plates on her own tray. They plugged in the hot plates and set the pots on them, and the assistant left with the tray.
“I thought,” Al smiled as he began to pour, “that we’d need something to help us stay awake with all these lists.”
“Or I could go around and pinch everyone,” Ed volunteered.
“I’ll take the coffee, thanks anyway, Ed,” Havoc grinned over his shoulder at him.
Once they were all caffeinated, they really buckled down. For a long time, silence fell in the office as several pairs of eyes scanned the lists of passenger names. Now and then, a chair squeaked as someone shifted position, or the sound of a pen scribbling on paper would intrude into the hush.
At one point, Breda murmured, “You just don’t realize how busy the Central train station is until you have to do this.”
“I know what you mean,” Havoc nodded. “It’s quite a hub.”
“If this were Risemboul,” Ed quipped, “it would have taken us five minutes to read the list.”
After an hour or so, Al got up and went around the room with one of the coffee pots, refilling everyone’s cups. And an hour after that, Mei arrived with two couriers from the Xingian quarter, bringing lunch for everyone.
“I called her when I went to get coffee,” he grinned as everyone exclaimed with pleasure. “I was pretty sure this would take us well past lunch.” He leaned over and planted a kiss on his girlfriend’s forehead.
As Breda and Falman moved the binders onto the floor, the couriers opened up their packages of food and placed them on the round table.
Mei produced several plates and handfuls of cutlery from a cloth bag she carried over her arm, and Alphonse began to distribute them. “I ordered food you would all like,” the Xingian girl assured the others.
“No chicken feet, then?” Al grinned at her.
Her eyes sparkled as she laughed. “No chicken feet,” she said.
Riza slid her chair sideways to make room for Fuery to eat, since he’d given his own spot to Mei. The girl was as good as her word, and had ordered only foods that would be familiar to the Amestrian palate. Not that any of them were unfamiliar with the foods of other nations, and especially Xingian food. For Mustang’s group, at least, there had been more than one occasion when they’d spent time wandering through the Xingian quarter, gathering information for various reasons. But eating the more well-known dishes, Riza thought, was somehow comforting.
Comforting. There was that word again. She watched Hohenheim chewing his food absently as he leaned over to read his son’s latest list along with Ed. Not for the first time today, Riza wondered why the man had joined in with this search, given that he’d barely ever had any contact with Roy. It was true that Roy had once spent a great deal of effort to try to find him, but that was over a decade ago, and whatever questions Roy had had would now have been answered.
Maybe Hohenheim just wanted to spend every minute he could with his sons. Given that he’d spent so many years away from them. The man was such a puzzle…
“Done my binder,” Breda said, snapping it shut and setting it aside. “Any more lists to look at?”
As Falman silently pulled a few sheets out of his own binder and handed them over, Riza asked, “Have you found any interesting names so far?”
“Just a couple,” Breda said, “but I don’t think they’re likely to help.” He picked up the paper he’d written them on. “There’s another Hughes, but it’s a ‘G. Hughes,’ and I can’t think of why he’d have used that initial. And there’s Scarbel…but somehow I don’t think he’d have used ‘Scar’ as a nickname.”
“You’re probably right,” Riza said, “but these are all we’ve got so far.” She glanced at her own meager list: Roy Edwards, Jean Black, and R. Faldman. After two hours, these were the only names she had, and she suspected they’d be about as useful as Breda’s.
“Well, here’s something interesting,” Al murmured. He sat with one arm around Mei, who had pulled her chair close, and the other hand holding a loose sheet from his binder. “How many Hawkeyes are there in the country, do you suppose?”
Riza couldn’t even remember standing up. “There are a few,” she managed. “I have a few third cousins…and there are some in the west that seem to be unrelated to me. Why? What – “ she swallowed. “What’s the name?”
Al looked at her for a moment and then back to the sheet. “It’s not a name you hear every day,” he said. “Does ‘Berthold Hawkeye’ mean anything to you?”
Cold. It was so cold, suddenly. And every movement, every breath in the room seemed to have stopped, as all eyes focused on her.
But that was the name. It was the name they’d been looking for all morning.
“Berthold Hawkeye,” Riza said, her voice slowly fading from her own hearing, “was my father. Roy’s…teacher…”
And Fuery leapt to his feet just in time to catch her as she fell.
(Continue to Chapter 3)
Chapter 2
Roy leaned back in his chair and surveyed the remains of his bowl of stew on the table. Most people who travelled in higher social circles had no idea that some of the best meals they would ever eat could be found in these small country inns. Never mind the posh restaurants – people in smaller places like this really knew how to cook, and most of their ingredients had been on the trees, in the ground, or in the barns no more than a couple of days ago. Nothing equaled good home cooking, with local foods.
He took another sip of his mug of ale and surveyed the rest of the clientele. They were pretty much as he expected: mostly farmers, a few local merchants, and a couple of others whose professions were not immediately visible. Only two women at the tables, probably having supper with their farmer husbands. And three women and two men serving the tables and going back and forth with trays of drink and food.
The walls were punctuated by heavy wooden posts at perhaps five-foot intervals, so that even though the walls themselves were painted white, the posts and the low, heavily beamed ceiling made the atmosphere rather dim and cozy. Off in a corner, someone had sat down and started to play piano. A couple of people had begun to sing along. As Roy well knew, soon the dinner atmosphere would turn to the more energetic singing and drinking typical of later evening. Which meant…
He drained the last of his ale and stood up, tossing some extra coins onto the table for the server; he’d already paid for his food and drink. The server, leaning against the long counter of the bar across the room, took note of his action and offered a smile and nod. Roy returned both, and walked out into the main lobby of the inn.
He paused in front of the sign-in desk, glancing between the stairs to his second-floor room and the double doors leading to the street. It might be a bit too early to head off to bed, whatever the atmosphere in the tavern suggested. He walked to the door and stepped out onto the broad porch that fronted the little inn.
It had rained last night, but the day had warmed up nicely, letting the new leaf buds on the trees and the flowers just beginning to open get a nice burst of refreshment. They had responded today by seeming to grow to twice the size they’d been in the morning. Roy had been so busy, the past few years, that he’d rarely had time to notice such things. But he’d been doing a lot of watching as he travelled.
The inn stood at one end of the main street of the town – or, actually, more of a village. A few stores stood on the other side of the street, with the inn owner’s house to one side of the inn and a flower shop on the other side. Roy had been here two days, just looking around, sometimes strolling through the streets and greeting people he met, and other times walking to the outskirts and doing some exploring. He’d spent a little time today wandering through the stalls of the farmer’s market at the other end of the main street, gathering a few supplies for his next train ride in the morning –
Havoc should have the papers by now.
Roy breathed sharply in as the thought intruded without warning. Yes, Jean would probably have received the deed by now. He’d be well taken care of. All of them would; Roy had made sure of that by putting them in charge of the new department. They believed in what they were doing. They would be happy.
And she – someday maybe she would forgive –
He turned on his heel and headed back in through the double doors. Never mind all that. Everything was behind him now. They were his past. Time to let go of them and head off in another direction, to discover instead the long future that awaited him.
Roy smiled at the person behind the registration desk as he walked toward the stairs, and the young woman called out her goodnight. Maybe he’d read, after all, by the fire in his room. That was what he’d brought some of his books for, after all. And if he had to get up early, maybe it was better to turn in early as well.
He took the steps two at a time. It shouldn’t have surprised him, how vigorous he felt these days, but it still did, despite everything he knew. But never mind that. Just another couple of days of travel and he’d get to where he was going. Whether he’d stay there, as he’d originally planned, was another story. But he’d decide that when he finally arrived.
“Goodnight, Mr. Hawkeye!” the young woman had called to him as he’d passed the desk.
Roy pressed his forehead against the door of his room as he paused with his hand on the doorknob. No, he thought, wearily closing his eyes. She’ll never actually forgive me.
* * * * * * *
Riza bent over the piles of paper partially spread out in front of several other binders of paper on the round table in one corner of her office. Havoc, who was more familiar with their contents than she was, leaned back against the wall beside the table, arms crossed over his chest as he murmured quietly to Breda, who stood at his side. Fuery bent beside Riza, also peering at the papers, and Falman leaned over him, reading the more distant sheets.
“I suppose,” Riza murmured, “that we should each take a binder or two and go over them.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Havoc nodded. “I’ve been reading the first binder for a day and a half, and I’ve only just finished it.”
Passenger lists, schedules, and destination lists, for every train that had left Central in the ten days since Roy Mustang had disappeared. Borrowed from the stationmaster on pain of severe consequences if so much as a single sheet were lost. Riza shook her head at the thought of the task ahead of them. But it seemed to be all they had left, since every other inquiry they’d made in the city had led to nothing but dead ends.
“Very well, Jean,” Riza began, “since you’re more familiar with them, tell us how we should divide – “
And the door burst open with a crash, splitting the doorjamb and banging into the wall behind it. Edward Elric stood in the doorway, positively beaming a smug smile at the occupants of the office.
“Trying to lock people out, are you?” he said, flipping his blond braid back off his right shoulder. “Well, you didn’t take this into account. Can’t keep me out of anywhere I want to be.” He held up his right hand, where a gleam of metal showed between his shirtsleeve and his glove.
Riza straightened. “Actually, I wasn’t trying to keep you out, Edward. I had no idea you were in town.”
“I wasn’t in town,” Ed replied, “until – “
“Until I called him,” Alphonse supplied, his own tawny head appearing around the cracked doorjamb. “Sorry about that, Riza. I thought I could call and tell him, because I didn’t think he’d just decide to show up here.”
“Of course I was going to come,” Ed retorted, stepping into the room. “If Mustang’s in trouble, he might need us to rescue him.”
“Well, that’s the problem, chief,” Havoc said. “We don’t even really know if he’s in trouble.”
“Of course he is, or he’d never have pulled this vanishing act. I know it and you know it. So what are those?” the young man wondered, peering beyond Fuery and Falman to the binders and papers.
But before anyone could reply, a third person walked in behind Alphonse. And this time, all of Mustang’s people were struck dumb. Ed’s and Al’s father, Hohenheim, stood in the doorway, taking in the scene, his blue eyes narrowed in appraisal behind his glasses. “Good morning,” he said. “I hope my son didn’t startle you too much.” He pressed his hands together and then ran one hand along the doorjamb, almost absently melding the wood back together with his alchemy.
Riza swallowed. This whole scene was suddenly careening out of control. “He…well, sir…even if Ed startled us, I think we’re more startled by your being here.”
For a moment, a glint of humour flashed in the man’s eyes. “Oh, you mean because I’m dead? Or was supposed to be? I’m afraid I got better.”
“That’s for sure,” Ed said, raising his eyebrows at his father. “He only showed up in Risemboul a couple of weeks ago, and shocked everyone. Well, except Granny Pinako. She seemed to be expecting him. She said he was late.”
“I was,” Hohenheim nodded agreeably. “It took me a couple of years to recover from that last battle. I would have given you some time to settle down and get used to the new way of things, anyway, before I came back. But once I recovered,” he shrugged, “oh, I just felt like wandering for a while. Seeing if there were any effects of Father’s work that had gone farther than the borders of Amestris. I didn’t want to leave any leftovers simmering any longer than I already had.” He smiled at Ed. “I would have come back eventually. I always will.”
“Well, you sure could have warned me,” Alphonse muttered. “Instead of shocking me and Mei at breakfast this morning.”
Ed grinned over his shoulder at his brother. “Sorry. But I couldn’t resist. I just had to see your face when you saw him.” Again he turned toward the table. “Is someone going to tell me what you’re all looking at?”
The new arrivals moved closer to the table, so Riza sidled around it, standing between it and the wall. “These are passenger lists and train schedules,” she explained as Ed picked up a few of the sheets and peered at them. “We’re quite sure he didn’t leave the city by some other means, and we’re fairly certain he isn’t still in Central.”
“So he had to have left by train,” Ed nodded, frowning. “But not necessarily on the day everyone thought he was leaving.”
“Exactly.”
“So it’s our job,” Falman put in, “to read every name on the passenger lists to see if we can find him.”
Ed glanced up at the man. “You’re not looking for the name ‘Roy Mustang’, are you? There’s no way he’d have used his real name if he wanted to give everyone the slip.” His quick eyes moved down the top sheet of the sheaf in his hand, and he flipped to the next one.
Fuery snorted. “We’re not stupid, Ed. I think we’ll go through systematically and try to eliminate unlikely names first. People listed as children. Mothers. Fathers traveling with families. That sort of thing.”
Al looked over Ed’s shoulder at the page his brother was currently reading and mused, “That takes care of names he wouldn’t be using. But I wonder if there’s a way to guess the sorts of names he would use.”
“Like trying to guess how he might have disguised himself?” Breda asked. “I don’t know. He’s pretty creative. That would leave the door wide open for all sorts of names.”
“Well,” Falman put in, “I doubt he’d have chosen something too outlandish. He’d have to know we’d spot that too.”
Al nodded. “That’s true. But still, I wonder…” He glanced across the table at Riza. “Even a couple of days before he left, he was still checking up on me. That shows that he wasn’t leaving because he didn’t care about me – or the rest of you – any more. It shows he does still care, a lot.”
“So why did he leave, then?” Fuery blurted, and then lowered his eyes, his cheeks stained with a light colour.
“I don’t know,” Al murmured, patting the other man’s shoulder. “But we’ll find out when we find him. Because we will find him,” the young man added, a most Elric-like glint in his grey eyes. Again he peered at the page, and then leaned an arm over Ed’s shoulder, pointing at a name. “I think that’s the sort of name we’re looking for, don’t you?”
Ed read slowly, “’R. Hughes’? You think he’d use Maes Hughes’s name?”
“No, silly. I think he’d use the kind of name that means something important to him. Like the name of one of his friends.”
“In fact,” Hohenheim said quietly, “he’ll go farther than that, if he didn’t really want to leave everyone behind. And everything I know about the man leads me to suspect he didn’t. So he won’t just use a familiar name. He’ll use a name that comforts him.”
* * * * * * *
In the end, they didn’t all just take a binder home and read it that way, as Riza had first intended. Ed wanted to get down to business almost as soon as he’d arrived, and she herself was beginning to feel the same urgency. So she sent Breda and Falman out to find a few more chairs and maybe a couple of small folding tables, and then began to organize which people would get which binders.
“We’ll look for the names first,” she decided. “Everyone make a list of any they find that look interesting. We’ll compare those to the train destinations and the stops along the route.”
“And what if we don’t find anything that way?” Fuery wondered gloomily.
“Then we’ll start over with the train routes and destinations themselves,” Riza said.
“I get it,” Havoc nodded. “Try to figure out the sorts of places he might choose to go.” He shook his head. “That one will be tougher, I think.”
“Maybe not,” Hohenheim remarked. “I also suspect he’ll have chosen a destination that’s significant to him.”
“Another sort of ‘comfort’ thing?” Fuery asked.
“Something like that.”
“But I don’t get it,” Ed said. “I mean, the idiot had everything he’d ever worked for. Why would he need ‘comfort’ in the first place?”
“Commander Mustang had just stepped down from everything he’d worked for,” Hohenheim reminded him. “In one real sense, he had lost it all.”
“So wouldn’t that be a reason to stick close to his friends? I just don’t get it,” Ed shook his head.
Riza handed a folding table to him and arranged a couple of chairs while he set it up. “How are Winry and the baby?” she asked quietly.
“Oh, they’re great,” Ed smiled. He opened up the table and set it down, pressing on it to make sure it was stable. “Winry wanted to come with us, but she thought Trish would be too fussy. She’s teething right now, you know. And she lets us know when she’s not happy.”
“Sounds like an Elric to me,” Riza returned his smile.
Once the extra tables and chairs had been arranged, everyone settled down to scan their assigned lists. Riza sat behind her desk, with Havoc pulled up to it on the other side. Breda and Falman shoved some of the route/destination binders to one side of the round table in the corner, and spread their own papers over it. Ed had one of the smaller tables, where Hohenheim joined him, mostly for support, since he wasn’t as familiar with names that might mean something to Roy. And Al shared the other smaller table with Fuery.
Alphonse disappeared for a few minutes right at the beginning, but the explanation was soon apparent. He walked back into the office carrying a tray with a big pot of coffee and some cups. And behind him came an assistant from down the hall, another pot and two hot plates on her own tray. They plugged in the hot plates and set the pots on them, and the assistant left with the tray.
“I thought,” Al smiled as he began to pour, “that we’d need something to help us stay awake with all these lists.”
“Or I could go around and pinch everyone,” Ed volunteered.
“I’ll take the coffee, thanks anyway, Ed,” Havoc grinned over his shoulder at him.
Once they were all caffeinated, they really buckled down. For a long time, silence fell in the office as several pairs of eyes scanned the lists of passenger names. Now and then, a chair squeaked as someone shifted position, or the sound of a pen scribbling on paper would intrude into the hush.
At one point, Breda murmured, “You just don’t realize how busy the Central train station is until you have to do this.”
“I know what you mean,” Havoc nodded. “It’s quite a hub.”
“If this were Risemboul,” Ed quipped, “it would have taken us five minutes to read the list.”
After an hour or so, Al got up and went around the room with one of the coffee pots, refilling everyone’s cups. And an hour after that, Mei arrived with two couriers from the Xingian quarter, bringing lunch for everyone.
“I called her when I went to get coffee,” he grinned as everyone exclaimed with pleasure. “I was pretty sure this would take us well past lunch.” He leaned over and planted a kiss on his girlfriend’s forehead.
As Breda and Falman moved the binders onto the floor, the couriers opened up their packages of food and placed them on the round table.
Mei produced several plates and handfuls of cutlery from a cloth bag she carried over her arm, and Alphonse began to distribute them. “I ordered food you would all like,” the Xingian girl assured the others.
“No chicken feet, then?” Al grinned at her.
Her eyes sparkled as she laughed. “No chicken feet,” she said.
Riza slid her chair sideways to make room for Fuery to eat, since he’d given his own spot to Mei. The girl was as good as her word, and had ordered only foods that would be familiar to the Amestrian palate. Not that any of them were unfamiliar with the foods of other nations, and especially Xingian food. For Mustang’s group, at least, there had been more than one occasion when they’d spent time wandering through the Xingian quarter, gathering information for various reasons. But eating the more well-known dishes, Riza thought, was somehow comforting.
Comforting. There was that word again. She watched Hohenheim chewing his food absently as he leaned over to read his son’s latest list along with Ed. Not for the first time today, Riza wondered why the man had joined in with this search, given that he’d barely ever had any contact with Roy. It was true that Roy had once spent a great deal of effort to try to find him, but that was over a decade ago, and whatever questions Roy had had would now have been answered.
Maybe Hohenheim just wanted to spend every minute he could with his sons. Given that he’d spent so many years away from them. The man was such a puzzle…
“Done my binder,” Breda said, snapping it shut and setting it aside. “Any more lists to look at?”
As Falman silently pulled a few sheets out of his own binder and handed them over, Riza asked, “Have you found any interesting names so far?”
“Just a couple,” Breda said, “but I don’t think they’re likely to help.” He picked up the paper he’d written them on. “There’s another Hughes, but it’s a ‘G. Hughes,’ and I can’t think of why he’d have used that initial. And there’s Scarbel…but somehow I don’t think he’d have used ‘Scar’ as a nickname.”
“You’re probably right,” Riza said, “but these are all we’ve got so far.” She glanced at her own meager list: Roy Edwards, Jean Black, and R. Faldman. After two hours, these were the only names she had, and she suspected they’d be about as useful as Breda’s.
“Well, here’s something interesting,” Al murmured. He sat with one arm around Mei, who had pulled her chair close, and the other hand holding a loose sheet from his binder. “How many Hawkeyes are there in the country, do you suppose?”
Riza couldn’t even remember standing up. “There are a few,” she managed. “I have a few third cousins…and there are some in the west that seem to be unrelated to me. Why? What – “ she swallowed. “What’s the name?”
Al looked at her for a moment and then back to the sheet. “It’s not a name you hear every day,” he said. “Does ‘Berthold Hawkeye’ mean anything to you?”
Cold. It was so cold, suddenly. And every movement, every breath in the room seemed to have stopped, as all eyes focused on her.
But that was the name. It was the name they’d been looking for all morning.
“Berthold Hawkeye,” Riza said, her voice slowly fading from her own hearing, “was my father. Roy’s…teacher…”
And Fuery leapt to his feet just in time to catch her as she fell.
(Continue to Chapter 3)
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Date: 2011-02-06 10:02 pm (UTC)Must hurry on to Chapter 3!