kashiwrites (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kashiwrites) wrote2010-11-20 05:10 pm
kashiwrites) wrote2010-11-20 05:10 pm
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NaNoWriMo - FMA - A Mere Lifetime - Chapter 4
(Continued from Chapter 3)
Olivia Armstrong was as good as her word. As soon as Riza had taken the surprising call from Pinako Rockbell in Risemboul, she had sent Breda and Falman rushing through the halls of the building, hoping to catch the General on her way out. Being the inquisitive person she was, she hadn’t gone that far, and immediately returned to Riza’s office, commandeering her phone.
Olivia had pulled a high-speed express train – coincidentally, the one Roy Mustang himself had used on official trips around the country during the past five years – and had gotten them on their way by evening, radioing ahead to be sure that all tracks they’d need would be entirely clear of traffic as they passed through. Far from the usual three days to Risemboul, it would take them just over a day and a half.
Ed had burst out in irritation after Pinako’s call, “What? You mean he’s near Risemboul, and we didn’t even have to come here? We only just got off the train coming from there. What a bastard!”
“But at least you’ll be traveling in luxury going back,” Al had grinned, before starting to make phone calls to his medical professors about the sudden need to miss classes.
“You don’t need to come with us, Alphonse,” Riza had begun, but he shook his head firmly.
“Sorry, Riza, but I’m definitely going. Something tells me this has something to do with alchemy, meaning he’ll need someone around who has the skills to handle him if necessary.”
“So I’m going too,” Mei announced. “If Al-sama goes, I go.”
“Actually,” Hohenheim put in, “I don’t think either of you boys needs to be there. Or you, Mei, though I appreciate your devotion to my son. But I think I’ll be quite sufficient to handle Mustang on my own – “
And then he’d broken off in the face of Al’s flat stare. There was that Elric nature again, peeking out from under the young man’s normally mild attitude. So Hohenheim finally shrugged and smiled at Riza. “That makes this a family affair, I guess.”
It only took a few hours to get ready, but Riza begrudged every minute. Pinako had admitted that it was possible she was mistaken, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t. She’d heard a description of the newcomer from a friend who had watched him quite closely in the town market on two successive days, and it matched the former Commander to a tee. And then there were those boxes everyone had heard about, that shipped from Central and had needed to be delivered from the Risemboul train station to the village beyond the hills.
“That’s where the books went, then,” Havoc had said. “I noticed a lot of empty spaces in the library in his house the other day.”
Given all the indications, Riza agreed with Pinako that the person she would meet tomorrow was very likely Roy Mustang. But it was only when she was about half through the preparations she needed to make that she suddenly realized she should have asked Pinako not to do something foolish. “What if she decides to go and see him?” Riza fretted. “She wouldn’t do that, would she?”
Three almost identical male expressions of evasion almost cast her into despair. “She can’t do that. You know he’s likely just to leave the area again as soon as Pinako leaves. It will ruin everything if he gets suspicious that we’re coming.” She stared at the phone, currently in use by Havoc, as he arranged for someone to take over his own work for a few days, or maybe even weeks.
She was on the verge of deciding to interrupt him and grabbing the phone to call Risemboul again, but Ed tried to reassure her. “Look, Riza, even if he does try to run away, how far can he get with the whole county watching him? We’ll know where he is, and we’ll just follow him if he runs.”
“And anyway,” Al added in that reasonable way of his, “at least General Armstrong cleared the tracks between Central and Risemboul. That means he’s got even fewer options. He won’t be able to take the train until we get there. So even if he tries to go somewhere, he won’t be able to go far. Even if he finds a horse, we’ll be less than a day behind him.”
“And we know the territory way better than he does,” Ed added, as he and his brother smiled at each other, eyes sparkling.
So Riza had kept on getting ready, instead of calling Pinako back. And finally, here they were at last, in a three-car luxury express train, hurtling through the dark night, heading toward Risemboul. Breda, Falman, and Fuery had had to be left behind to run the new department while she and Havoc were gone. They had all wanted to come too – of course they did – but she just couldn’t risk losing momentum as they set up the department. They understood the necessity, even if they weren’t very happy about it. Instead, Lieutenant-Colonel Armstrong had come along. He was there partly as reinforcement of his sister’s authority in case they ran into difficulties, but also as another alchemist who might help deal with other types of problems.
Hohenheim, Edward, Alphonse, and Mei made up the rest of the contingent. Hohenheim, Armstrong, and Havoc had gone to bed about an hour ago, in the berths in the third train car, beyond the dining car that rode in the middle. Riza would soon be heading that direction herself. But she needed the chance to let her mind slow down, or she’d only lie in her berth all night, worrying about what awaited her – them – at the end of the trip.
Sleep shouldn’t have been a problem; after all, she’d learned how to catch sleep whenever she needed to, even in the midst of the battles of Ishbal. But this…somehow, this was different. This was more…important. So she suspected that she probably wouldn’t sleep no matter what she did, but at least she had to try.
A couple of seats up, and across the aisle from Riza, Alphonse and Mei sat on facing seats, playing some sort of alchemy game on the tray table they had lowered between them. Each of them had pulled a block of material out of a satchel they carried with them, and they were taking turns turning the material into toys. As Riza turned from her fruitless survey of the dark scene outside her window, she saw Ed leaning over the back of his brother’s seat. Both of them watched Al clap his hands, creating a little black and white panda bear. Mei drew a little circle on the table with chalk, miniature versions of her signature knives landing on strategic spots along the circle, and into being sprang a winged horse.
“Very good,” Al murmured, clapping again. The panda changed shape under his hands, and immediately became a long, sinuous shape something like a snake. The face had a wide, gaping mouth with fangs, but somehow it looked simply wrong. Especially when Mei burst out laughing.
“Al-sama, that’s not a good dragon. Not at all.”
“I keep trying to get the dragon’s head right,” the young man muttered, “but it never works.” He picked the figure up and peered at the face, which really did look more like some kind of bulldog than a dragon. He looked across at Mei, and the two of them collapsed into giggles.
Ed watched for a moment before he abruptly pulled away and got up, walking toward the front end of the car. He stopped at an open space between seats, leaning a hand against the window glass and peering into the darkness. Riza hardly realized she was going to follow him until she’d passed the still-giggling young people and was halfway up the aisle.
As she stopped to look out the window beside Ed, she murmured softly, “You really miss it, don’t you? Having alchemy.”
Ed tried to shrug nonchalantly, but he wasn’t convincing. He glanced past her toward his brother and answered quietly, “Yeah, I do miss it. It gets hard to watch. I’m not sorry I gave it up, because that’s the reason Al is over there, having such a good time. That’s worth…anything.” He turned back toward the window, and whether he was staring outside or looking at his own reflection, it was hard to tell.
“But it’s still hard to live without.”
He nodded. “For my whole life, growing up, it was the one thing I wanted more than anything in the world – except getting Al’s body back. I’ve tried sometimes to relearn it, you know.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“Yeah. I mean, for most alchemists, the power isn’t inside them – it’s in the arrays. So I should be able to relearn to do alchemy by drawing arrays. Sometimes I feel a kind of tickle, like I might be on the verge of getting it to reactivate. But so far, I haven’t been able to make the arrays work. Not really.”
“I’m very sorry, Edward.” Riza set a hand on his shoulder.
His reflection smiled at her. “I’m really not complaining, even if that’s hard to believe. I love living with Winry, and Trish is the best thing that’s happened to both of us. But…,” his eyes once again strayed past her toward his brother, “it’s still better that Al lives in Central now, and not with us at Risemboul. Even though I love him, sometimes it’s just easier to bear a loss, if you can be away from what you’ve lost and don’t always have it parading in front of you.”
Riza gasped and stared at him, her heart skipping. His head turned toward her as he frowned. “What? Riza? Are you all right?”
She couldn’t answer. But she watched the same thought strike him that had struck her, as their eyes met. His own eyes widened. “I see,” he said with a thoughtful nod. And again he turned to stare out the window, into the darkness. “So what is it, exactly, that he thinks he’s lost, that makes him have to get away from it?”
* * * * * * *
“What the hell are you doing here?” Roy burst out, more stridently than he intended.
“Funny, I was about to ask you the same question,” retorted the diminutive woman across the garden. “What is the great Commander Mustang doing holed up in a place like this, in a backwater of Amestris? When he should be living in luxury in the center of the country.”
Winry turned her head and planted a light kiss on her daughter’s forehead, bouncing her a little as the baby played with a bright curl of her hair. But the young woman’s curious eyes watched Roy to see what his answer would be.
He turned and leaned back against the fence, setting his hands on either side of his hips to steady himself. He took a deep breath, trying to calm the pounding of his heart. He was proud that he managed to respond with a bit more control this time. “I’m not ‘Commander Mustang’ any more,” he said. “I’ve stepped down.”
“Yes, yes, I know that,” Pinako gave an impatient wave as she swept his comment aside. “Everybody knows that. What I’m asking is what you’re doing here.”
“Nothing. I mean – I just wanted some peace and quiet for a while. I’ve earned it, don’t you think? But never mind that. What I want to know, myself, is how on earth you even knew I was here.”
The woman took a deep drag of her pipe and let the smoke out in little puffs, like foggy laughter. “Young man, I can see it’s been a long time since you’ve lived in a rural area. If someone new moves into an area like this – especially someone from a big city – we’re all going to know eventually. Risemboul is just a few miles down the road, you know, and we do talk to each other. It’s not like the news isn’t going to travel. And before you ask – those boxes were obviously shipped from Central. So you weren’t just new, you were from the hub of everything. And when I heard the Commander himself had gone missing from Central, well, I just had a hunch. Which I decided to check out.”
“We’re sorry to bother you, Commander,” Winry put in. “I wasn’t as sure as Granny Pinako, but we just had to find out. And anyway,” the girl smiled, “she’s right. It’s news. We enjoy finding out when something unusual is happening.”
Roy pinched the bridge of his nose. So. He hadn’t gotten away as unobtrusively as he’d hoped. It seemed he should never have come so close to Risemboul, after all, and he really should have guessed from the start that it could be a problem. What had he been thinking?
“Well,” he muttered, lowering his hand. “Now you know. But I’d appreciate if you don’t tell anybody that it’s me, or even that I’m here. It’s pretty important. And…I don’t want to be rude, but…I don’t really want any visitors.”
“Like hell,” Pinako snorted. “I could tell how lonely you are the minute I laid eyes on you. I’ve already started the kettle on your stove, and set out the cups. You can come and join us for coffee, or not. Come on, Winry.”
She turned and marched up the porch steps and through the back door. Winry cast Roy an apologetic smile, but said nothing, following her grandmother into the house.
Roy leaned for another moment on the fence, wondering what to do. Then he sighed and shrugged in resignation. What the heck. He might as well enjoy their company, this once. He hadn’t even had a chance to see Ed’s little girl yet. And anyway, he had some damage control to do. He had to be absolutely sure, before they left, that they weren’t going to reveal his whereabouts.
Because if he couldn’t do that, it would be time to pack the suitcase again, much sooner than he’d expected.
He pushed off from the fence and walked around the garden, into the house. Winry sat on a kitchen chair by the window looking out into the yard, bouncing the baby on her knee near a table already set with cups, spoons, and containers of cream and sugar. Pinako stood by the stove, waiting for the kettle to boil, with the warmed teapot wrapped in a tea towel, ready for the boiling water.
“You didn’t waste much time taking over my kitchen,” Roy remarked from the doorway.
Pinako replied without looking back at him, “I didn’t think you were likely to be a good host. But at least you’ve got a well-stocked larder and icebox.”
“I may be living like a hermit these days,” he retorted, “but that doesn’t mean I have to eat poorly. The market down the hill has great produce, and I know what to do with it when I get it back here.”
The woman half-turned toward him, casting a curious glance. “I never took you for a cook.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Mrs. Rockbell.”
“Oh, stop with that. My name is Pinako, and I certainly plan to call you Roy.”
“Granny, stop being rude,” Winry said, absently, as though out of habit. The baby made a sound, like a noise of protest, and her mother pulled a hard, black rubber ring out of her skirt pocket and gave it to her daughter to chew. The ring looked like some kind of washer or gasket.
Roy wrestled down a chuckle at this evidence that motherhood hadn’t changed Winry’s basic interests. He reminded himself that he was supposed to be angry that they’d come. And yet – it really was good to talk to people he knew again –
Stop that.
“Right,” he said crisply, stepping further into the kitchen. “You’re supposed to be telling me why you’re bothering me. And why you won’t go away.”
Winry threw him a narrow-eyed frown, and he had the impression she was about to tell him to stop being rude, too. But he didn’t care. They were the ones who had just barged in and made themselves at home in his house. And he was already having enough trouble learning to live without the people from his past. These unexpected visitors were not helping at all.
“Oh, I just decided,” Pinako said, turning her attention back to the kettle as it started to whistle, “that if you’d run away all this distance, there was probably something wrong. So we came to check what it was.”
“There’s nothing wrong at all – here, let me get that,” Roy blurted, walking to the stove and grabbing the kettle before the woman could grab it. The hot, steaming thing sat at about shoulder height for her, as did the teapot on the counter.
“I’ve been maneuvering my way around my own kitchen for years, Roy Mustang,” Pinako grumbled, “and I’ve never burned myself yet.”
“Well…hardly ever,” Winry murmured from the table.
“Maybe so,” he said, “but if you’re insisting that I masquerade as host, then I’m bloody well going to make sure none of my guests suffer accidents in my house. Go sit down.” He poured boiling water over the spoonful of dark leaves inside the pot, then set the kettle back on the stove and brought the pot, still wrapped in its towel, over to the table. Pinako had already taken her chair, so he sat opposite her. “Now,” he said. “What do I have to do to satisfy you that everything’s fine? And to convince you not to tell anyone I’m here?”
The woman stared mildly at him through her round glasses, puffing on her pipe. “I’d be ready to believe everything was fine,” she said, “if you weren’t so determined to keep anyone from knowing you’re here.”
“But what’s the matter with that?” Roy insisted, spreading his hands in frustration. “I’ve spent years and years of my life in the public eye – State Alchemist – ‘hero of the Ishbal Rebellion’ – rebel against the Fuhrer – Commander of Amestris – when all I ever really wanted, when I started out, was to study my alchemy and do a little good, here and there. I’ve made up for the past as best I could, and tried to set my country on a good footing. Now it’s my time to retreat for a while. Maybe all that turmoil just wore me out, did you think of that? How can it be so wrong to want some peace and quiet now, and some time to take up my studies again?”
“That makes sense to me – ” Winry put in.
“Thank you.”
“ – except that if it was just that, you’d have told all your friends about your plan. You know they’d have let you have time alone if you just asked for it. But you did everything in secret, and left without telling them you were going. And you don’t want them – or us – to find you. So I’m afraid Granny’s right, Commander – there’s more going on than you’re letting on.”
“Listen, I’m not the Commander any more,” he growled. “I’m not anyone. I’m just Roy now – if I’m even that.” He leaned an elbow on the table and absently massaged his forehead, brushing back and forth past the thick fringe of his hair. “I just want to be left alone.”
Winry held Trish sitting against her stomach with one hand while clutching the handle of the teapot and shaking it a little, with the other.
“Winry, just leave it to steep naturally,” Pinako cautioned.
“You know I hate just sitting and waiting for tea to be ready,” the girl said.
The baby dropped her rubber teething toy and Roy bent to pick it up. He held it out to the child. “Here you go,” he smiled.
Young Trish examined his face for a moment with a pair of wide golden eyes that were almost an exact replica of her father’s. Curls of gold framed her face, and two brand new teeth came into view as she grinned and snatched the toy from his hand, her eyes glittering with pleasure at her own boldness. Oh yes. This was an Elric child, there was no doubt about that.
“She likes you,” Winry smiled. “She doesn’t always take to people this quickly.”
Roy held out a finger. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Tricia Elric.”
The baby stuck the rubber toy into her mouth and held it there with one hand, reaching slowly out to touch his forefinger and then curl her own little fingers around it. She had a strong grip, for a creature so small. One day she’d be wielding a wrench just like her mother.
Deep glowing eyes and a halo of golden hair…
Her baby would have looked like that…an angel of gold.
Roy snatched his hand away with a little gasp, and shoved back his chair, almost overturning it in his haste to leap to his feet. He stumbled toward the back door, pausing only long enough to gasp, “I’m sorry – I just – I can’t do this. Please – take your time and enjoy your tea, but I just can’t join you. And – and if you care what I want at all –please go home, and forget you ever saw me here.”
Then he staggered across the porch and down the steps, arms hugged tightly over the pain in his chest as he lurched back around the garden plot toward the fence and its eastward view. He hoped with his whole heart and soul that neither of them followed him out here. Because he simply couldn’t bear them to see him weeping.
* * * * * * *
Riza watched the dark liquid in her coffee cup jiggling with the motion of the train, before turning her gaze toward the landscape streaming past the window beside her table. They were in the midst of farmland at the moment, though there wasn’t much to see except for newly-plowed ground. Seeds had just been planted and were only beginning to sprout, so the view lacked the tall, swaying fields of grain that one usually thought of when imagining a farming area.
She had been the first person to enter the dining car, and had taken a table at the far end so she could sit alone for a while and gather her thoughts for the day. Around mid-afternoon, they’d finally arrive at Risemboul, where Pinako and Winry would meet them. And then all that would remain would be the wagon ride down the road, crossing the hills that separated them from Roy, and hopefully confronting him at home.
He might not want to give them any answers. In fact, if he had run away like this, he most assuredly wouldn’t want to. But Riza didn’t care any longer. His actions had been so hurtful and insulting to all of them – and, if she’d let herself admit it, even moreso to her – that she was determined to get the answers from him by whatever means necessary. She wasn’t letting him get away with this. All the hopes she’d had, all the assumptions she’d made after all the years they had devoted to so many important causes – oh no. She wasn’t letting him run away and abandon her without explaining why.
A movement out of the corner of her eye signaled that someone had come to join her, and she looked up to see Hohenheim settling into the seat across the table. “I hope you don’t mind?” he asked. “If you’d rather be alone, I’ll pick another table.”
“No, I think I’m ready for company now,” she smiled. She glanced over her shoulder at the waiter, who nodded and began to wheel the breakfast cart toward them. And behind the waiter came Havoc, who took the chair beside Hohenheim.
“This is perfect timing,” Havoc said as the waiter began to set out steaming platters of bacon and sausages, breakfast rolls, fruit, and toast.
The waiter, a tall, lean man who rather resembled Falman except with black hair, told them, “I have a plate of fried eggs and a bowl of scrambled eggs. There is also porridge, if you’d prefer that. And the cook is making waffles and pancakes as well, if you’d rather wait for them.”
“Wait?” Havoc snorted. “I think I’ll have one of everything.”
Once they had all chosen what they wanted, the waiter left to attend to Armstrong, Mei, and the Elric brothers, who had all now emerged for breakfast as well. Hawkeye asked her companions, as she took a forkful of scrambled eggs, “Did you both sleep well?” She hesitated, looking at Hohenheim, her fork halfway to her mouth. “Do you even…need to sleep? I just wondered, after the things you said to General Armstrong.”
“Oh yes, I still need sleep,” the man chuckled, pouring himself some orange juice. “In fact, I can get quite cranky when I haven’t had enough.” Adding, with the amused lift of an eyebrow, “Ed didn’t get that from Tricia, I can assure you.”
“Well,” Havoc remarked after swallowing his bacon, “one thing that’ll never happen is having us making you cranky by calling you short.” He glanced toward the other table, to find Ed glaring over at him. The young man might not have been able to hear the whole conversation, but he still had an uncanny knack for hearing the word “short” at great distances.
Hawkeye watched the exchange in amusement, before turning back to Hohenheim. “So everything works normally for you? Except that you just keep on living?”
“I might quibble at the word ‘just’,” the man replied, “but yes, that’s pretty much how it works.” He leaned back in his chair, looking out the window and thoughtfully smoothing down his beard. “It took some getting used to, as you can imagine.”
Havoc spread some marmalade on a slice of toast. “Not meaning to be disrespectful or anything, but…I don’t know how you managed to stay so sane through it all. It has to be hard, being the only person who doesn’t change while everyone around you does.”
Hohenheim nodded. “As I said…it took some getting used to. But I had a purpose, remember. I knew Father was out there somewhere, plotting something. If I managed to detect some of his work, I set out to stop it. When I couldn’t find him, I had a lot of looking to do. And sometimes I could settle for a while and just do some ordinary living.”
Riza had curious questions of her own that she had no intention of asking, but it was Havoc who blurted out one of the big ones: “Did you have other families, then? Did you have other kids beside Ed and Al? Big brothers or sisters who lived two hundred years ago?”
Hohenheim poured cream into his coffee and stirred it slowly. “No,” he said at last. “I had a few brief liaisons, you might say, but didn’t feel I could settle that much, for all sorts of reasons. It was Tricia who persuaded me otherwise. And then I got news of the homunculi, and other signs that Father’s secret plans were finally culminating, so I had to leave her. I thought that was only temporary, and that we’d have many years together after Father was defeated.” He shrugged with a regretful smile. “But an illness took her that never would have taken me. And we didn’t get those years after all.”
“So would you do it again,” Riza asked quietly, “if you knew beforehand how it might turn out?”
The man took a sip of coffee, his light brown eyes fixed intently on her face over the rim of the cup. He set it down carefully and said, “I was always going to lose her in one way or another. So I did know beforehand. And yes – for her, I would do it again.”
A silence descended between them as the table’s occupants fell into private thoughts for a while. But after a few moments, Ed left his place at the other table and pulled up a chair at theirs. And, of course, immediately began to help himself to some of the breakfast fixings that still remained on the plates in the center of the table.
“So,” he said, “what’s the plan when we finally get to Mustang?”
“I know what I want to do,” Havoc answered cheerfully. “I may just march up to him and give him a good punch in the face. Or else I’ll rip up the deed to his house and throw the bits in his face.”
“I’d like to see that,” Ed grinned, waving a crisp strip of bacon in the air for emphasis.
“Well, I brought the paper with me, just in case.”
“Oh Jean, you didn’t,” Riza chided.
“Why not?” The man’s smile darkened. “After the way he’s treated us? And treated you, worst of all? For one thing, if anyone deserves to own that house, it’s you, after all these years.”
Her throat tightened and she looked out the window. “I never wanted his house.”
“I know. But I didn’t need it, just because I got injured a few years back. You’ve given up so many years to him, and then he treats you like dirt – I want to punch him for that, more than anything.”
“There’s no need for that. I can stick up for myself perfectly well.”
“So I’m asking again,” Ed interjected. “What are you going to do when you see him? Aside from Havoc slugging him.”
She gave a little shrug, her eyes still fixed on the newly sewn fields streaking past the window. “I have no idea,” she said faintly.
“If I might make a suggestion,” Hohenheim said quietly, “maybe I can talk to him first.”
“You?” Ed raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Why you? You don’t even really know him.”
The man’s eyes flickered to his son and back to Riza as she turned to look at him. “That’s partly why,” he said. “He might not feel so caged in, if the first person he talks to is a virtual stranger. He might be willing to be reasonable, and to listen.”
“’Caged in’,” Havoc repeated incredulously. “Why would he feel that way? After we’ve all been so close all this time, and supported each other – why would his biggest wish suddenly be to get as far away from us as he can get? I just don’t understand.”
“That’s why I want to talk to him,” Hohenheim said.
“Well, I’m sorry,” Ed blurted, “but this isn’t really your concern, even if you did come with me to Central and back. This is about all of us,” again he waved the bacon, at their table and back toward the one where Al, Mei, and Armstrong sat. “All of us who’ve been with him for years. We’re the ones he’s stabbing in the back, as though everything we’ve done for him all these years never mattered. It’s nice that you want to help, but this is really about us, and not you.”
“And,” Hohenheim said, dabbing his mouth with a linen napkin, “it’s about alchemy.”
Riza glanced instinctively at Ed, in time to see him lower a stricken gaze to his plate as he fell silent.
She asked the man, “What makes you think this has something to do with alchemy?”
“I think so because of all the reasons both Ed and Jean have given for why he wouldn’t abandon you. If there’s something big enough to make him walk away from these friendships he’s relied on for so long and so many years – then it’s related to alchemy. And it must be something very big. And that,” Hohenheim added, folding his napkin neatly and setting it on his plate, “is why I need to be there. Stranger or not. Now please excuse me, I need to say good morning to the others.”
Riza’s head turned to follow his steps to the other table. It all sounded so plausible. Some large alchemy problem really might be enough to force Roy to walk away from them. Yet he hadn’t done anything like this, even when they’d realized they were fighting not just a human Fuhrer, but a group of homunculi and a vastly powerful force behind them. So it didn’t quite add up, despite how plausible it sounded. And even if something big was going on, alchemically, they had Alphonse with them, and he had become almost as powerful as his father. So in theory, he and Alex Armstrong should be enough to handle whatever was coming.
Yet Hohenheim insisted that he particularly had to be there. Riza entirely didn’t buy his story, that Roy would be more likely to talk to someone he wasn’t close to. So there must be another reason Hohenheim wanted to talk to him.
She wanted very much to know what it was. And she was more afraid than she could possibly express of finding out the answer.
* * * * * * *
Riza watched the joyous reunion, Ed leaping out of the train car before it had entirely stopped at the Risemboul station. He flung himself forward, to meet Winry and the baby in a wild swirl of embracing arms, golden hair flying and mingling as he kissed them both and pressed their foreheads together. It was probably the happiest thing Riza had seen in years. And it made her heart ache, as she thought of her own impending reunion with a man who she’d thought…
A firm arm slid around her shoulders. “We’ll straighten him out, Riza,” Jean murmured at her side, his own eyes taking in the little family contained in their own joy just a few feet away.
But Riza’s heartache turned to trepidation and fear as Pinako came forward, revealing that yes, she and Winry had gone to visit the stranger in the morning, the day before yesterday, to discover that he was indeed Roy Mustang, the missing ex-Commander of Amestris, now attempting to live in some sort of obscurity. Yet all the while, appearing to be desperately lonely and unhappy.
That did it. There was nothing to do now but to find transportation and take the road through the hills immediately, in the hope that Roy had not immediately packed and left as soon as his visitors were gone. All of them, including Winry and the baby, agreed that they would go right now, in the Rockbell wagon. The half hour drive felt like three days to Riza as she sat, still encircled by Jean’s arm, her hands clenched on her lap and her heart clenched in fear.
And then there was the despair as they found the door unlocked, and its occupant gone. Riza stood in the kitchen, tears streaming down her cheeks as she stared at the teapot and cups he hadn’t even washed before he’d left.
(Continued in Chapter 5)
Olivia Armstrong was as good as her word. As soon as Riza had taken the surprising call from Pinako Rockbell in Risemboul, she had sent Breda and Falman rushing through the halls of the building, hoping to catch the General on her way out. Being the inquisitive person she was, she hadn’t gone that far, and immediately returned to Riza’s office, commandeering her phone.
Olivia had pulled a high-speed express train – coincidentally, the one Roy Mustang himself had used on official trips around the country during the past five years – and had gotten them on their way by evening, radioing ahead to be sure that all tracks they’d need would be entirely clear of traffic as they passed through. Far from the usual three days to Risemboul, it would take them just over a day and a half.
Ed had burst out in irritation after Pinako’s call, “What? You mean he’s near Risemboul, and we didn’t even have to come here? We only just got off the train coming from there. What a bastard!”
“But at least you’ll be traveling in luxury going back,” Al had grinned, before starting to make phone calls to his medical professors about the sudden need to miss classes.
“You don’t need to come with us, Alphonse,” Riza had begun, but he shook his head firmly.
“Sorry, Riza, but I’m definitely going. Something tells me this has something to do with alchemy, meaning he’ll need someone around who has the skills to handle him if necessary.”
“So I’m going too,” Mei announced. “If Al-sama goes, I go.”
“Actually,” Hohenheim put in, “I don’t think either of you boys needs to be there. Or you, Mei, though I appreciate your devotion to my son. But I think I’ll be quite sufficient to handle Mustang on my own – “
And then he’d broken off in the face of Al’s flat stare. There was that Elric nature again, peeking out from under the young man’s normally mild attitude. So Hohenheim finally shrugged and smiled at Riza. “That makes this a family affair, I guess.”
It only took a few hours to get ready, but Riza begrudged every minute. Pinako had admitted that it was possible she was mistaken, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t. She’d heard a description of the newcomer from a friend who had watched him quite closely in the town market on two successive days, and it matched the former Commander to a tee. And then there were those boxes everyone had heard about, that shipped from Central and had needed to be delivered from the Risemboul train station to the village beyond the hills.
“That’s where the books went, then,” Havoc had said. “I noticed a lot of empty spaces in the library in his house the other day.”
Given all the indications, Riza agreed with Pinako that the person she would meet tomorrow was very likely Roy Mustang. But it was only when she was about half through the preparations she needed to make that she suddenly realized she should have asked Pinako not to do something foolish. “What if she decides to go and see him?” Riza fretted. “She wouldn’t do that, would she?”
Three almost identical male expressions of evasion almost cast her into despair. “She can’t do that. You know he’s likely just to leave the area again as soon as Pinako leaves. It will ruin everything if he gets suspicious that we’re coming.” She stared at the phone, currently in use by Havoc, as he arranged for someone to take over his own work for a few days, or maybe even weeks.
She was on the verge of deciding to interrupt him and grabbing the phone to call Risemboul again, but Ed tried to reassure her. “Look, Riza, even if he does try to run away, how far can he get with the whole county watching him? We’ll know where he is, and we’ll just follow him if he runs.”
“And anyway,” Al added in that reasonable way of his, “at least General Armstrong cleared the tracks between Central and Risemboul. That means he’s got even fewer options. He won’t be able to take the train until we get there. So even if he tries to go somewhere, he won’t be able to go far. Even if he finds a horse, we’ll be less than a day behind him.”
“And we know the territory way better than he does,” Ed added, as he and his brother smiled at each other, eyes sparkling.
So Riza had kept on getting ready, instead of calling Pinako back. And finally, here they were at last, in a three-car luxury express train, hurtling through the dark night, heading toward Risemboul. Breda, Falman, and Fuery had had to be left behind to run the new department while she and Havoc were gone. They had all wanted to come too – of course they did – but she just couldn’t risk losing momentum as they set up the department. They understood the necessity, even if they weren’t very happy about it. Instead, Lieutenant-Colonel Armstrong had come along. He was there partly as reinforcement of his sister’s authority in case they ran into difficulties, but also as another alchemist who might help deal with other types of problems.
Hohenheim, Edward, Alphonse, and Mei made up the rest of the contingent. Hohenheim, Armstrong, and Havoc had gone to bed about an hour ago, in the berths in the third train car, beyond the dining car that rode in the middle. Riza would soon be heading that direction herself. But she needed the chance to let her mind slow down, or she’d only lie in her berth all night, worrying about what awaited her – them – at the end of the trip.
Sleep shouldn’t have been a problem; after all, she’d learned how to catch sleep whenever she needed to, even in the midst of the battles of Ishbal. But this…somehow, this was different. This was more…important. So she suspected that she probably wouldn’t sleep no matter what she did, but at least she had to try.
A couple of seats up, and across the aisle from Riza, Alphonse and Mei sat on facing seats, playing some sort of alchemy game on the tray table they had lowered between them. Each of them had pulled a block of material out of a satchel they carried with them, and they were taking turns turning the material into toys. As Riza turned from her fruitless survey of the dark scene outside her window, she saw Ed leaning over the back of his brother’s seat. Both of them watched Al clap his hands, creating a little black and white panda bear. Mei drew a little circle on the table with chalk, miniature versions of her signature knives landing on strategic spots along the circle, and into being sprang a winged horse.
“Very good,” Al murmured, clapping again. The panda changed shape under his hands, and immediately became a long, sinuous shape something like a snake. The face had a wide, gaping mouth with fangs, but somehow it looked simply wrong. Especially when Mei burst out laughing.
“Al-sama, that’s not a good dragon. Not at all.”
“I keep trying to get the dragon’s head right,” the young man muttered, “but it never works.” He picked the figure up and peered at the face, which really did look more like some kind of bulldog than a dragon. He looked across at Mei, and the two of them collapsed into giggles.
Ed watched for a moment before he abruptly pulled away and got up, walking toward the front end of the car. He stopped at an open space between seats, leaning a hand against the window glass and peering into the darkness. Riza hardly realized she was going to follow him until she’d passed the still-giggling young people and was halfway up the aisle.
As she stopped to look out the window beside Ed, she murmured softly, “You really miss it, don’t you? Having alchemy.”
Ed tried to shrug nonchalantly, but he wasn’t convincing. He glanced past her toward his brother and answered quietly, “Yeah, I do miss it. It gets hard to watch. I’m not sorry I gave it up, because that’s the reason Al is over there, having such a good time. That’s worth…anything.” He turned back toward the window, and whether he was staring outside or looking at his own reflection, it was hard to tell.
“But it’s still hard to live without.”
He nodded. “For my whole life, growing up, it was the one thing I wanted more than anything in the world – except getting Al’s body back. I’ve tried sometimes to relearn it, you know.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“Yeah. I mean, for most alchemists, the power isn’t inside them – it’s in the arrays. So I should be able to relearn to do alchemy by drawing arrays. Sometimes I feel a kind of tickle, like I might be on the verge of getting it to reactivate. But so far, I haven’t been able to make the arrays work. Not really.”
“I’m very sorry, Edward.” Riza set a hand on his shoulder.
His reflection smiled at her. “I’m really not complaining, even if that’s hard to believe. I love living with Winry, and Trish is the best thing that’s happened to both of us. But…,” his eyes once again strayed past her toward his brother, “it’s still better that Al lives in Central now, and not with us at Risemboul. Even though I love him, sometimes it’s just easier to bear a loss, if you can be away from what you’ve lost and don’t always have it parading in front of you.”
Riza gasped and stared at him, her heart skipping. His head turned toward her as he frowned. “What? Riza? Are you all right?”
She couldn’t answer. But she watched the same thought strike him that had struck her, as their eyes met. His own eyes widened. “I see,” he said with a thoughtful nod. And again he turned to stare out the window, into the darkness. “So what is it, exactly, that he thinks he’s lost, that makes him have to get away from it?”
* * * * * * *
“What the hell are you doing here?” Roy burst out, more stridently than he intended.
“Funny, I was about to ask you the same question,” retorted the diminutive woman across the garden. “What is the great Commander Mustang doing holed up in a place like this, in a backwater of Amestris? When he should be living in luxury in the center of the country.”
Winry turned her head and planted a light kiss on her daughter’s forehead, bouncing her a little as the baby played with a bright curl of her hair. But the young woman’s curious eyes watched Roy to see what his answer would be.
He turned and leaned back against the fence, setting his hands on either side of his hips to steady himself. He took a deep breath, trying to calm the pounding of his heart. He was proud that he managed to respond with a bit more control this time. “I’m not ‘Commander Mustang’ any more,” he said. “I’ve stepped down.”
“Yes, yes, I know that,” Pinako gave an impatient wave as she swept his comment aside. “Everybody knows that. What I’m asking is what you’re doing here.”
“Nothing. I mean – I just wanted some peace and quiet for a while. I’ve earned it, don’t you think? But never mind that. What I want to know, myself, is how on earth you even knew I was here.”
The woman took a deep drag of her pipe and let the smoke out in little puffs, like foggy laughter. “Young man, I can see it’s been a long time since you’ve lived in a rural area. If someone new moves into an area like this – especially someone from a big city – we’re all going to know eventually. Risemboul is just a few miles down the road, you know, and we do talk to each other. It’s not like the news isn’t going to travel. And before you ask – those boxes were obviously shipped from Central. So you weren’t just new, you were from the hub of everything. And when I heard the Commander himself had gone missing from Central, well, I just had a hunch. Which I decided to check out.”
“We’re sorry to bother you, Commander,” Winry put in. “I wasn’t as sure as Granny Pinako, but we just had to find out. And anyway,” the girl smiled, “she’s right. It’s news. We enjoy finding out when something unusual is happening.”
Roy pinched the bridge of his nose. So. He hadn’t gotten away as unobtrusively as he’d hoped. It seemed he should never have come so close to Risemboul, after all, and he really should have guessed from the start that it could be a problem. What had he been thinking?
“Well,” he muttered, lowering his hand. “Now you know. But I’d appreciate if you don’t tell anybody that it’s me, or even that I’m here. It’s pretty important. And…I don’t want to be rude, but…I don’t really want any visitors.”
“Like hell,” Pinako snorted. “I could tell how lonely you are the minute I laid eyes on you. I’ve already started the kettle on your stove, and set out the cups. You can come and join us for coffee, or not. Come on, Winry.”
She turned and marched up the porch steps and through the back door. Winry cast Roy an apologetic smile, but said nothing, following her grandmother into the house.
Roy leaned for another moment on the fence, wondering what to do. Then he sighed and shrugged in resignation. What the heck. He might as well enjoy their company, this once. He hadn’t even had a chance to see Ed’s little girl yet. And anyway, he had some damage control to do. He had to be absolutely sure, before they left, that they weren’t going to reveal his whereabouts.
Because if he couldn’t do that, it would be time to pack the suitcase again, much sooner than he’d expected.
He pushed off from the fence and walked around the garden, into the house. Winry sat on a kitchen chair by the window looking out into the yard, bouncing the baby on her knee near a table already set with cups, spoons, and containers of cream and sugar. Pinako stood by the stove, waiting for the kettle to boil, with the warmed teapot wrapped in a tea towel, ready for the boiling water.
“You didn’t waste much time taking over my kitchen,” Roy remarked from the doorway.
Pinako replied without looking back at him, “I didn’t think you were likely to be a good host. But at least you’ve got a well-stocked larder and icebox.”
“I may be living like a hermit these days,” he retorted, “but that doesn’t mean I have to eat poorly. The market down the hill has great produce, and I know what to do with it when I get it back here.”
The woman half-turned toward him, casting a curious glance. “I never took you for a cook.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Mrs. Rockbell.”
“Oh, stop with that. My name is Pinako, and I certainly plan to call you Roy.”
“Granny, stop being rude,” Winry said, absently, as though out of habit. The baby made a sound, like a noise of protest, and her mother pulled a hard, black rubber ring out of her skirt pocket and gave it to her daughter to chew. The ring looked like some kind of washer or gasket.
Roy wrestled down a chuckle at this evidence that motherhood hadn’t changed Winry’s basic interests. He reminded himself that he was supposed to be angry that they’d come. And yet – it really was good to talk to people he knew again –
Stop that.
“Right,” he said crisply, stepping further into the kitchen. “You’re supposed to be telling me why you’re bothering me. And why you won’t go away.”
Winry threw him a narrow-eyed frown, and he had the impression she was about to tell him to stop being rude, too. But he didn’t care. They were the ones who had just barged in and made themselves at home in his house. And he was already having enough trouble learning to live without the people from his past. These unexpected visitors were not helping at all.
“Oh, I just decided,” Pinako said, turning her attention back to the kettle as it started to whistle, “that if you’d run away all this distance, there was probably something wrong. So we came to check what it was.”
“There’s nothing wrong at all – here, let me get that,” Roy blurted, walking to the stove and grabbing the kettle before the woman could grab it. The hot, steaming thing sat at about shoulder height for her, as did the teapot on the counter.
“I’ve been maneuvering my way around my own kitchen for years, Roy Mustang,” Pinako grumbled, “and I’ve never burned myself yet.”
“Well…hardly ever,” Winry murmured from the table.
“Maybe so,” he said, “but if you’re insisting that I masquerade as host, then I’m bloody well going to make sure none of my guests suffer accidents in my house. Go sit down.” He poured boiling water over the spoonful of dark leaves inside the pot, then set the kettle back on the stove and brought the pot, still wrapped in its towel, over to the table. Pinako had already taken her chair, so he sat opposite her. “Now,” he said. “What do I have to do to satisfy you that everything’s fine? And to convince you not to tell anyone I’m here?”
The woman stared mildly at him through her round glasses, puffing on her pipe. “I’d be ready to believe everything was fine,” she said, “if you weren’t so determined to keep anyone from knowing you’re here.”
“But what’s the matter with that?” Roy insisted, spreading his hands in frustration. “I’ve spent years and years of my life in the public eye – State Alchemist – ‘hero of the Ishbal Rebellion’ – rebel against the Fuhrer – Commander of Amestris – when all I ever really wanted, when I started out, was to study my alchemy and do a little good, here and there. I’ve made up for the past as best I could, and tried to set my country on a good footing. Now it’s my time to retreat for a while. Maybe all that turmoil just wore me out, did you think of that? How can it be so wrong to want some peace and quiet now, and some time to take up my studies again?”
“That makes sense to me – ” Winry put in.
“Thank you.”
“ – except that if it was just that, you’d have told all your friends about your plan. You know they’d have let you have time alone if you just asked for it. But you did everything in secret, and left without telling them you were going. And you don’t want them – or us – to find you. So I’m afraid Granny’s right, Commander – there’s more going on than you’re letting on.”
“Listen, I’m not the Commander any more,” he growled. “I’m not anyone. I’m just Roy now – if I’m even that.” He leaned an elbow on the table and absently massaged his forehead, brushing back and forth past the thick fringe of his hair. “I just want to be left alone.”
Winry held Trish sitting against her stomach with one hand while clutching the handle of the teapot and shaking it a little, with the other.
“Winry, just leave it to steep naturally,” Pinako cautioned.
“You know I hate just sitting and waiting for tea to be ready,” the girl said.
The baby dropped her rubber teething toy and Roy bent to pick it up. He held it out to the child. “Here you go,” he smiled.
Young Trish examined his face for a moment with a pair of wide golden eyes that were almost an exact replica of her father’s. Curls of gold framed her face, and two brand new teeth came into view as she grinned and snatched the toy from his hand, her eyes glittering with pleasure at her own boldness. Oh yes. This was an Elric child, there was no doubt about that.
“She likes you,” Winry smiled. “She doesn’t always take to people this quickly.”
Roy held out a finger. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Tricia Elric.”
The baby stuck the rubber toy into her mouth and held it there with one hand, reaching slowly out to touch his forefinger and then curl her own little fingers around it. She had a strong grip, for a creature so small. One day she’d be wielding a wrench just like her mother.
Deep glowing eyes and a halo of golden hair…
Her baby would have looked like that…an angel of gold.
Roy snatched his hand away with a little gasp, and shoved back his chair, almost overturning it in his haste to leap to his feet. He stumbled toward the back door, pausing only long enough to gasp, “I’m sorry – I just – I can’t do this. Please – take your time and enjoy your tea, but I just can’t join you. And – and if you care what I want at all –please go home, and forget you ever saw me here.”
Then he staggered across the porch and down the steps, arms hugged tightly over the pain in his chest as he lurched back around the garden plot toward the fence and its eastward view. He hoped with his whole heart and soul that neither of them followed him out here. Because he simply couldn’t bear them to see him weeping.
* * * * * * *
Riza watched the dark liquid in her coffee cup jiggling with the motion of the train, before turning her gaze toward the landscape streaming past the window beside her table. They were in the midst of farmland at the moment, though there wasn’t much to see except for newly-plowed ground. Seeds had just been planted and were only beginning to sprout, so the view lacked the tall, swaying fields of grain that one usually thought of when imagining a farming area.
She had been the first person to enter the dining car, and had taken a table at the far end so she could sit alone for a while and gather her thoughts for the day. Around mid-afternoon, they’d finally arrive at Risemboul, where Pinako and Winry would meet them. And then all that would remain would be the wagon ride down the road, crossing the hills that separated them from Roy, and hopefully confronting him at home.
He might not want to give them any answers. In fact, if he had run away like this, he most assuredly wouldn’t want to. But Riza didn’t care any longer. His actions had been so hurtful and insulting to all of them – and, if she’d let herself admit it, even moreso to her – that she was determined to get the answers from him by whatever means necessary. She wasn’t letting him get away with this. All the hopes she’d had, all the assumptions she’d made after all the years they had devoted to so many important causes – oh no. She wasn’t letting him run away and abandon her without explaining why.
A movement out of the corner of her eye signaled that someone had come to join her, and she looked up to see Hohenheim settling into the seat across the table. “I hope you don’t mind?” he asked. “If you’d rather be alone, I’ll pick another table.”
“No, I think I’m ready for company now,” she smiled. She glanced over her shoulder at the waiter, who nodded and began to wheel the breakfast cart toward them. And behind the waiter came Havoc, who took the chair beside Hohenheim.
“This is perfect timing,” Havoc said as the waiter began to set out steaming platters of bacon and sausages, breakfast rolls, fruit, and toast.
The waiter, a tall, lean man who rather resembled Falman except with black hair, told them, “I have a plate of fried eggs and a bowl of scrambled eggs. There is also porridge, if you’d prefer that. And the cook is making waffles and pancakes as well, if you’d rather wait for them.”
“Wait?” Havoc snorted. “I think I’ll have one of everything.”
Once they had all chosen what they wanted, the waiter left to attend to Armstrong, Mei, and the Elric brothers, who had all now emerged for breakfast as well. Hawkeye asked her companions, as she took a forkful of scrambled eggs, “Did you both sleep well?” She hesitated, looking at Hohenheim, her fork halfway to her mouth. “Do you even…need to sleep? I just wondered, after the things you said to General Armstrong.”
“Oh yes, I still need sleep,” the man chuckled, pouring himself some orange juice. “In fact, I can get quite cranky when I haven’t had enough.” Adding, with the amused lift of an eyebrow, “Ed didn’t get that from Tricia, I can assure you.”
“Well,” Havoc remarked after swallowing his bacon, “one thing that’ll never happen is having us making you cranky by calling you short.” He glanced toward the other table, to find Ed glaring over at him. The young man might not have been able to hear the whole conversation, but he still had an uncanny knack for hearing the word “short” at great distances.
Hawkeye watched the exchange in amusement, before turning back to Hohenheim. “So everything works normally for you? Except that you just keep on living?”
“I might quibble at the word ‘just’,” the man replied, “but yes, that’s pretty much how it works.” He leaned back in his chair, looking out the window and thoughtfully smoothing down his beard. “It took some getting used to, as you can imagine.”
Havoc spread some marmalade on a slice of toast. “Not meaning to be disrespectful or anything, but…I don’t know how you managed to stay so sane through it all. It has to be hard, being the only person who doesn’t change while everyone around you does.”
Hohenheim nodded. “As I said…it took some getting used to. But I had a purpose, remember. I knew Father was out there somewhere, plotting something. If I managed to detect some of his work, I set out to stop it. When I couldn’t find him, I had a lot of looking to do. And sometimes I could settle for a while and just do some ordinary living.”
Riza had curious questions of her own that she had no intention of asking, but it was Havoc who blurted out one of the big ones: “Did you have other families, then? Did you have other kids beside Ed and Al? Big brothers or sisters who lived two hundred years ago?”
Hohenheim poured cream into his coffee and stirred it slowly. “No,” he said at last. “I had a few brief liaisons, you might say, but didn’t feel I could settle that much, for all sorts of reasons. It was Tricia who persuaded me otherwise. And then I got news of the homunculi, and other signs that Father’s secret plans were finally culminating, so I had to leave her. I thought that was only temporary, and that we’d have many years together after Father was defeated.” He shrugged with a regretful smile. “But an illness took her that never would have taken me. And we didn’t get those years after all.”
“So would you do it again,” Riza asked quietly, “if you knew beforehand how it might turn out?”
The man took a sip of coffee, his light brown eyes fixed intently on her face over the rim of the cup. He set it down carefully and said, “I was always going to lose her in one way or another. So I did know beforehand. And yes – for her, I would do it again.”
A silence descended between them as the table’s occupants fell into private thoughts for a while. But after a few moments, Ed left his place at the other table and pulled up a chair at theirs. And, of course, immediately began to help himself to some of the breakfast fixings that still remained on the plates in the center of the table.
“So,” he said, “what’s the plan when we finally get to Mustang?”
“I know what I want to do,” Havoc answered cheerfully. “I may just march up to him and give him a good punch in the face. Or else I’ll rip up the deed to his house and throw the bits in his face.”
“I’d like to see that,” Ed grinned, waving a crisp strip of bacon in the air for emphasis.
“Well, I brought the paper with me, just in case.”
“Oh Jean, you didn’t,” Riza chided.
“Why not?” The man’s smile darkened. “After the way he’s treated us? And treated you, worst of all? For one thing, if anyone deserves to own that house, it’s you, after all these years.”
Her throat tightened and she looked out the window. “I never wanted his house.”
“I know. But I didn’t need it, just because I got injured a few years back. You’ve given up so many years to him, and then he treats you like dirt – I want to punch him for that, more than anything.”
“There’s no need for that. I can stick up for myself perfectly well.”
“So I’m asking again,” Ed interjected. “What are you going to do when you see him? Aside from Havoc slugging him.”
She gave a little shrug, her eyes still fixed on the newly sewn fields streaking past the window. “I have no idea,” she said faintly.
“If I might make a suggestion,” Hohenheim said quietly, “maybe I can talk to him first.”
“You?” Ed raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Why you? You don’t even really know him.”
The man’s eyes flickered to his son and back to Riza as she turned to look at him. “That’s partly why,” he said. “He might not feel so caged in, if the first person he talks to is a virtual stranger. He might be willing to be reasonable, and to listen.”
“’Caged in’,” Havoc repeated incredulously. “Why would he feel that way? After we’ve all been so close all this time, and supported each other – why would his biggest wish suddenly be to get as far away from us as he can get? I just don’t understand.”
“That’s why I want to talk to him,” Hohenheim said.
“Well, I’m sorry,” Ed blurted, “but this isn’t really your concern, even if you did come with me to Central and back. This is about all of us,” again he waved the bacon, at their table and back toward the one where Al, Mei, and Armstrong sat. “All of us who’ve been with him for years. We’re the ones he’s stabbing in the back, as though everything we’ve done for him all these years never mattered. It’s nice that you want to help, but this is really about us, and not you.”
“And,” Hohenheim said, dabbing his mouth with a linen napkin, “it’s about alchemy.”
Riza glanced instinctively at Ed, in time to see him lower a stricken gaze to his plate as he fell silent.
She asked the man, “What makes you think this has something to do with alchemy?”
“I think so because of all the reasons both Ed and Jean have given for why he wouldn’t abandon you. If there’s something big enough to make him walk away from these friendships he’s relied on for so long and so many years – then it’s related to alchemy. And it must be something very big. And that,” Hohenheim added, folding his napkin neatly and setting it on his plate, “is why I need to be there. Stranger or not. Now please excuse me, I need to say good morning to the others.”
Riza’s head turned to follow his steps to the other table. It all sounded so plausible. Some large alchemy problem really might be enough to force Roy to walk away from them. Yet he hadn’t done anything like this, even when they’d realized they were fighting not just a human Fuhrer, but a group of homunculi and a vastly powerful force behind them. So it didn’t quite add up, despite how plausible it sounded. And even if something big was going on, alchemically, they had Alphonse with them, and he had become almost as powerful as his father. So in theory, he and Alex Armstrong should be enough to handle whatever was coming.
Yet Hohenheim insisted that he particularly had to be there. Riza entirely didn’t buy his story, that Roy would be more likely to talk to someone he wasn’t close to. So there must be another reason Hohenheim wanted to talk to him.
She wanted very much to know what it was. And she was more afraid than she could possibly express of finding out the answer.
* * * * * * *
Riza watched the joyous reunion, Ed leaping out of the train car before it had entirely stopped at the Risemboul station. He flung himself forward, to meet Winry and the baby in a wild swirl of embracing arms, golden hair flying and mingling as he kissed them both and pressed their foreheads together. It was probably the happiest thing Riza had seen in years. And it made her heart ache, as she thought of her own impending reunion with a man who she’d thought…
A firm arm slid around her shoulders. “We’ll straighten him out, Riza,” Jean murmured at her side, his own eyes taking in the little family contained in their own joy just a few feet away.
But Riza’s heartache turned to trepidation and fear as Pinako came forward, revealing that yes, she and Winry had gone to visit the stranger in the morning, the day before yesterday, to discover that he was indeed Roy Mustang, the missing ex-Commander of Amestris, now attempting to live in some sort of obscurity. Yet all the while, appearing to be desperately lonely and unhappy.
That did it. There was nothing to do now but to find transportation and take the road through the hills immediately, in the hope that Roy had not immediately packed and left as soon as his visitors were gone. All of them, including Winry and the baby, agreed that they would go right now, in the Rockbell wagon. The half hour drive felt like three days to Riza as she sat, still encircled by Jean’s arm, her hands clenched on her lap and her heart clenched in fear.
And then there was the despair as they found the door unlocked, and its occupant gone. Riza stood in the kitchen, tears streaming down her cheeks as she stared at the teapot and cups he hadn’t even washed before he’d left.
(Continued in Chapter 5)