Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Committee's Findings ❯ V ( Chapter 5 )

Authorial note: Before proceeding I would request that the reader does not jump to conclusions because this particular chapter is written in script format. Fanfiction.net does prohibit script-stories; I acknowledge that. However, I respectfully hold contention that this 1) limits creative device and 2) does not apply to stories told in sections with some brief parts in script format, I would hope that the reader understands this and does not report the story for using fictitious hearing transcripts as narrative device.

 

On a totally unrelated note, I apologize in advance for any discrepancies between reality (or potential reality) and what I have written here. I envisioned that when power was returned to the military under Mustang he would, rather than keep the existing system, create a quasi-parliament of military officers. Therefore it seemed fitting to model the dialogue off of parliamentary proceedings instead of any other form of communication.

 

(20 December 1937)

Stenographer's notes, General Hearing on the Twentieth of December.

 

MUSTANG: Assembly will come to order.

Incoherent talking

MUSTANG: Assembly will come to order.

HAVOC :Oh come on, Roy, lay back some

MUSTANG: Come. To. Order.

HAVOC: Ehh. Relax will ya? AH! What the hell was that?

MUSTANG: That was me throwing a gavel at you. Are we at order now? Good.

FURY: I don't think that the gavel thing is in procedure…

MUSTANG: Then don't take so long coming to order next time.

FURY: Yes, sir.

MUSTANG: First item on the agenda, “a resolution to ration luxury items and begin a peacetime draft to strengthen defense.” Supporters of the resolution have fifteen minutes to present a speaker to argue for their proposal.

Silence

MUSTANG: Signers, please present a representative to argue for the bill.

MUSTANG: Does this bill have any supporters? It must have one for someone to write it up.

Silence

MUSTANG: Very well then, per procedure the bill is discarded. Next item on the agenda, committee's findings on the explosion at the West Central Orphanage.

FURY: Fuehrer, the findings of the committee are inconclusive as minimal evidence was found for the cause of the explosion, one orphan is still missing, other than the possibility that that orphan was killed there have been no fatalities. No explosive material was found in the area in the investigation nor is there reason to believe explosive material was present at the time of the incident

MUSTANG: You mean to tell me that there was an explosion without any cause?

FURY: No, sir.

MUSTANG: Then explain to me what happened.

FURY: Sir, it is the tentative conclusion of the committee that the fire and resulting damage to the orphanage was the result of a failed human transmutation.

Incoherent muttering.

MUSTANG: Order. Assembly will come to order.

HAVOC: Will Mr. Fury yield the floor for a question?

FURY: Fuehrer, I yield five minutes to Mr. Havoc for a question.

MUSTANG: Assembly recognizes Mr. Havoc for five minutes.

HAVOC: Mr. Fury, does the committee know the person he or she was trying to transmute? Or who performed the transmutation? I yield back the balance of my time.

MUSTANG: Mr. Havoc returns the balance of his time to Mr. Fury

FURY: No, sir. The committee, I should re-emphasize, is not even certain a human transmutation took place. Who was involved is a complete mystery. The committee has no further details right now. I yield back the balance of my time.

MUSTANG: Does Mr. Fury have an estimate on how much longer the investigation could take before it's able to make any useful conclusions?

FURY: No, Fuehrer.

MUSTANG: Perfect. Just perfect. Assembly will adjourn and reconvene at a date to be set later and assembly members will be informed of that date when the selection is made.

Talking

 

Mustang stayed behind after the assembly adjourned. He pulled Fury aside, the younger man quaked in fear. He had a feeling that his report on the assembly floor had cost him his job. Mustang spoke first. “You didn't say everything up there on the podium, did you?” Fury shook his head.

“No, sir.” Mustang nodded,

“Then tell me what you left out.”

“The girl gone missing is Maes Hughes' daughter.”

“Holy shit.” Mustang closed his eyes and his brow wrinkled with cares and his lips turned down and the muscles keeping his back straight loosened and he rather visibly sagged and everything, absolutely everything, about him betrayed his fatigue.

“Shit,” he repeated.

“I'll get the wine and whatever. It's going to be a long night. A long, long night.”
“Hurry, will ya? I think I need a drink already.”

“I don't promise it won't be empty by the time I get back.”

“Then bring two. Or four, just bring as much as you can carry, Riza will want some, too.”

Fury sighed, “yes, sir.”

 

-----Elysia hadn't spoken to Winry or Riza for the past five months and she had only spoken to Ed when he was teaching her alchemy. It was some surprise, then, when one night at the dinner table, she burst out in a rage without, so far as anyone could tell, a particular stimulus.

“When are you going to fucking tell me?”

“Huh?” Ed didn't get it.

“It's been one hundred forty two days, and you still haven't told me.”
“Told you what?”

“That my Mom was dead,” she held out a small newspaper article she apparently had clipped out some time ago and had carried with her since. Ed didn't say a word.

“Why?”

Silence still.

“No response? I'll ask again. Why?”

Ed pursed his lips together into a frown. He avoided making eye contact as he spoke “we weren't sure how.”

Elysia stopped, repulsed, “you didn't know how?”

“We didn't know how,” Ed confirmed, head hanging.

`You could have just

 

 

said it.”

 

“H-How?” Winry.

“Your mom is dead. Like that.”

“B-but.”

“I've lived in an orphanage, I can take care of myself- so stop hiding things from me just because you don't think I can take it.” Elysia walked out of the room, no less angry, but quieter about it.

The table was mute for a moment, and then Winry began to sob. “Dammit, Ed, we're not good at this.”

Ed stood for a moment before relocating himself closer to girl, holding her hand.

Winry looked up and squeezed the boy's hand back. He smiled.

“No, we aren't good at this, but we're also new at it. We'll get it in time, I know we will.” They sat there for a time, hand in hand, finally facing the magnitude of their undertaking, their decision to be parents. It was as if they had tripped upon a stone, only to look up and see a mountain before them, a mountain they needed to climb. In that moment, they stood staring in awe at the mountain and, trusting only in themselves and in one another, grabbed a small crevice in the rock's face, beginning to climb.

Riza, now a next door neighbor, walked in. She saw the couple, whether they knew they were one or not, and hesitated. But it couldn't be helped.

“Ed,” she said. He looked up. “We're being called back to active duty, we report to headquarters tomorrow.”

And then the sandstone they had held as granite but a few moments ago crumbled in their hands and they fell. Winry sobbed once more; Ed's arms instinctively wrapped around her. He nodded to Riza before turning his attention back to Winry.

“C'mon, let's get some sleep.” He half-dragged the still crying Winry to her bed. His bed was across the hall, turning to go to it he found his movement arrested by a hand clinging to his automail arm. Looking at her, he understood perfectly.

Don't leave me, not until you have to.

Ed nodded and lay down next to her. Everything was so chaotic, nothing was constant, nothing, human flesh grabbed engineered steel and flesh and steel, holding eachother through the night, slept.