Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Rain ❯ Part Two ( Chapter 2 )

Rain: Part Two

 

A Full Metal Alchemist fanfic by L.A. Mason.

Standard disclaimer applies: No copyright infringement intended. No profit being made or sought.

 

 

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Author's Note: Rain has gotten its first review - thank you, Lyl!

 

This installment is un-beta-ed. Any errors in logic, continuity, or grammar are entirely mine.

 

 

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Nearly a month had passed since the beginning of their strange living arrangement, and in some weird way, Ed had to admit that it was working better than he'd thought it would. The Colonel wasn't half as annoying to be around as he'd expected him to be. Although the irritating man kept reminding Ed that he wasn't a colonel in the Army anymore, while at the same time constantly calling the younger man `Full Metal,' as if he was still a dog of the military.

 

It was infuriating.

 

And, in an odd way, comforting, too.

 

Not that there weren't still some things seriously wrong. It had taken Edward till the third morning to figure out that the disused bedroom that the Colonel had given him was, in fact, Mustang's. And that the reason it was disused was that the older man was in the habit of drinking until he passed out on the old couch in the parlor along towards dawn.

 

That was disturbing.

 

And then there was the kitchen. The kitchen fell into a category all of its own.

 

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Apparently, time in the alternate world ran a bit differently than it did here at home, Ed thought grumpily. It was nearly noon of his first day sleeping in a real bed, even if it was a cramped cot squeezed into a tiny bedroom that doubled as storage, and his internal clock was still insisting that it was too damned early to be up and about. But his appetite had turned ravenous, and he figured he'd better feed his belly before it crawled out and went hunting on its own. Surely, even a bachelor like the Colonel, skinny though he was, would have something edible in his pantry. Ed was hungry enough that even plain bread without butter would be welcome. And coffee. The Colonel practically lived on the stuff, so he was bound to have a pot brewing. The dismal post-war economy on the other side had made coffee a luxury that most of the time Edward couldn't afford.

 

Scratching sleepily at his frazzled hair, the alchemist shambled through the swinging door into the kitchen, and stopped dead. Oh, God in Heaven, what was that stench! Edward gagged, and backed right out into the hall.

 

The older alchemist had mentioned in passing the night before as he'd helped locate linens in a closet that he'd fired the housekeeping service that used to come in on a weekly basis. He'd joked that it was because they never sent a pretty girl to clean, despite his begging, but Edward had suspected that it was more because the Colonel didn't want any intrusions into his self-imposed exile. He recognized some of the symptoms from his own situation. He didn't like having people around to distract him, either.

 

But it hadn't dawned on Edward that no cleaning service meant more than just cobwebs in the corners.

 

Obviously, it did.

 

Eyes narrowed thoughtfully, he stared through the smudged glass of the swinging door. Apparently, judging by the grocer's name on the side of the jumbled boxes visible in the kitchen, Roy had made arrangements to have food dropped off on a regular basis. And, equally apparently, he was in the habit of taking what little he wanted - such as the bottles of alcohol - and leaving the rest to rot. Such heedless waste brought Ed's temper to a simmer, and he had to remind himself that unlike the world where he had lived for two years, Amestior was not subject to the hardships of shortages.

 

His stomach rumbled hungrily, and the young man came to a snap decision. He wanted to eat; therefore, he would clean.

 

By three hours later, Edward was queasily thinking that he would never eat again. Even with a damp handkerchief tied over his nose and mouth, he felt as if his lungs were permanently polluted. The once-empty trash bins in the alley behind the house were now full, and he had separated out a collection of tinned goods that ought to be safe, but his appetite had vanished.

 

And it wasn't entirely due to revulsion over the maggots crawling on salt pork that was turning green, or the bags of nearly liquid, rotten potatoes that had gotten the heave-ho, either. Given that there wasn't a clean dish in the place, he suspected that Roy had been living out of cans, himself, which would account for the lack of meat on the man's bones. No, it had more to do with fact that it represented a life that had given up living. What had happened to drive the arrogant son of a bitch to slow suicide like that?

 

Maybe… he had misjudged the man?

 

The ground floor of the cottage consisted really of only three main rooms: the parlor with its closed sliding door - presumably where the Colonel was holed up; the filthy kitchen with its attached pantry; and a room that was meant to be a dining room but which was devoid of furniture. A narrow hall with an open staircase to the second floor ran from the front entry, between parlor and dining room, ending at the swinging door to the kitchen. Stripping off his grimy shirt, Ed flopped onto the bare floor of the dining room and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.

 

It had never occurred to him before that the sarcastic pain in the ass who had been his commanding officer during his time as a State Certified Alchemist might not be as strong and confident as he had looked. Oh, Lieutenant Hawkeye had assured Edward more than once that the irritating man cared passionately about his subordinates, and the sanctity of life, but that didn't make him mortal and fallible. It was… disturbing, to say the least, to find that Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist, could fall apart.

 

If Roy could fall apart, then what did that say for the rest of the universe?

 

Edward had no delusions left concerning the inevitable triumph of good over evil, or any nonsense like that. That bitch Dante, and her homunculi had held the upper hand for over four hundred years, after all. No, if good won out, it was only through hard work and sacrifice. There was no rule of Equivalent Trade that guaranteed it. But somehow, he had always assumed that Mustang would be there, unchanging and annoying, whenever Edward came back.

 

The matter warranted further study.

 

And study, Edward did. After the binge cleaning of the kitchen, he'd taken it on himself to take charge of cooking. As he'd told Winry once, after one of her more disastrous attempts to bake, food was just alchemy by another name. Although, to be honest, the girl who had been his best friend though his childhood had finally mastered Gracia Hughes' recipe for apple pie, but Edward privately thought that that was more in the way of a tribute to Maas Hughes than representative of a newly discovered talent for cooking. But at any rate, Ed could make basic, nutritious, edible meals. And, when a plate appeared in front of him, the Colonel would eat, solving problem number one.

 

Problem two, which Edward referred to privately as `The Damned Couch,' was less easy to deal with. He might be a lot stronger than the half-starved ex-officer, but he still doubted that he could get the man upstairs to bed if he wasn't capable of walking. And, would it be worth it? He'd taken to slipping into the parlor for books to read while the Colonel was out cold, and even drunk as a skunk, the man still twitched and made tiny, strangled noises at the back of his throat. From personal experience, Edward figured that the nightmares had to be fearsome to get that much of a reaction. Mustang needed sleep as much as he needed to be fed, but how to accomplish it, if drink wasn't sufficient to numb the pain?

 

Talking - even if it regularly devolved into arguments with Ed jumping to his feet at the battered old table, waving his arms furiously - did seem to help. Lately, he'd been seeing real humor lurking behind the former Army officer's opaque black gaze as the ungrateful man would drawl out some insult guaranteed to yank Edward's chain. The Colonel proved to be surprisingly broad in his interests, more so than the Full Metal Alchemist with his admittedly obsessive focus on first the Philosopher's Stone, and later on the puzzle of how to get home through the Gate when he had no alchemical abilities. Roy had enlisted in the military young, but he'd had a good education before that, coming from a respectable manufacturing family.

 

Unfortunately, the man had clamed up after letting that tidbit about his past slip, and nothing that Ed had come across in the jumbled mess of the parlor had provided further clues as to what had become of that family. Mentally, the younger blond made a note to ask his master to check around; Roy's slanted eyes and black hair were characteristic of people from the region around Dublith, after all.

 

But most worrisome of all was that they didn't seem to be making any progress on their joint project. Mustang had helped draft a letter to his master than spoke volumes between the lines - and Edward had to admit that it was a work of art - but after that brief flurry of action, they were stuck on hold until Izumi Cooper could send back a reply.

 

And, then take today. The Colonel had left the house shortly after dawn on one of his infrequent excursions into Central proper, and Edward had been forced to agree to stay behind. It was damned annoying, having to admit that the ex-officer was probably right; there were lots of people who would still be interested in what they could wring out of him, even two years after the revolt that had toppled the Fuhrer and put the Parliament back in control. Edward paced the empty dining room, too frustrated to take advantage of the peace and quiet to exercise more strenuously. Not that Mustang ever complained when he was around that the vacant room had gotten taken over by his house-guest and was being used to burn off some of the excess energy that being cooped up left him with.

 

He could always adjust his automail. Two years without Winry had done wonders for forcing Edward to learn how to care for it himself, but there was a lot of work left to be done. Since returning to a world where alchemy actually functioned, he'd cautiously stretched and modified both metal limbs to better fit the height he'd gained.

 

But, damn it, he didn't really feel like doing that, either.

 

Okay, he was pathetic; he missed the Colonel's presence, and the man had only been gone for half a day.

 

A rumble of thunder from outside distracted the alchemist. The rush of potential energy in the charged air crawled across his skin, and buzzed faintly in the neural connectors that married metal to flesh. Still, it was a welcome sound because it meant a change from the slow, cold rain of waning winter to the rebirth inherent in spring. Automail leeched the heat from his body, making frost bite a very real risk, and that in turn made him cranky. Edward snorted, grinning ruefully as his memory supplied the Colonel's snide comment that summer would generate just as much complaining as the younger man ended up feeling like he could fry an egg on his shoulder.

 

The resounding crash from the vestibule knocked dust from the ceiling and drapes. By the sound of it, the Flame Alchemist was home, and pissed off by either the pervasive wet or by being forced to deal with idiots at the Army's command center. Or both. Edward's grin turned into an evil smirk as he yanked open the dining room door. Mustang in a foul mood was entirely too much fun to bait, and while it had taken a long time to learn his weaknesses, he did have them. It was impossible to keep the glee out of his voice as Edward called “Oy! Colonel! Can you come light a fire for me-- ”

 

The front door was standing wide open, having banged into the wall with sufficient force to crack the long pane of frosted glass. There was no sign of the house's owner.

 

Frowning, Edward closed the door, noting absently that its knob had also put a sizable dent into the plaster wall. It was too small a thing to waste alchemy on, now that he was aware of where the energy required came from, and it would be a nuisance to repair. He opened his mouth, intending to tell Mustang that he could do his own damned fix-it jobs, when a series of thumps and crashes came from the direction of the parlor.

 

What the Hell?

 

The sliding panel that normally closed off the parlor was standing half-open, yellow light from the gas fixture spilling out into the gloomy hall. This time, the sound that issued from the room beyond was that of shattering glass, and an unhappy premonition seized Edward's mind. Something far worse than rain or military idiocy was the matter. Striding across the hall, he hastily shoved the door open the rest of the way, and promptly jumped back as an empty Bourbon bottle came sailing out to smash against the hallway's far wall.

 

The Colonel was systematically stripping the books - and everything else - from the shelves, hurling them onto the floor. He hadn't bothered to take off his familiar black wool great coat. Sodden, it hung from his shoulders creating a dark, wet stain on the carpet as it dripped, adding to the mess and ruining the books that had landed splayed open by the man's feet. As Ed watched, speechless, from the open doorway, the ex-officer snatched up a small wooden box that his efforts had uncovered hidden behind the volumes. A sweep of his arm cleared one end of the table, and the box was opened to reveal an Army-issue pistol.

 

The premonition crystalized in that instant into certainty; Edward didn't know exactly what the man had in mind, but if it involved guns, it couldn't be good. He launched himself into a flying tackle that struck the Colonel just below the waist and sent both of them sprawling across the ruined books.

 

Pound for pound, Edward was sure that he was the stronger of the two, but Mustang had the advantage of reach and leverage. And, he was fast. Roy's elbow clipped the blond's ear, making his head ring, even as he twisted, planting a foot in Ed's stomach and sending him airborne. The smaller man landed badly on the shifting piles of debris, skidding feet-fist into the base of the nearest bookcase. For a second, it seemed as if the wobbling piece of furniture would topple, and Edward scrambled for the shelter of the sturdy table.

 

The delay had been enough for Roy to scrabble after the lost gun, and to find it.

 

Caught on his hands and knees, the smaller alchemist froze. Armed, there was no question that the experienced soldier had the upper hand. Mustang might not fight unarmed with the elegance and efficiency that Edward's master employed, but at that range and with a gun in his hands, he was undoubtedly lethal. The question was, what did the bastard intend to do?

 

The man seemed to have completely forgotten their brief battle, absorbed in staring at the dull black steel in his trembling hands. Water dripped from the hem of his coat, and was ignored, as his lips compressed so tightly that they were nearly as white as his face, and the papers spilled around them.

 

Grown long and shaggy with neglect, the Colonel's soaked hair trailed like spilled India ink into his surviving eye and down his cheeks, but it failed to conceal the anguished twist of pain. Slowly, he turned the gun about and pressed the muzzle into the soft flesh where chin and throat met.

 

Edward didn't think. He gave a hysterical screech of protest and launched himself, clapping his palms together as he leapt. His outstretched hands closed onto the pistol's barrel just as the Colonel's index finger tightened on the trigger.

 

The resulting explosion flung the two of them apart in a hail of tiny metal needles, and threw the smaller alchemist painfully into the edge of the table, rocking the heavy thing onto two legs. Edward had a jumbled impression of Mustang sliding in a tangle down the wall next to the door, pieces of a broken glass shade following him as the lamp blew out.

 

Except for rustle of settling paper, there was silence.

 

Shakily, Edward exhaled, and winced. The damned table had left an aching bruise across the small of his back, and it throbbed in counter-point to the burn of the myriad scratches that extended up his flesh and blood arm, across his chest, and up his neck. He was lucky that none of the splinters had struck him in the eye.

 

It had been a spectacularly stupid way to deal with live ammunition, so he supposed he ought to be grateful that the explosion hadn't been worse. Groaning, the blond staggered upright, books slithering out from under his bare foot. The crunch of glass under the metal one warned him to step carefully as he made his way toward the fireplace to light the pair of gas jets mounted on either side.

 

As the gray, rainy light gave way to the warm glow of the burning gas, Edward limped cautiously back to the Colonel. There was a smear of blood above him on the yellow wall paper, garishly bright, but the man seemed uninjured beyond that bump on the back of his head, the heavy wool coat having taken the brunt of the needle-fine shrapnel. Which unfortunately made the coat itself as much fun to handle as a hedgehog. Cautiously, Ed eased the wet fabric back from the unconscious man's shoulders, cursing as it pricked at his non-metal fingers. Tugging at it finally convinced the coat to give way, and as it did so, a rolled-up newspaper slipped from the inside pocket. Limp with damp, it flopped open on the floor.

 

Edward stared in shock at a well-remembered, craggy countenance. The image lacked color, or course, but he knew that the eyes were a vivid shade of blue, and the familiar curling lock of hair that hung down was the same pale blond as the luxuriant moustache.

 

Armstrong.

 

And there, immediately beneath, was the headline that explained everything: “Hero of Ishbal Slain Defending Garrison.”

 

Edward sat down hard on the carpet beside his former commander. Commander…? No wonder the Colonel had tried to kiss his gun, or eat it, or whatever the military term for committing suicide was. Mustang had shouldered the guilt for the entire revolt that had ended the Fuhrer's reign, and Ed knew that he blamed himself for involving the Major in it. Never mind that the Major had been just as adamant that another Ishvarian Atrocity should never be allowed to occur, being who and what he was, Roy had taken the blame for everything that had gone wrong. Since he was now powerless to alter the circumstances that could lead to a repeat of Ishbal, it ate away at him like a cancer.

 

But even if his assumptions were right - and Edward was sure that they were, they gave him the same tight tickle to the stomach feeling as figuring out a complex equation did - what was he to do with the man? Sure, he had managed to destroy a firearm without killing either of them, but it had been a close call. Next time, he might not be so lucky. And, if he didn't find a way to fix what was wrong with the Colonel, there most certainly would be a `next time.'

 

Well, first things first. While being unconscious had relieved the tight frown that drew down the Flame Alchemist's brows, it did nothing for the rest of him, which was freezing in a wet civilian suit. It looked as if it was up to Ed to clean the place up, and to take care of the suicidal idiot, both. He gave a long-suffering sigh and began the laborious task of dragging the Colonel over to the decrepit couch.

 

Once he had the taller man arranged more or less to his liking on the cushions, Edward threw an old blanket over him and slid down to sit on the floor. He ought to clean up the broken glass and the torn books. Hell, he ought to light a fire and drive the dank chill from the room, but discouraged, he stared at the scattered mess. After a long moment, he remarked conversationally, “You know, Colonel, this isn't how I imagined things working out… you know…” He waved a hand vaguely at the house, and at the world beyond. “I guess I always thought that I'd be there when Al got his body back, not stuck in some weird alternate dimension. And you… I thought I'd get to see you parading around looking smug as the new Fuhrer.” A grimace crossed his face, aging it. “I sure as Hell never figured I'd be trying to keep you form killing yourself. So… what went wrong? Sir?”

 

There was no reply, not that he'd really expected one, and Edward continued, “Maybe that's the problem? We're too much alike, with me shouting and you being a prick… Although, I'm trying really hard to keep it under control now. It's funny, but I actually did learn something from my father: people can be more than just what you see on the surface. And I guess you're one of them. I never thought I'd say it, but I admire you. You had a goal to work toward, too, and in a lot of ways, stopping the killing and the wars was a more noble one than mine and Al's. Ours only benefited us, while yours was for the good of everyone…” His voice died away, and Edward scrubbed fiercely at his eyes, surprised to feel his chest get tight and painful. Maybe it didn't need to be said out loud, but he did it anyway. “Well… I suppose it's my turn now. Since Al doesn't need me anymore, and you do, I'm staying.”

 

Staying…

 

Snickering, Edward pushed himself pack onto his feet and set to work picking up the nearest books. Wasn't the Colonel in for a surprise when he woke up, and found that his houseguest had become permanent. It would almost be worth it just to see the man's face, even if the smaller alchemist hadn't already discovered a comfortable feeling of warmth, deep inside, just from the idea of finally having a home again… and someone to come home to.

 

 

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To be continued