Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Völuspá ❯ the Sixth: men will remember while men live ( Chapter 6 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

The camp was lively with firelight, active with soldiers well after dark, and in a gentle snowfall. Roy could hear the laughter and music right through the closed window. The event was nothing more significant than the belated arrival of the delayed supplies, but since, here, that could easily have been the arrival of life itself, Roy allowed them their celebration on the condition that camp security would not be compromised.

A cool hand touched his shoulder and slid down his arm, wrapping around his wrist under his uniform sleeve. "Come to bed," said Lust.

"I can't." Soldiers moved between the campfires wherever he looked, getting drunk on nothing more potent than their own joy at having chocolate and cigarettes available again; some of them had fiddles and trumpets and put whatever skill they had into the instruments, with their comrades keeping time for them.

The army that Amestris had sent north was vast, and Roy had an obligation to keep as many of them alive as he could. He'd have to start pressing the alchemists into duty. They wouldn't like it, it was boring and repetitive work, but Roy wasn't going to have something like this happen again ... if he had to transmute supplies himself to shame the alchemists into it, he would. He wasn't used to depending on supply lines that were so fragile, but he wouldn't make this same mistake again.

"You're thinking about him, aren't you?" asked Lust, coming to stand behind him at the window. The lamp was cold and dark, and the only light in the room came from the campfires outside.

"Trying not to."

His companion leaned up against his back; Lust was naked, as he usually was when they had a little privacy, and Roy could feel the creature's erection against his thigh. But when the homunculus spoke, his voice was thoughtful, and not seductive at all. "He hates me."

"Yes. I think he does."

"And he hates you. I don't want him to hate you. You didn't do anything."

"That's arguable." Edward's problem with Roy's behavior had more to do with what Roy hadn't done than what he did do, but Roy wasn't going to split hairs. "I could have done more."

"Mmmm." Arms went around Roy's waist, and Roy laid a hand on the creature's hands on his belly. He wished that were Edward behind him, Edward with his cheek pressed against the back of Roy's shoulder, Edward offering him comfort. "What is clear now," said Lust eventually. "Was it clear then?"

"No. But Edward doesn't see it that way."

Lust said nothing more, and although the homunculus was clearly aroused, with his hard cock tucked up against Roy's buttock and the back of his thigh, the creature did nothing to draw Roy toward bed. After a few minutes, Roy patted Lust's hands.

"Let me go," he said. "And if you want to come with me, put some clothes on."



They looked through the camp for over an hour, in the snow and cold. Roy's breath stood out in front of him like dragonsmoke, even next to the campfires, as he threaded his way between them and offered jovial smiles to the soldiers who recognized and greeted him. Card games were offered, music was offered, saucy salutes and food were offered. Roy returned the salutes and turned the rest down, and moved on through the sprawl of camp.

It was only when they began to return once more to the farmhouse when Lust stopped, and pointed toward the barn. "There," he said. "In there."

The cattle that had been in the barn when the army had first arrived had been slaughtered and eaten almost immediately, and the cavalry horses were billeted in the barn now. There were too many horses for the space, and the barn was warm with their body heat, redolent with their animal stench. A lone corporal was mucking out the stalls, and left immediately when Roy told him to go join the festivities.

Lust stopped dead in the middle of the barn, and pointed toward the tack room.

"Edward?" asked Roy quietly, knocking on the tack room door.

"Get the fuck out," said Edward. That choking sound was still in his voice.

The door creaked as Roy opened it slowly, and the lamplight from the barn proper spilled into the room. Edward had made a pile of the saddle blankets, and was sprawled out across the floor with the blankets piled over him, regulation blue and green with tiny silver regulation hippogriffs sewn into the corners. The tack room was significantly cooler than the rest of the barn, and Roy wondered worriedly how long Edward had been in here. "I'm sorry, Edward," he said.

"Fuck you. Fuck you. What the hell good do your apologies do?" Rolling over and turning his back to Roy, Edward pulled one of the saddle blankets over his shoulder and curled up into a smaller ball.

"None. I'm still sorry, Edward. I didn't know he was planning to do that. I would have stopped him if I'd had any idea at all ..."

Edward shivered under the blankets, and after a moment let out a choked, keening sound of fresh grief. Roy forged on forward. "He wouldn't have wanted you to do this to yourself."

"Fuck you," said Edward, and the words were wet.

"Come back to the house, Edward. Get warmed up. We'll open up a bottle of scotch and you can hit me if you want, but don't lay out here in the barn anymore. Have you had anything to eat today?"

"Fuck. You."

Leaning against the doorway, Roy glanced back toward Lust, who was eyeing the tack room as if there were something both fascinating and frightening in there. Roy had long since come to terms with his failure on that night ... he'd had almost seven years of Lust's constant companionship to remind him and dull the pain. He couldn't begrudge Edward his grief, but he couldn't just watch Edward fall apart either. "Edward ..."

"Did you bury him?" asked Edward suddenly.

Roy moved into the tack room and crouched down on the floor beside the door. "Yes," he said. "I did."

"You personally. You did it."

"Yes. I owed you that much."

That seemed to mollify Edward somewhat, and after a moment he sat up a little, shedding saddle blankets. He drew in a deep breath, and the emotions that had been so close to the surface settled down somewhat, leaving the blond man slightly calmer in the dim light. "What was he like?" he asked quietly. "Did I succeed? Was he ... human again?"

"Yes," said Roy, with a melancholy little smile. He hadn't thought about Alphonse in a long time, many years ... when he looked at Lust, he always thought of Lust's template, not his creator. "He was human. It was ... beautiful, the most beautiful alchemy I had ever seen. He looked a lot like you, but he came back ... young, for some reason. He didn't remember anything beyond when you two had tried to raise your mother."

Edward sat in silence, wiping drying tears off his face, and listened. After a moment, Roy continued, "Out of everyone, he was the only one who believed that you were still alive."

"Did he," said Edward softly, and the unstable calmness cracked. "Then why ..."

"I don't know. I didn't get a chance to ask him. By the time I got there, it was already too late. The transmutation was out of control."

He paused because Edward was raising a hand to his face, mouth twisting as he looked away and covered the expression with his fingers. "Wasted," whispered Edward, and Roy wanted to go over there, wrap up all that anguish in his arms and hold it close, smother it against his chest. Why was he just sitting here, letting Edward suffer on the other side of the room? "I did it all for him, and ..."

Watching Edward collapse in on himself, for a second time, was almost too much for Roy. But would Edward really welcome an embrace? This wasn't the child he remembered, the one he looked at every day in the mirror of Lust. This was a man, not even really a young man ... a man in his middle twenties, who had already made his feelings about Roy eminently clear. Should he leave instead, and give Edward some privacy with his emotions?

Roy looked down toward the floor, wishing helplessly that there were something, anything, that he could do.

Eventually, Edward gasped for breath and wiped his face again. "Was he happy?" he asked miserably.

A difficult question. Roy took his time considering his answer. "He was ... I think he was as happy as he could be. Do you think he could ever have been really happy without you? He ..." Roy decided that Alphonse's frightening obsession with Edward, dressing like his brother, behaving like his brother, as if he could somehow forge a connection with Edward that way ... none of that needed to be said. "He thought about you constantly. I think he was as happy as he could be, considering that you weren't with him."

"And you let him ... try to raise me."

"I didn't know that was what he was going to do. He kept talking about you being alive. He was convinced you were alive. How could I have known that he was planning to resurrect you when he seemed so certain that you were still alive? I knew he was researching something, but I had no idea he'd go that far."

"You let him ... you should have known. You should have known." Edward's automail fingers crushed the corner of a cavalry blanket, scraped across the wood floor of the tack room.

"Probably I should have. But I didn't. I'm not perfect. If I were, a lot of things that happened to the two of you wouldn't have."

Edward went silent again, struggling with his emotions, and Roy looked away so as not to bear witness to that. "I'm sorry," he said. "I really am. I loved him, too. I loved him because he was your brother, and because he was a very kind person in his own right."

"You had better not have fucked him, too," said Edward thickly.

"No. Of course not." Vaguely insulted by the intimation that he might have, Roy repressed the annoyance; Edward was not really in control of himself at the moment. "I did what I could. When I found out what he was doing, I went to the lab right away to stop him, but it was too late. The transmutation was already out of control. All I could do was watch." As the reaction cut Alphonse apart, and built a twisted, pulsing thing that cried in pain and looked at him with Edward's eyes. A thing he had instinctively wanted to destroy, but couldn't bring himself to try. The wrenching unreality of that night was distant now, dealt with in dreams and nightmares of guilt, and it didn't want to come rising to the surface again.

"And now you're fucking the thing he made," said Edward, voice trembling. "You're fucking the thing that cost him his life."

It took a moment for Roy to respond to that. A moment to measure his answer, calculate the cruelty. "Did you want me to waste the effort, and just destroy Lust? Make Alphonse's death mean nothing?"

Edward glared at him, fury overwhelming his grief. "You son of a bitch ..."

"It was hard to live with Lust and not touch him. He looks like you, and ..." And Roy had loved Edward, but now was not the time to say it. "He wanted it. He wanted me. I'm not superhuman, Edward, and the alternative was to kill him. Killing him was out of the question. It would have made your brother's sacrifice meaningless."

"I hate you so fucking much," said Edward. "I hate you so. Fucking. Much." He wiped his face off on one of the saddle blankets and stood up.

Roy stood as well. "I couldn't kill him, and if you think I could have something around me that looked like you and wanted me, and not ..."

"Fuck you," said Edward. "Just ... fuck you. You let him die, and then you use the thing he made for your own personal fucktoy, and you offer me excuses?"

"I didn't just let him die, Edward. I did what I could to stop him, and it wasn't enough. Do you think I never regretted that? Do you think I never looked back and wished I'd seen it sooner?"

The strength seemed to go out of Edward's good leg, and he tilted abruptly sideways; only the nearness of the shadowed tack room wall saved him from falling. "Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Alphonse."

Before he could let himself think about it too much, Roy took three steps to cross the distance and pulled Edward against himself. A hard automail fist struck him twice in the chest, but not hard enough to make Roy let go, and then the metal fingers curled in the lapel of his coat. Edward keened softly into his shoulder, and Roy let him, where nobody could see it.

The way Edward felt, the way he smelled ... Roy rested his cheek against the top of Edward's head and held him tightly. He wouldn't be surprised at all if Edward hated him forever after this.

"Let go," said Edward eventually, and the shove against Roy's chest was implacable this time. Roy released the man who had once been his lover and looked away as Edward scrubbed the moisture off his face again. Pretended not to see it.

"Let's go up to the house," Roy said. "We'll open that bottle of scotch. It's a miracle that it's made it this far north without getting broken, so we should drink it before its luck runs out."

"You want to fucking drink with me," said Edward. "That's rich."

"At least get out of the barn."

Edward stepped toward the tack room door, and one of the horses whickered as Lust retreated. "Everything I was doing," said Edward quietly. "Everything I ever worked toward, was for him. I wanted ... to get south to see him. But now ... what would be the point?"

Roy moved to lay a hand on Edward's shoulder, but Edward moved away before Roy could touch him. Roy didn't chase him, and let his hand drop. "What was it that you always told other people to do? Keep walking forward?"

A weak snort, but Edward stopped at least, next to one of the tethered cavalry horses. "Toward what?" he asked bitterly.

Roy had no answer for that, and said nothing. Edward's long ponytail swayed as he walked toward the barn door.



"Come to bed," said Lust, raising a hand toward Roy. He lay atop the sheets, naked and aroused in the flickering lamplight.

Shaking his head, Roy said, "I can't, Lust."

"Come to bed," the homunculus said again. "I'll just hold you. You don't have to let me fuck you. I want to, but if you don't, I'll just hold you."

Edward hadn't come to the house. Roy wasn't sure where he'd gone - he'd disappeared into the camp by the time Roy had gotten out of the barn - but the house hadn't been it. The celebration was starting to wind down, and the music wasn't so loud anymore; it was bitterly cold outside, and Roy still hoped that Edward would come to the farmhouse to sleep.

"Stop thinking about him."

"I can't," said Roy. He glanced toward Lust, lithe Lust with a teenager's body and Edward's face. "I'm worried about him."

Lust was silent for a moment, and then said slowly, "But I'm here."

"I know that."

"I've always been here for you."

"Lust ..." What was there to say? Roy looked toward the window again. "Just ... be quiet, okay?"

There was a sound from the bed as the homunculus rolled over, then the skitter of paper as the creature messed around with the maps of the pass on the floor. Roy knew that he really should go to sleep, whether in Lust's arms or not, but Edward was somewhere out in the gently-falling snow, no doubt thinking of Roy's failure so long ago. How could he let a thing with Edward's face soothe him to sleep knowing that?

"You don't love me," said Lust suddenly.

Roy turned toward the bed again, to see Lust manipulating the maps with the tips of his extended talons. Turning them around, matching them against each other. "What?" asked Roy.

"You never did. You loved him. You wanted me to be him."

To deny that would be to lie. "You told me you wanted to be human," said Roy carefully. "When I thought he was dead, that seemed like the easiest way. You were intended to be him from the start, after all."

"That isn't going to happen now, is it?" Something disturbing was marring Lust's expression, something dangerous. "You were going to give me his soul. You can't do that if he still has it, can you?"

That was true, and was something Roy had already realized, although he'd been putting it out of his mind. "We'll find another way to make you human again, Lust."

"You don't even want me to be human now." Lust looked up at him, and that dangerous emotion was darkening his eyes. "You only wanted me to be human so I could be him for you. I wanted to be him for you. But now you have him back, and you don't want me at all anymore. You want him even though he hates you."

"No," said Roy, and he moved away from the window. He half-expected Lust to shove him away the way Edward had, but Lust compliantly turned onto his back, let Roy crawl on top of him and kiss him. "That isn't true," he whispered.

"It is. I'm extraneous now."

"No," said Roy again, and he pressed his lips under Lust's jaw. "You're not extraneous."

What other way, though, was there to make a homunculus human? In truth, Roy didn't even know that it was possible to do the way he'd originally planned, but the equations had come out correctly and the alchemy was solid. Now that the original plan had been scuttled, what could he do?

"Tell me that you love me then," said Lust, hands on Roy's back. "Tell me how you miss me and how you always loved me and never told me. Call me by his name."

The kisses slowed and then stopped, and Roy drew back a little. He dropped his forehead to Lust's shoulder, and sighed there. "I can't do that," he whispered. Keep up that charade, now that he knew that the confessions had been hollow? "Not anymore."

One of the hands on his back clenched, and he felt the prickle of claws as they sank through the fabric. Almost as soon as they touched his skin, they retreated. Roy pushed himself up from Lust's body, and looked down at the homunculus.

"We'll find another way to make you human," he told Lust. "I promise. We're still going to draw the array. We'll need that no matter what we do. We'll find some other way. I can't pretend anymore that you're Edward, but that doesn't mean that I can't ..." He paused, unwilling to say what he'd been about to say.

Lust reached up to touch Roy's cheek, talons still extended and sharp, although he was careful with them. "Let me make you come, then," said the homunculus. "Let me feel that."

"I can't." Roy reached up and pulled Lust's hand away from his face, kissed the back of the creature's hand. "Give me a little time with this, Lust."

The dark light of what Roy now recognized as rage flickered in the creature's drab eyes, and then was gone. Lust nodded, and Roy transferred his kiss to his companion's chin before starting to take off his clothes so he could sleep. He tucked the homunculus up against his chest once the lamp was off, and rested his cheek against the creature's head the same way he'd rested his cheek against Edward's.

He knew now that his memory had lied, and Lust did not smell like Edward at all.