Closer part IV Closer part IV Beta: toxicbullets - love the beta, love the beta . . . Rating: R because Ed cannot stop cursing Disclaimer: I don't own anything worth having, and I'm infinitely thankful that Hiromu Arakawa invented something as beautiful as this series and was generous enough to share it with us. Yay ^^ Warnings: Complete squickness. I freak myself out sometimes. Summary: Roy is trying to move on, Ed is having a trauma-fest, and Al is surrounded by cats - so at least he's happy. All other parts are in my memories. Seeing things, going places, Living out of suitcases, Every day's like a dream I find myself talking to shadows, Taking the train of youth Back home again 'Cause I don't wanna be a hero, But I don't wanna be a zero - And I don't wanna sit here wasting time I just want a place inside your mind I wish that I could turn the clocks right back It's easy to forget just what you've got - Feeder, Turn The rhythm of a train was so familiar to Ed now that he barely felt it as he gazed unimpressed through the files he'd been given. In one of the increasingly industrialized cities on the edge of the plains, people had been going missing - and the only thing of remote interest to Ed was that everyone who'd gone missing had been an alchemist of some form. "Dunno why they expect it to be some kind of bloody conspiracy," Ed muttered, passing the folder to Al and stretching back in his seat. This train was still cut into old-fashioned compartments, giving them some privacy from people who always stared as if they were the strangest travelling companions they'd ever seen. Ed knew that they probably were, but so what? Didn't give anyone the right to stare. He'd had enough of that, after the whole Mustang fiasco - the next person to give him a funny look was eating automail. "But it's all alchemists, brother." Al said. "Don't you think that's a little strange?" Ed shrugged, kicked his feet onto the opposite seat and folded his arms behind his head. The ridges of the automail dug into his skull just a little too much, as always, and he knew he'd have to move it soon. "It's alchemists, Al. They're all freaks and idiots. Maybe they forgot where they lived and never made it back, maybe they all got eaten by badly-drawn arrays, maybe they-" "Didn't look both ways before crossing the road?" Ed scowled. Al shuffled his shoulders and Ed knew when his little brother was grinning even if he couldn't show it. Ed humphed and looked out of the window, folding his arms in front of his chest, letting his head flump onto the headrest. "Whatever. Okay, it is weird it's all alchemists. Guess we'll find out when we get there." "Did - how did -" Al squirmed with a rasp of metal. "How was the Colonel?" Ed skimmed his narrowed eyes back to his brother and said, "He was a bastard." "Well, at least some things don't change." Al murmured, and Ed looked out of the window again, and scowled. * Ed was kneeling over Roy's lap, completely naked and completely unconcerned, propped up on his hands with his thighs snug against Roy's hips. Roy was laying back, looking up at him, as Ed put his head on one side, braid slipping over his shoulder. He grinned and said, Equivalent exchange? Roy woke with a snort, raising his head from the desk and then peeling off the piece of paper glued to his cheek, blinking up at Hawkeye. She gave him a completely level, completely unsurprised gaze and held out a folder. "The Elrics should have arrived at their destination half an hour ago, sir. And these are due back by four o' clock." "I . . ." He took the folder and said meekly, "Thank you." She bowed her head slightly and then turned and walked away, pausing at the door. She looked back and said, "If you finish those papers on time, sir, why don't you go home early tonight?" He blinked. "Do you really think so?" "If you finish them on time." she said, and her eyes very nearly softened. "We need you at your best, sir." Which was Hawkeye-code for, I'm worried about you. Roy rubbed his chin - should've shaved this morning - and said, "Thank you, First Lieutenant." She closed the door gently behind herself, and Roy slid his hand up from his chin to run through his hair. He had sunk to the point where First Lieutenant Hawkeye was willing to cut him some slack. This was . . . not good. He shook his head, slid the papers out of their folder, and as he read them tried to think of ways to make this one piece of work drag out across the entirety of the day, some way to keep his brain occupied - empty brain space had a horrible habit of filling up with Ed. Maybe he could tidy his desk. He could hardly work with a desk this messy. It was shameful, a Colonel having a desk this messy . . . * Al stood back and marvelled at his brother at work. Ed was information-gathering, interviewing people connected to the vanished alchemists, nodding along in a polite, adult way to the blacksmith he was currently talking to. How could this be the same boy who almost rammed his fist down the Colonel's throat for every 'short' comment? "She just went out for lunch and didn't come back," the blacksmith said, scratching the folds of flesh at the back of his neck - he reminded Al a little of Sieg, which was nice, it made him nostalgic before it made him think of their teacher and parts of Al which didn't exist anymore went cold and shivered. "We got a couple of orders that afternoon I really could've used her help for." "No-one's seen her since?" Ed said, looking around the blacksmith's shop, picking up a large badly-dented, oil-smeared cog and turning it over in his hands. The blacksmith shook his head, shifting the hammer at his waist in an almost embarrassed way. "She was pretty absent-minded. Maybe she . . . I don't know, I want her to turn up fine, you know? She was a nice kid. We really need an alchemist around here now, we're not getting any of the old jobs anymore, it's all machinery nowadays, it's all-" Ed clapped his hands and almost absent-mindedly straightened the cog, putting it back down onto its bench. The blacksmith just stared, his mouth wide. Ed looked up - way up - at him again and said, "What about the other alchemists who went missing? Did she know any of them?" ". . ." The man blinked himself back to the conversation and said, "I - don't know, a lot of alchemists moved here since the city expanded . . . there's a new research school or something opened, but who's going to come here if people keep disappearing? I'll tell you, it's a good thing the military finally decided to do something about it, this could really break this place . . ." Ed snorted. "Yeah, well, a state alchemist went missing, and all of a sudden they're really interested." He picked up a clock, squinted inside its open back, and clapped. There was a sodium-edged flare of blue-white and a sudden tick-tick-tick cut through the cramped, low-ceilinged room. "Maybe I'll look into this new research thing." "It's . . . on the other edge of town . . . she always drew a - don't you need to draw a-?" "Thanks for you help, you've been really useful, I'll make sure all the military repair orders get passed on here, bye!" Ed said, already waving from the doorway, and Al bowed quickly before following his brother out into the sunlight. Ed stood with his hands in his pockets for a moment, scowling at the pavement. "I don't like this," he muttered. "Do you want to go to the research school, brother?" Ed narrowed his eyes at the pavement, then looked up with a casual shrug, hair swinging carelessly. "It can't hurt. C'mon, Al." Al caught up with his brother within two steps, and quickly shortened his pace again to match Ed's. "It doesn't sound like it's any powerful or dangerous alchemists," he said. "It's just normal people, brother, why would anyone-?" "People just do weird shit," Ed said, and counted off on his fingers as he walked, "religious crazies, power-hungry crazies, bog-standard crazies, just plain bastards-" "But why?" "Like I know. Hormonal imbalance?" Al sighed. Unlike his brother, he wasn't quite so certain that science could explain everything. They interviewed a few more people on their way across the city, and lunchtime found them sitting on the edge of a fountain, in a large square between the entrance to the alchemical research institution and a damaged old square-box of a building, a disused warehouse with weeds growing in its guttering. Opposite the clean white alchemical research centre it looked as dirty and ruined as a newspaper left to rot. Ed was on his third pancake - Al suspected he'd been following his nose to this square and that pancake vendor for the past five blocks - squinting suspiciously at the bright white building in front of him. "Why aren't we going in, brother?" Al said, watching his brother tear off another mouthful. Ed chewed, still scowling at the building. "I just want to see for a while, okay?" Al looked across at the building Ed was glaring death at, and sighed. He looked around the square instead, at all the people going about their lives - going shopping, going for walks, going to lunch, going to work. It didn't quite seem fair that most people never had to think about disappeared alchemists and corrupt military officials and illegal human alchemy, but then, he supposed someone had to do it. A football rolled to a halt by his foot, and Al looked down at it. He looked up at the group of children running up to fetch it, slowing gradually to a halt as they noticed the huge suit of armour and the scowling blond boy glaring across the square. Al glanced at his brother, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the fountain and entirely unaware of anythin...
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