Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Family ❯ Deeper Wounds ( Chapter 11 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Okay/ Advanced warning: this chapter turned out uber crappy and I'm just too busy to fix it. Maybe I'll come by later and do it. For now . . . enjoy as is. (toothy smile)

Chapter XI: Deeper Wounds

“Ow, ow, ow, ow!”

“Oh, hold still you big baby . . . lemme look.”

Edward held his lover's chin tightly in his flesh hand, his features contorting sympathetically as he inspected the damage. The entire left side of Roy's face was darkening into bruises and his eye was already swelling shut; while the right side appeared to have suffered far less injury, there was still one large, particularly nasty-looking bruise blossoming along the pale cheekbone.

As Ed tilted Roy's head to one side, trying to get a better look at the new mark, the man winced, letting out a string of curses that were almost as colourful as his bashed-up face, and smacked the teen's hand away. Quickly hiding the hurt expression that had crept onto his face, the blonde huffed, bringing his hands down to rest on his hips, and offered his lover a concerned look. “Man . . . he really did a number on you. Smashed up your face pretty bad.”

Roy, who was now seated at the large butcher-block table in the centre of his kitchen, clutching a clear glass filled to the brim with Apricot brandy in his hand—which, Ed noted, was starting to bruise around the knuckles—looked over at him and stated testily, “Really Ed? I couldn't tell.”

The Fullmetal made a discontented tut-tutting sound and continued on as if the colonel had said nothing, “It's a pity, really . . .”

“What is?” Roy sighed out, going back to gingerly nursing his drink.

“Well, your face was my favourite part about you.” Ed folded his arms across his chest and leant down to rest his torso on the table, observing his lover out of the corner of one golden eye. “Now, c'mon . . . how am I supposed to make love to someone with a face likethat?” As if to press his playful point, he then presented his automail arm, letting the bruised man use it as a makeshift mirror.

Roy regarded his distorted visage in the irregular, reflective surface of his lover's arm for a short time, and then looked away with a small shrug. “I do it all the time.”

Edward scoffed at the rather lame insult and pulled his arm back, straightening his stance as Roy quickly polished off the last of his drink. However, when the dark-haired man went to pour himself another one, Ed reached over and put his hand on top of the glass. “You've already had two. You're not gonna get drunk in this house tonight, mister.”

Roy scowled up at the blonde, but didn't argue as he worked the man's fingers away from his glass and took it away from him. “Course not . . . then, I'd be ugly, unemployed, and munted. Why don't you just dump me?”

Ed glared at him for a second, before sighing and rolling his eyes up in innocent consideration. “That might not be such a bad idea . . .” he said after a time, ignoring the look of annoyance Roy flashed at him. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Nah . . . it'd be too much trouble to break in a new boyfriend. I think I'll keep you.”

“You're a prince,” stated Roy facetiously.

“Love you, too.”

The colonel's eyes shifted up to Edward's face, seriousness and even something that resembled fear engrained in the dark retinas, and the blonde felt his smile—and his resolve, for that matter—falter. Lowering his gaze to the floor, Ed walked the empty glass over to the sink and washed it out, making sure the smell of alcohol was completely gone before he began to wipe it dry.

Replacing the glass in its appropriate cabinet, the blonde then turned around and leant his back heavily against the counter, crossing his arms over his narrow chest. “Roy . . .” he said to his lover. The colonel noticed that the alchemist's gaze was continuously shifting around him, but never actually settling on him. “Did you mean what you . . . I mean, were you . . . serious? About . . . what you said?”

The Flame gazed at the younger man for a second, noting the light blush that was tingeing his tanned cheeks and the bridge of his nose, before sighing and stretching his arm out in Ed's direction. “Come here,” he said softly.

The blonde blinked, admittedly surprised at how warm and tender Roy had sounded just then, but padded over and took his lover's hand without protest. Shifting around in his seat until he was facing Ed, the colonel then gently steered the teen into his lap and pulled him into an ardent embrace.

“Edward,” he said, his warm breath tickling the blonde's ear. “I have never meant anything more . . . than when I said that I loved you. And . . . just so you know . . .” Roy pulled back slightly, taking Ed's chin in his hand and lifting it to where the boy was looking him square in the eye. “You . . . you were never second. I mean . . . yes, I still love . . . him—and, you're right: there's nothing that you or anyone else can do to change that, but . . . I wanted you to know . . . And, I don't even know if it was bothering you, but . . . I wanted to tell you that . . . you weren't . . . his replacement.”

Ed silently gasped. Though he tried to hide it as quickly as he could, his surprise must have shown on his face, for Roy frowned suddenly and a dark look came over his eyes. “You could never be,” the colonel said, his voice almost scolding—as if Edward should have known better than to think such a thing. “You both, as ridiculously sappy as it sounds, hold a different place in my heart. You could never replace Maes . . . and he couldn't replace you. Got it?”

The blonde nodded dumbly, his stomach dropping out and his whole body going slack with relief. Closing his golden eyes and falling forward, he wrapped his arms tightly around his lover's neck and pulled him into an awkward hug. “Thanks,” Ed muttered absently into the crook of his own flesh elbow, feeling Roy's arms wrap around him to return the gesture. “I needed that.”

There was a quiet pause in which the two alchemists simply held one another, before Roy sighed and asked, “You were worried about that, weren't you?”

Yes.

Ever since Tamalynn had told him how her brother felt about the deceased brigadier general, it was that thought that had been plaguing his mind, pecking away at the already unstable wall that surrounded the dam of their relationship like a scavenging raptor. It was that that had weakened his resolve concerning the two of them. Even Edward's confession of love—first to himself and then to Roy—wasn't enough to completely chase away the hovering phantasm of doubt.

But now . . . it seemed unimportant.

If Roy Mustang, the pompous ass of a Flame Alchemist, put his family, life, and—most importantly—his career on the line for him, then Ed had to believe him when he admitted that it was out of love. If he, Edward, didn't have faith in the man that he truly loved, then . . . what else was there?

The blonde moved back to look up at his lover, his arms still draped around the colonel's neck. “Kiss me,” he quietly demanded.

Roy quirked an amused eyebrow. “Why?”

The Fullmetal let out a soft chuckle and replied, “Because your father found out about us in the most embarrassingly horrible of ways and because your mother and sister witnessed it, too. Because, both of us will most likely lose our jobs and you're gonna be court-martialed. Because we, the infamous Fullmetal and Flame Alchemists, are about to be outed to the entire Amestris military.” Edward paused a moment, watching the colonel's frown slowly deepen with each truthful realization; the blonde sighed and smiled sadly.

“Because I need it.”

Roy regarded his young lover for a moment, a smile mirroring Ed's own gradually making its way onto his face; with a small expulsion of warm breath that tickled his cheeks and made his blonde bangs dance, the dark-haired man leant forward to comply, pressing his lips against the Fullmetal's.

However, when Ed went to deepen the kiss, Roy suddenly flinched and pulled back with an “Ow,” reaching up to tend to his battered cheek. The blonde cringed sympathetically.

“Hold on,” he told the older alchemist, sliding off of his lap and making his way over to the icebox.

Roy turned back to where he was sitting facing the table, but continued to watched the boy with mild curiosity as he tipped himself over the side of the box, his head, arms, and torso disappearing into the cool, white brume. He huffed and rubbed his face, complaining that he was sure that his father had knocked one of his teeth loose; as expected, Edward's muffled response to this was to reason that as long as it was one of the back ones, then he should be all right. “Gee, thanks,” the Flame muttered sarcastically, watching as the elder Elric finally extracted himself from icebox, turning away and letting the door fall shut with a thud.

One of Fosco's good, large steaks was now balanced precariously on his automail palm.

“And just what do you plan to do with that?” Roy asked as the blonde came back over, sounding as though he didn't entirely want to know the answer.

“You're gonna put it on your face,” Ed replied, sounding as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Seeing the dual looks of incredulity and disgust cross his lover's features, Edward chuckled and explained. “Don't worry. Our teacher's husband is a butcher. Whenever we'd come in from training, sporting some kind of new, painful welt, Teacher would just make him cut off a piece of meat and she'd slap it on us. Trust me, it helps.”

Eyeing the raw beef, the skepticism remained plastered on Roy's bruised face . . . until he forcefully swallowed, that is. Then, it was hurriedly replaced with an almost comical look of horror. As the skin beneath all the purple marks went white, Ed cocked his head to one side, very much resembling a parakeet looking at itself in a mirror. The Flame pursed his lips and said slowly, “You know that tooth?”

Edward nodded, his eyes narrowing and his brows meeting together in confusion.

“Yeah . . . I just swallowed it.”

There was a short moment of silence in the Mustang-Elric kitchen, before the room suddenly exploded with the sound of sheer, unbridled amusement at another's expense. Roy scowled at his boyfriend, who was dangerously close to letting the raw steak slip from his hand and go tumbling to the floor, as he unabashedly cackled at him. “You . . . you should . . .” he managed to choke out between gales of laughter, “. . . sleep under your pillow tonight. Maybe . . . you'll crap out a quarter!”

Roy rolled his eyes and dryly responded, “I should've let my dad kill you.”

“Oh, come on,” Ed said rather cheerfully once he had recovered from his fit and had regained his composure. “You know it was funny, you humourless bastard.”

The dark-haired alchemist just grunted his irritation.

With a sigh and a slight roll of his golden orbs, Edward once again took up his position in his lover's lap. Roy, despite being upset with him, instinctively wrapped his arms around the blonde's waist, pulling him as close to his body as he could manage.

“Look up,” Ed told him with a small smirk. The Flame scowled, but reluctantly complied with the demand, huffing as he tilted his head back. Placing the steak on the left side of his lover's face, the Fullmetal smiled forlornly. “You need to talk to him, Roy. If you don't get this straightened out . . . we could be in some deep shit.”

“Ed, you don't know my father. He's . . . stubborn,” admitted the colonel, wincing as the slab of cold meat was pressed against his cheek. At this, Edward rolled his eyes and mumbled something that sounded an awful lot like “pot”—knowing that his lover was oh-so cryptically referring to the old adage, Roy likewise gave his coal black eyes a theatric spin heavenwards and said, “It runs in the family, I suppose. Stubbornness is . . . a Mustang ethos . . .”

The blonde teen chuckled and went to respond to this, but stopped when he suddenly heard loud voices—arguing voices—from just outside the kitchen door. Both men turned their heads in the direction of the quibbling, Roy now having to hold the steak against his face to keep it from sliding off, and watched in a mixture of confusion, amusement, and terror as Mai Yao and Tamalynn pushed/dragged the sputtering, enraged Major General into the kitchen.

Ed hurled himself out of Roy's lap.

Suddenly, the older man's eyes found his son's . . . and there was a moment where time stood still. It was as if Chronos himself had stepped off Olympus and interrupted the flow of nonspatial continuum within the confines of the kitchen. The two men grew still as their eyes met, Edward stayed anchored to the cold tile floor where he had landed square on his butt, and Mai Yao and Tamalynn stilled and silenced their yelling, watching the diaphanous sparks of vehemence dart back and forth between the father and son. And then, a mere three seconds later—though it seemed like hours—there was an imaginative sound of suction as the time flow was rent . . . and everyone began moving at once. The Major General spun around fiercely and the two female Mustangs were forced to grapple with his uniform and dig their heels in to keep him from fully escaping; at the same time, Roy stood, throwing a withering look over his shoulder at the retreating officer, and attempted to make his escape through the servant's entrance. Attempted being the operative word.

As soon as his boyfriend had stood up, Ed had come out of his little time warp stupor and had sprung into action. He didn't know whether or not Roy was going to run or try to pummel the man—the blonde did know that he wanted neither and promptly flung his arms around the colonel's waist.

“Edward, let go of me!” Roy shouted as he came to a stumbling halt.

“No!” Ed screamed back in a most childish manner, tightening his hold as the Flame attempted to pry him off. Mai Yao and her daughter had somehow managed to stop the fuming Major General from fleeing the scene and the woman was now screaming at her husband in Xingese. Everyone was shouting.

The kitchen was in an absolute uproar.

“You can't keep running away from this, you coward!”

“Daddy, you have to talk to Brother!”

“Xi dai no!”

“I am not running away, you pipsqueak!”

“Xu dai vernai xus takasa, Gerald!”

“Xi dai no!”

“I am not a pipsqueak! And if that's so, then wuddaya call this?”

“Daddy!”

“All right! That's enough!”

It was Mai Yao who had yelled this last part, the sheer intensity of the cry bringing all motion in the small room to a stand-still. The tiny woman was glaring daggers at her husband, her silken blouse rumpled and her bun coming unraveled, cascading strands of long, black hair down her back. “Now, I have had just about enough of this, Gerald Mustang! You are going to sit down right here it this chair and you are going to talk to your son, if it's the last thing you do! And believe me, if you refuse it will be the last thing you do!”

The Major General looked slightly shocked at this outburst for a moment, but then managed to screw up his bruised face into an expression of rage. “Now, see here—”

“Oh, shut up, you pompous windbag,” said Mai Yao disdainfully, silencing the man. He looked ready to explode, his face purple and swelling, his cobalt eyes wide in surprise and offense, and a huge vein pulsating just below the skin of his neck; however, the Major General said nothing more to his wife—nor anyone else in the room—and merely dropped himself unceremoniously into one of the chairs adjacent to Roy's own.

Having effectively castrated her husband, Mai Yao then turned her harpy-like eyes to her son, who very nearly flinched at the quiet, harsh tone she took with him. “Royce Edan Mustang, you will talk to your father.”

“I have nothing to say to him, Mother,” growled the colonel. “After all, I'm not his—”

“Don't!” she snapped, cutting him off. “I refuse to have two people that I love fighting with one another. I refuse to spend another six years not being able to see my son because you two have something to prove! Not again!”

Ed felt Roy wince at the cutting emotional force behind the words. But then, his body relaxed and his hands fell away from the blondes arms, defeated.

He was accepting his fate.

Nodding sharply to him, Mai Yao then looked down at the younger alchemist and offered him a tired, but reassuring smile. “Come, Edward,” she said softly, turning towards the kitchen door and motioning for him to follow. Ed nodded imperceptibly and reluctantly let his arms slip away from his lover's waist. Mai Yao and Tamalynn passed through the threshold into the dining room, letting the door gently swing shut behind them. As Ed approached the door, he abruptly stopped, an obscure look overtaking his face, and turned to face the Major General.

“If you hurt him,” the blonde stated caustically, his golden fringe obstructing the eldest Mustang's view of his eyes, “I swear I will kill you.”

And with that, he left.

After a moment of flabbergasted silence, the Major General turned warily to his son and huffed. “Protective little twit, isn't he?”

Roy gazed out of the corner of his good eye at the man for a moment, before shrugging and dipping down to retrieve the steak that had slipped from his face is his struggle with said twit. “He's . . . my knight in shining automail,” said the Flame mirthlessly as he straightened and dumped the cut of meat onto the table.

As Roy turned away, heading to the cabinet to retrieve the glass that Edward had earlier taken away from him, a tense silence fell between the two men. Neither wanted to discuss what had happened only ten minutes ago in the living room—and neither wanted to even think about the event upstairs which had sparked that little scuffle.

The Major General for the obvious reasons. And Roy because . . . well, because the entire episode was his fault. If he hadn't tried so fervently to convince Ed to make love to him when the blonde knew that something would go wrong . . .

Murphy was a cruel son-of-a-bitch.

The Flame opened the cabinet and picked out the still-damp tumbler, suddenly noticing how the beads of moisture stayed caught in the angular rivulets of the Vandyke-coloured glass. “How could you do this to me?” came his father's questioning voice, low and rumbling like a distant thunderstorm.

On second thought, better make it two glasses.

- + -

Ed stared out of one of the front windows from his spot on the comfortable, white sofa, watching as two cardinals happily darted back and forth in the tree just outside, piping shrilly to one another as they danced around the nest they were constructing. The blonde somehow knew that cardinals were one of the few birds that, once they found a mate, they stayed partners for life; it made him happy for some reason to think that the pair had chosen he and Roy's yard to nest in.

Maybe it was some sort of sign . . .

As the two redbirds flitted away from the Mustang yard, Edward let out a tranquil sigh. “Sounds like it's going pretty well.”

Mai Yao nodded serenely at him from her armchair, while Tamalynn remained silent on the floor. The Fullmetal let his golden eyes dart to and fro betwixt the two of them for a second, before letting his gaze drift back out the window, a light blush colouring his cheeks. Neither of the two women had said one word to him since they had come back home, save for the soft-spoken order that Mai Yao had given to follow her from the kitchen not ten minutes ago.

He couldn't say that he blamed them. After what they had walked in on . . . what they'd seen Roy doing . . .

An involuntary shudder ran through him as he realized that, unless he attempted to explain himself and apologize for permanently scarring their retinas, Tamalynn and Mai Yao might never speak to him again.

“Um . . . Mrs. Mustang? Tamalynn?” Even though he was staring determinedly at the toes of his boots, he could feel the women look up at him. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he pressed forward as smoothly as he could. “I . . . um, I'm sorry for . . . I mean, we never . . . we never meant for . . . for you to—” He stopped to chew on his bottom lip uncertainly, still not able to look either of the women in the eye. “And . . . if you never wanted to talk to me again . . . I'd underst—”

“Congratulations.”

The elder Elric nearly got whiplash as he jerked his head up to stare, wide-eyed, at Tamalynn. The young woman was seated on the floor in front of another couch, her knees pulled up to her chest, long arms wrapped around them to keep them in place. She was looking in his direction, her long, ebony fringe hiding a large portion of her pale face—but not enough for Ed to see that she was smiling peacefully.

“Uh . . . huh?”

“Congratulations,” she repeated, sweeping her bangs behind her ear. “You're the only person who Brother actually hit Daddy over. Told you he cares about you.”

Edward was . . . surprised, to say the least, by this turn of events and could do nothing but sputter incoherently and blink in shock, like some POW signaling in Morse code. “You . . . you mean . . . you . . . wha? Huh? I don't . . .”

“Edward, dear,” Mai Yao finally spoke up, straightening in her seat a tad. “Let me put your mind at ease. You see, after his grandmother—Gerald's mother—taught Roy about alchemy—”

“That's who he learned it from?” Ed interjected, unable to stop himself. He had always been curious who had introduced his lover to the spagyric science—especially the more explosive part; the part that made him the Flame Alchemist—but had just never gotten around to asking the man himself.

If Mai Yao was irritated at the blonde's interruption, she gave absolutely no indication. “Oh, yes,” she replied with a nod. “My people don't study it as a violent method—merely for medical purposes. We call it Pharmacy. Seeing as Roy was a normal little boy, he wanted something with more . . . immediate results, let's say. Edana—that's his grandmother—not only introduced your concept of alchemy to him, which was far more interesting that any sort of medicinal alchemy my father might have taught him, but when he told her that he was leaving to join the military as a state alchemist, she gave him his first pair of pyrotex gloves.”

“Wow,” was all Ed could say. He made a mental note to himself to invite Mai Yao and Tamalynn over more often. He'd gotten more information on Roy out of them in the past week than he'd gotten from the Flame himself in the six years they'd known each other. “Oh—I'm terribly sorry for interrupting you! Please, continue with what you were saying. You were . . . trying to set my mind at ease?” he said helpfully.

Mai Yao chuckled slightly and shook her head. “I was just going to tell you that, after that horrible woman taught him that fire alchemy that she—and my son, apparently—are both so well-known for . . . he nearly set fire to our entire town.”

Ed stared. He wasn't certain whether or not he was supposed to be shocked or amused by this statement, so he decided to simply keep his face blank.

“All I'm saying is, Edward . . . after that, there's really nothing that Roy can do to get me upset.” She smiled at him brightly, the corners of her eyes and mouth crinkling slightly with the gesture. “Especially if it's with someone as delightful as you.”

The blonde chuckled sheepishly and reached up to scratch at the base of his braid. Of all the things he expected to come out of this conversation . . . this was not one of them. The warm smile remained emblazoned on her thin lips for a short minute more, before slipping away as she turned her attention back to the kitchen door. “I worry about him,” she muttered softly.

Letting his hand drop back to his lap, Edward regarded the woman for a few moments, before smile assuredly and stating, “You shouldn't be worried about Roy. He can take care of himself.”

“I know,” she admitted slowly, after a time. “But it wasn't he who I was worried about.”

The blonde blinked. “You mean the Major General?” She inclined her head slightly to signify an affirmative and Ed heard himself snort. “No offense, but I think he can take care of himself, as well.”

Tamalynn suddenly pushed herself up off the floor and migrated over to the couch that the blonde was seated on; elbowing him in the side softly, she whispered, “That's not what Momma means.”

“Huh?”

“What Tamalynn is trying to say, Edward,” Mai Yao stated, some unknown emotion betrayed in her voice, “is that . . . it's not his body that I'm worried about . . . It's his mentality.” The Xing woman paused for a moment, her eyes glazing over . . . as if she was seeing a memory or simply looking into another realm . . . “Did Roy ever tell you about his grandfather?”

Ed blinked, yet again. Though, this time, it was more to accompany the small frown that split his face than to show surprise.

No. He hadn't.

It was a particularly hot-button issue between the two of them: family. Despite the fact that Roy seemed to know all about his family—from his failed attempt at human transmutation, to his little brother, who had just gotten his body back; from his burnt down house to the Rockbells—his neighbors, so close they almost were family. Hell, he even knew about his father, bastard, may he burn in hell . . .

Roy knew, literally, everything there was to know about his lover's family.

In complete antithesis to that . . . Edward knew absolutely nothing about the Flame's. The closest thing the blonde had ever seen to a family around Roy were his subordinates . . . He hadn't even known that the man had had a sister until that fateful call just one week ago.

He shook his head. “No . . .”

Mai Yao took a deep, almost cleansing breath and then said, “Gerald and his father . . . got into a fight when Gerald was younger—not much younger than Roy, in fact. I was never quite sure what the argument was about . . . but, Tremain—his father—punished Gerald . . . and Gerald told him that he hated him . . .”

This woman, this pillar of strength in the Mustang herd—whose job it had been to torture prisoners for information—had to stop . . . and bit down on her lip to keep herself from crying. Ed's jaw dropped.

Blinking fiercely, Mai Yao continued: “He told Tremain that he hated him. And, well . . .”

Seeing her mother in distress, Tamalynn reluctantly took over. “Granda' . . . took his own life . . . later that night.”

The Elric whipped around so fast he was sure that his braid had caught the young woman in the face. “W-what?”

Tamalynn just nodded morosely, averting her onyx eyes to the coffee table before her. Ed, however, was too lost in his own thoughts to care where she was looking.

It all makes sense now, he thought to himself. Mai Yao's terrified that . . . that what happened with the Major General's dad is gonna repeat itself now. She's not gonna sayit . . . but I'll bet that that's the real reason she's forcing those two to work it out. I wonder . . . I wonder if she knows that Roy tried to . . .?

Most likely not; however, Ed wouldn't put it past her.

Roy had said it himself: she was a specialist at obtaining information that didn't necessarily want to be revealed.

The blonde shook his head slightly and mumbled, “I'm sorry, I didn't know . . .”

A heavy, funereal air descended upon the living room, pressing heavily upon the shoulders of the living. After several long minutes, Ed shivered and, desperate to change the subject, said to Mai Yao, “Um . . . I just remembered something that you said, ma'am.”

He looked up to find that the woman's slightly red-rimmed eyes were now focused kindly on him, waiting for his question. “Back there in the kitchen . . .” he ventured. “Something about . . . spending six years not being able to see Roy? What was that about?”

Anything involving not spending time with her son for the equivalent of six years couldn't have been much better than the path they were previously traveling . . . but. Ed had to admit that it was a change of pace. However slight.

Plus, he was insatiably curious.

Tamalynn, noticing a small shift in Mai Yao's face, once again flawlessly stepped in to take her mother's place in explaining things to him. “See, Ed,” she stated, leaning in conspiratorially close. “Years ago, Daddy forced Roy into joining the military. Brother didn't want to join, but Daddy told him that he had no choice. Brother, in turn, told Daddy that, if he was forced into duty, not only would he join as a state alchemist—which Father hates, by the way—”

“Hates?” questioned the Fullmetal, his eyebrows arching. “Why?”

The dark-haired girl shrugged and said, “I think it's just because his mother could do alchemy and he never learned. But anyway, Brother told him that, not only would he join as a state alchemist, but he would also never talk to the family again.”

The frown that had sprouted on Edward's lips deepened and his brow furrowed as he asked, “But the Major General made him join anyway . . .”

“Exactly,” said Tamalynn with a small nod. “That's about all there is to it. Brother kept that promise for nearly six years—never called, wrote, visited, nothing . . . We only heard stories about a Colonel Mustang—the Flame Alchemist—when Amestris was at war with Ishbal. We knew that was him . . . They called him a hero.”

Ed almost laughed. If Tamalynn and Mai Yao could only see what he saw . . . sheets soaked in tears and cold sweat, screams that peeled paint from walls in the middle of the night, deadened, haunted eyes that saw right past him, staring into a memory . . .

If they could only see the scars that would never heal . . . then they would have the decency not to call Roy a hero.

He sighed and turned away; considering how badly that change of subject had gone, Edward wondered if he should attempt it one more time, or if he should just let the silence of the room talk.

However, after only three minutes, the Fullmetal's nerves had had enough.

“Um, I'm . . . curious,” he said to no one in particular. “I'd say it's fairly obvious that Roy and I weren't . . . expecting you guys to be home this early. We figured that you'd be gone for a few hours at the least. I'm wondering . . . why did you come back so early?”

He looked over at Mai Yao expectantly; however, the woman appeared to have no answer for him . . . at least, no verbal answer. She gazed at him placidly for a long moment, then let her black eyes swivel over to rest on the daughter seated next to him. “Tamalynn? You want to take that question, as well?”

The blonde's gold orbs traveled to the girl, also; she had suddenly averted her gaze to her own lap and was fidgeting with the sleeve of her suede jacket. From the tone Mai Yao had taken to the almost ashamed expression the girl now had on her face, it only took a fraction of a second for realization to hit Ed square between the eyes.

“You told him?”