Fullmetal Alchemist: Roughing It (2/7)
Apr. 16th, 2012 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jordannamorgan posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
prose_alchemistTitle: Roughing It (2/7: The Grating Outdoors)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG for some fantasy violence.
Characters: Primarily Edward, Alphonse, Mustang, and the Hughes family, as well as some villainous OCs.
Setting: First anime, but it’s mostly cross-compatible. Takes place when Ed is fourteen, Al is thirteen, and Elicia Hughes is two.
Summary: In an effort to learn more about the Elric brothers and Mustang’s connection to them, Hughes maneuvers the three into a camping trip with his family—but the fun and games end when they find themselves caught in the fallout of a deadly museum heist.
Disclaimer: If you know them, they belong to Hiromu Arakawa. Only the villains of the piece are mine.
“This is just another one of your excuses to make my life a little harder, isn’t it?”
It was the third time Edward had voiced some variation of that question in the last hour. Roy Mustang sighed and continued his response of completely ignoring his subordinate, as they made their way along a leaf-littered trail that wound through a national forest thirty miles northeast of Central.
That Friday morning was unseasonably warm and muggy, with bright shafts of sunlight slanting through the canopy of the towering trees. The Hughes family and their mostly less-than-willing tagalongs had set out from the lodge at the edge of the forest an hour earlier. At the unhurried pace they were setting, it would take another two hours of hiking to reach their destination: a secluded camping site near a brook.
Maes and Gracia walked at the head of the party, because they were familiar with the trail. Apparently they had camped here a few times when they were courting, but it was only now they felt Elicia was old enough to share that experience. Their darling daughter, of course, had not even been required to set one dainty foot on the ground yet; if Hughes wasn’t carrying her, she was riding on Al’s shoulders. The armored boy had her at the moment, and she looked around wide-eyed at the damp, green stillness of the woods, asking incessant questions about the birds and squirrels that rustled the branches overhead.
Elicia had long since abandoned her miniature backpack, which bore nothing more burdensome than a doll and some candy. After she tired of the novelty of carrying it like a real grown-up camper, Maes had strapped the small pink-flower-printed bag onto his own pack.
Roy was determined to get hold of Maes’ ubiquitous camera at some point, and secretly capture that image of manly ruggedness for posterity.
As for Ed, he trailed at the rear of the group, giving a perfect impression of a small thundercloud. Roy avoided looking back at him. Not because he was really troubled by the boy’s misdirected grumblings, but because the look permanently fixed on Ed’s face all morning would have made him burst out laughing… even though, truth be told, he felt approximately the same way about this entire trip.
Roy still didn’t know what they were doing out here. He only knew when to let his best friend have his way—and Maes’ glib telephone call to him on the previous morning was one of those times.
One could easily imagine Maes wanting to take the Elrics on an outing that was his perverted idea of fun. He was plainly fond of them, and if he sometimes played down a little too much to those life-hardened young prodigies, his well-meaning ignorance could be forgiven. Yet if all he had in mind was a friendly offer, he wouldn’t have gone through Roy to make it happen, and he would have called off the idea after Ed’s very vocal objection. His odd insistence could only mean he had some ulterior motive for forcing the excursion. Dragging Roy into the mix—and Roy truly had been dragged into it, with a smile and the proverbial prick of a knife—only made the whole proposition even more puzzling.
It was of little use to ponder it at the moment. Eventually, Roy would gather enough clues to figure out his friend’s purpose, or Maes himself would confide his intentions. Nothing remained a mystery between the two of them for very long. And in the meantime, after all Ed’s bragging about his wilderness survival skills, there was at least some value in observing his abilities firsthand.
The Colonel wouldn’t admit it, but there was also considerable entertainment value in the kid’s discomfort—even if he was forced to share it.
A stinging nip made itself felt on the left side of Roy’s neck. He slapped at the latest in a long succession of mosquito assailants, and heard Ed chortle blackly a few steps behind him.
“At least I get to watch you share the misery,” the teenager quipped, unwittingly echoing Roy’s own thoughts about him. “Why don’t you just snap your fingers and incinerate the little buggers?”
The Flame Alchemist sighed. “I don’t happen to have my gloves in reach at the moment. I packed a pair for emergencies, but Hughes doesn’t care for my using them around Elicia—even though it’s perfectly safe.” On those words, he couldn’t help shooting a faint glare in the direction of Maes’ back.
Ed snorted, and it was the closest thing to a genuine laugh Roy had heard from him all morning. “Really? I didn’t think there was anything that could pry those things away from you.” He paused wickedly. “Then again, I didn’t think the uniform came off without a scalpel, either.”
With a slight flicker of indignation, Roy glanced down at the faded blue-gray fatigues he wore. They were a relic of younger years, lower ranks, and the dirty menial jobs that were all part of climbing the military ladder. Not exactly pretty, but suitable for the sweat and grime he had rightly anticipated as a feature of this trip.
“I can assure you that I have a more diverse wardrobe than yours,” he retorted. He glanced back at Ed, who for once had traded his habitual red-and-black ensemble for jeans and a light flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “For that matter, it’s refreshing to see you without that moth-eaten coat.”
“It is not moth-eaten! And you think I was going to wear it in all the mud and brambles out here? I have to do enough work fixing it, every time it gets torn to shreds by crazy alchemist nutjobs or ruthless criminals or rampaging chimeras—or whatever it is that just happens to be in every single town you send us to!”
“I have no idea what you’re insinuating, Edward.”
Several yards farther up the trail, Maes was shaking with silent laughter.
Idiot, Roy thought silently, in a fleeting moment of resentment. This is probably the whole reason he dragged us out here: to get a kick out of watching me spar verbally with Fullmetal.
Yet on the very next thought, Roy’s irritation faded, and he gave a mental shrug. The truth was that he really didn’t have enough opportunities to spend time with Maes anymore. He would have preferred this trip to be a male-bonding retreat for himself and Maes alone, but at least it was something. Gracia was always very understanding, after all. Once they were settled in at their campsite, perhaps she would keep the kids busy for a while, and the two old comrades-in-arms could still enjoy some private guy-time.
He was shaken out of his thoughts when Maes and Gracia abruptly paused on the trail ahead. After a brief whispered exchange, the couple backed up slowly, and Maes turned to grin at Elicia as Al brought her closer.
“Look there,” Maes said softly, pointing to a spot a few yards up the trail.
Following the gesture, Roy saw nothing at first. Then leaves rustled, and a small animal emerged from between the tufts of long grass—looking like nothing so much as a leathery, scale-covered hybrid of an opossum and a rabbit.
“Ah!—What is it, Daddy?” Elicia squeaked, hooking one finger into her mouth in a look of fascinated puzzlement.
“It’s called an armadillo, Sweetie. You don’t find them often in this part of the country. See those hard plates all over his body? They protect him from other animals.” Maes turned his smile from his daughter to the steel-shelled figure whose shoulders she was perched on. “When you think about it, the little guy’s got armor just like you, Al!”
At that remark, Alphonse flinched slightly. His helmet tilted downward in a sort of shy embarrassment, and a faint, nervous chuckle resonated beneath his chestplate. “Yeah… I guess he does.”
Roy glanced over his shoulder at Edward then, and was just in time to see the boy turn his face away quickly, his arms hugged tight against his chest to disguise pain as mere defiance. Complicated emotions of guilt and sadness cast shadows in his amber eyes; and in spite of himself, the Colonel felt a gentle pang of sympathy.
Maes meant well—but he didn’t know.
The hike deep into the woods was long but leisurely. Although the humidity was oppressive, the trees at least provided ample shade as the sun rose higher in the sky. Above and around them, birds were chirping and warbling constantly, and Gracia was delighted by the chance to mark an elusive species of sparrow off her birding list. Maes hoped Elicia would get to see a deer on this outing, but except for the armadillo and a lot of fat squirrels, the only mammals they encountered were two small rabbits.
But then, between Elicia’s enthusiastic chatter and the way Roy and Ed were sniping at each other, every animal in the forest was going to hear them ncoming from a mile away.
A part of Maes still felt guilty for pressuring Roy and the Elrics into making this trip, but for the most part, he was just enjoying it. The interplay between Ed and Roy was both hilarious and intriguing to him. He never ceased to be amazed by the openly contemptuous way Ed spoke to his superior—and perhaps even more by the Colonel’s tolerance of such insubordinate insolence.
Maes suspected that tolerance had to do with more than Ed’s youth, or Roy’s desire to keep the gifted prodigy at least somewhat placated and therefore useful to him. It certainly wasn’t pity either, because Roy would never give pity any more than Ed would take it. And it wasn’t mere fondness… at least, not exactly. It was obvious enough to Maes that on some level, Roy did genuinely like both Elrics; but especially with Ed, underneath all the posturing and meaningless antagonism, he felt there was something else.
Of course, that something was one of the mysteries Maes hoped to solve by watching them here. He had observed nothing yet to give him new enlightenment, but the venture was young. Eventually, this unaccustomed setting might lull Roy and the Elrics into opening up a bit more than usual… or else, it might stress them enough to crack their defenses just a little. Either outcome could achieve the same result for Maes, simply by getting them talking.
Another riddle Maes hoped to unravel was Alphonse. After more than two years of acquaintance, he had yet to see the younger Elric’s true face. By this point, he hardly expected the boy to shed his perpetual armor shell, even on this holiday of sorts—and besides, it was probably an excellent shield against insects and thorns. Even so, watching that steel-clad giant move through the forest was somehow more disconcerting than seeing him on a city street, and it only underscored the enigma of him.
Although Maes had the sensitivity never to question it, he sometimes heard the brothers trying to explain Al’s armor to other people. Their varied excuses were usually odd and awkward, and always rang false to his instincts. Like so many other unnatural aspects of the boys’ lives, he was certain the armor was related to the unknown tragedy that left Ed a double amputee. Had that trauma made Ed so pathologically afraid of seeing Al suffer injury as well that he insisted his brother wear the protection of heavy steel? Surely not. Ed was too practical, and his character was too strong to harbor such paralyzing fears.
The theory Maes came to favor was that the same event might also have disfigured Al terribly, driving him to hide his appearance beneath that all-concealing guise. If that was the case, Maes wanted very much to tell him it was alright, and the Hughes family would always accept him no matter what he looked like. However, still unsure, he didn’t dare approach the subject until Al himself was willing to make the first move.
Perhaps he could coax that first move to happen soon now.
It was just after noon when they reached the brook, a narrow winding stream that splashed pleasantly over a bed of smooth stones. The water was fresh and cool, and deep enough to harbor fish suitable for eating. After a pause to refill their canteens, they continued on along the bank, and it took only a few minutes for Maes to begin recognizing familiar landmarks: a large hollow tree trunk with ancient scars from lightning, a tall pine tree that stood out among the oaks and maples. Their campsite was near.
Finally, rounding a slight bend in the trail, they came upon the clearing Maes knew well and had been searching for. Here the firm high ground was level for a space of some twenty feet, tapering to a gentle slope that led down to the pebble-strewn bank of the brook. Patches of grass and wildflowers grew where sunlight fell through the surrounding trees, casting flourishes of green and yellow and pink amidst the brown leaf litter. Around the edges of the clearing, gnarled and rambling oak branches dipped almost to the ground, creating a sheltering mazework of boughs that invited the weary to sit and the adventurous to climb.
“Here it is!” Maes announced gleefully.
Just to be sure, he crossed the clearing to the base of the largest oak, and cautiously slid his fingers beneath a growth of vines that had crawled up the trunk. He smiled as he felt deeper ridges etched into the bark. Pushing the vines aside, he exposed a heart shape carved into the wood, enclosing crude renderings of the letters G and M.
“This is where I proposed to Gracia,” he reminisced warmly. “It rained on us the whole time—but it was wonderful.”
Roy and Ed both stared at Maes with flat disinterest, and he suppressed an urge to shake his head pityingly. The lack of romance in their souls was their loss.
“It’s a decent place for a camp, anyway,” Ed muttered, looking around with a relentlessly tactical eye. “High ground, fresh water, dry wood for fuel… Probably plenty of food to find nearby, too.”
Maes winced. Apparently Ed was still thinking as if the object of this trip was to make do with nothing. It was sort of sad, really.
“Come on, Ed, we’re not out here to live off the land—just to admire it a little.” The Major grinned encouragingly. “We brought plenty of food, and the weather’s going to be clear, so we shouldn’t even need our tents. All we have to do is sit back and have some fun while we enjoy the beauty of nature.”
“Yeah. You do that.” Ed slipped his pack from his shoulders and dropped it rather ungently on the ground. “I’m just here under orders.”
Ed would obviously need more time to warm up to the situation. Maes sighed and turned away; but his expression lightened immediately as he saw his daughter and her erstwhile bearer. Al had set Elicia down in a grassy spot, and she was watching eagerly as he wove her a pretty crown of wildflowers. His big leatherbound fingers worked with seemingly impossible gentleness and dexterity, lacing together the fragile green stems of the blossoms.
The adorableness made Maes want to utter a little squeal of delight. However, he suppressed the noise so as not to interrupt the pair, and went for his camera instead.
He really hoped he had brought enough film.
Just as Al was settling the crown of flowers on the child’s head, Gracia called out. “Elicia, do you want to play in the water while your daddy’s getting our camp set up?”
Elicia’s head turned so fast that the crown fell askew over one ear, and she jumped up with a happy squeak. “Yeah!”
In short order, Gracia took Elicia behind the bushes to put on her little pink-and-green striped bathing suit. Maes was a bit disappointed at the removal of his girls from his sight, but he heeded the task his wife had set for him, turning to Roy and the Elrics.
“Okay, well… I guess the first thing to do is start a fire.”
Both his gaze and that of the brothers shifted instinctively to Roy. The Colonel froze in the act of unrolling his sleeping bag, and the Elrics may not have seen his tiny flinch in response—but Maes did.
“Ah. Right,” Roy murmured, and began to reach for his pack. “I’ll get my gloves…”
The opportunity was more than Maes could resist.
“Uh-uh, Roy. You know the rules—not around my girls.” He noticed the wickedly amused light in Ed’s eyes, and added with a fiendish grin of his own, “Besides, you told the boys you wanted to use this trip for survival training. What kind of example will you be if you don’t show them how to light a fire on their own?”
Roy paled and glared daggers at Maes, but the Elrics were both watching him intently now: Ed with an unholy glee, and Al with apparent polite interest. Realizing he was put thoroughly on the spot, the Colonel rose with all the eagerness of a condemned man on his way to the gallows, and trudged off among the trees to collect suitable wood for fuel.
After a few minutes, he returned with a bundle of kindling. He dropped the dry twigs and logs on a bare patch of earth at the exact middle of the clearing, and kneeling over them, he began to spend an inordinate amount of time rearranging them in increasingly complex formations.
Cheerfully relentless, Maes bent down beside him, presumably to move a stray piece of wood onto the pile. “You’re stalling, Roy.”
The suggestion Roy muttered faintly between his teeth would not have been suitable for Ed’s ears, much less Elicia’s.
“I don’t think that’s physically possible.” Maes grinned at him encouragingly. “C’mon, Roy, I know you know this. We took survival training together back at the Academy… Or would you rather just admit to the boys that you don’t remember how to start a fire without those sparky-cloth gloves of yours?”
In the act of reaching for a piece of wood, Roy drew his arm back and discreetly elbowed Maes in the chest, pushing him away. Maes chuckled and backed off, to watch with vast entertainment as the scene played out.
Finally, Roy seemed to give up trying to light a fire with nothing but the heat of his wrath. He withdrew two sturdy sticks from the impressively geometric stack in front of him, taking one in each hand. After a long moment of staring at them with an unmistakable What do I do with these? expression, he placed one stick against the other, and began to rub them together vigorously.
…And half an hour later, it was a deeply mortified Roy who sat hunched up against a tree trunk and moodily massaged his aching arms, as his smirking young charge Edward sparked a pile of dry moss and leaves into flame in less than a minute.
Maes couldn’t help feeling a fresh twinge of guilt. This bit of humiliation hit Roy where he lived; but then, he probably deserved it, at least a little. The Elrics had spent the better part of the last two years performing dangerous field work, while, for the most part, the Colonel remained comfortably rooted behind a desk. Letting his outdoor skills lapse, and coming here unprepared for a task he had designated himself, was Roy’s own fault. With Ed’s increasingly obvious experience, they were really on his turf now. Besides, after the delight Roy took in teasing him about his height, the kid was overdue a chance to show him up for a change—harmlessly, and just this once.
After Gracia helped her wriggle into her bathing suit, Elicia came back to observe Roy’s futile efforts for several minutes, but she had long since lost interest and gone off to play in the brook by the time Ed took over. Gracia sat on a flat slab of rock at the water’s edge, attentively watching over her daughter, but she looked back toward the men with a smile as the breeze caught the scent of wood smoke.
“Oh, good. Maes dear, if you’ll watch Elicia, I can see about warming up some of the soup we brought. It’s past lunchtime!”
More than happy to oversee his little mermaid’s noisy splashings, Maes started moving toward the brook, but he paused to glance back at Roy and the Elrics. “Hey, fellas, what do you say we break out the fishing tackle, and see if we can convince some trout to join us for dinner?”
He was almost certain he saw an eye roll as Roy lethargically stood up. Ed hardly looked more enthused, but he shrugged in acquiescence, and Al responded with a cheerful, “Yes sir.”
Within a few minutes, Maes, Roy, and Al were settled beside the brook, casting lines they had fastened to makeshift rods cut from the trees. On the other hand, Ed apparently had a very different interpretation of fishing. Having stripped the branches from the strong sapling he cut down, he declined to attach a hook and line, and proceeded to shave one end of the rod into a viciously sharp spear-point instead.
Typical Ed: opting for the most violent available solution to a problem.
With her crown of flowers still perched on her head, Elicia was wading in the shallows near her father, collecting shiny pebbles from along the bottom. Maes happily held his fishing rod in one hand and snapped pictures of her with the other—but when Ed approached the water’s edge, with spear held high and an aggressive gleam in his eye, the Major instinctively pulled his daughter closer to him.
“Just be careful with that thing, okay Ed?”
“Relax, Major. I told you, I’ve been doing this since I was…” Ed paused to jump over to a flat stone that jutted out of the water three feet from the bank. “…just a kid.”
At Maes’ side, Roy muttered “You’re still a kid” under his breath. Ed heard the murmur and glanced up, clearly aware that he had been served with some kind of insult, but its faintness limited his response to the generic glare that covered just about anything Roy might say to him.
Groping for a distracting topic of conversation, Maes turned to Al with an uneasy chuckle. “So, uh… do you ever do your fishing with a spear too?”
The effort to lighten the mood fell flat, as the armored boy fidgeted noisily.
“Ah… I used to,” he said, with a peculiar awkwardness. In a seemingly nervous movement, he scooted back a little more along the fallen log he was seated on, and Maes suddenly noticed the distance he was keeping between himself and the wet, slippery stones of the bank. Compared to the positions Maes and Roy had taken up, Alphonse was almost two feet farther removed from the water.
Poor kid, he’s really that worried about rust…
Maes was drawn from his thoughts by a sudden movement at the corner of his eye. With an almost unsettling predatory grace, Edward lunged forward and thrust down with the spear clutched in his steel hand. The sharpened tip flicked into the water without splashing a drop, and then Ed brought the spear up quickly, to reveal a fat trout neatly skewered on it.
A smile of grim triumph lighted Ed’s face—but the wind was instantly taken out of his sails when Elicia yelped and half-hid behind Maes’ knee. “Eww, Daddy, that’s gross!”
Ed frowned at her. “This is dinner! And it’s a lot quicker and nicer to the fish than making it fight on a hook.”
“I won’t eat that!” Elicia squealed, and Maes was pained to see her eyes starting to well up in alarm. He quickly set aside his rod to lift her into his lap and squeeze her, damp bathing suit and all.
“Shh, Baby, it’s okay! You don’t have to eat the slimy old fish if you don’t want to! We brought lots of nice good food just like we eat at home. We’ve got wieners and marshmallows—you like that, don’t you?”
As he spoke, Maes rubbed his cheek lightly against hers, and that did the trick as always. Elicia squirmed and gave a token giggle at the friction of his stubble on her skin. “Tickles, Daddy.”
Maes grinned and pulled away a little, patting her back. “There now. Don’t you worry. This is just nasty boy stuff—but in the kinds of work we do, we need to know it sometimes. The reason Ed and Al and Uncle Roy came with us is to practice, so they can take care of themselves when they’re working away from the city.” Rather reluctantly, he set her down on the bank. “You just go over and help Mommy do her nice girl stuff instead, Sweetie. I’ll be right here if you want me.”
Mollified, Elicia smiled, nodded, and trotted off to her mother by the campfire. Maes sighed, and with an apologetic shrug, he glanced around at his fellow fishermen. It was hard to tell what Al really thought behind his steel mask, but Roy and Ed both appeared to be highly unamused.
“Survival training,” Ed muttered acidly, and shot Roy a look with eyes burning hot enough to boil water.
© 2012 Jordanna Morgan
:: 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5 :: 6 :: 7 :: Epilogue ::
Author:
jordannamorganArchive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG for some fantasy violence.
Characters: Primarily Edward, Alphonse, Mustang, and the Hughes family, as well as some villainous OCs.
Setting: First anime, but it’s mostly cross-compatible. Takes place when Ed is fourteen, Al is thirteen, and Elicia Hughes is two.
Summary: In an effort to learn more about the Elric brothers and Mustang’s connection to them, Hughes maneuvers the three into a camping trip with his family—but the fun and games end when they find themselves caught in the fallout of a deadly museum heist.
Disclaimer: If you know them, they belong to Hiromu Arakawa. Only the villains of the piece are mine.
“This is just another one of your excuses to make my life a little harder, isn’t it?”
It was the third time Edward had voiced some variation of that question in the last hour. Roy Mustang sighed and continued his response of completely ignoring his subordinate, as they made their way along a leaf-littered trail that wound through a national forest thirty miles northeast of Central.
That Friday morning was unseasonably warm and muggy, with bright shafts of sunlight slanting through the canopy of the towering trees. The Hughes family and their mostly less-than-willing tagalongs had set out from the lodge at the edge of the forest an hour earlier. At the unhurried pace they were setting, it would take another two hours of hiking to reach their destination: a secluded camping site near a brook.
Maes and Gracia walked at the head of the party, because they were familiar with the trail. Apparently they had camped here a few times when they were courting, but it was only now they felt Elicia was old enough to share that experience. Their darling daughter, of course, had not even been required to set one dainty foot on the ground yet; if Hughes wasn’t carrying her, she was riding on Al’s shoulders. The armored boy had her at the moment, and she looked around wide-eyed at the damp, green stillness of the woods, asking incessant questions about the birds and squirrels that rustled the branches overhead.
Elicia had long since abandoned her miniature backpack, which bore nothing more burdensome than a doll and some candy. After she tired of the novelty of carrying it like a real grown-up camper, Maes had strapped the small pink-flower-printed bag onto his own pack.
Roy was determined to get hold of Maes’ ubiquitous camera at some point, and secretly capture that image of manly ruggedness for posterity.
As for Ed, he trailed at the rear of the group, giving a perfect impression of a small thundercloud. Roy avoided looking back at him. Not because he was really troubled by the boy’s misdirected grumblings, but because the look permanently fixed on Ed’s face all morning would have made him burst out laughing… even though, truth be told, he felt approximately the same way about this entire trip.
Roy still didn’t know what they were doing out here. He only knew when to let his best friend have his way—and Maes’ glib telephone call to him on the previous morning was one of those times.
One could easily imagine Maes wanting to take the Elrics on an outing that was his perverted idea of fun. He was plainly fond of them, and if he sometimes played down a little too much to those life-hardened young prodigies, his well-meaning ignorance could be forgiven. Yet if all he had in mind was a friendly offer, he wouldn’t have gone through Roy to make it happen, and he would have called off the idea after Ed’s very vocal objection. His odd insistence could only mean he had some ulterior motive for forcing the excursion. Dragging Roy into the mix—and Roy truly had been dragged into it, with a smile and the proverbial prick of a knife—only made the whole proposition even more puzzling.
It was of little use to ponder it at the moment. Eventually, Roy would gather enough clues to figure out his friend’s purpose, or Maes himself would confide his intentions. Nothing remained a mystery between the two of them for very long. And in the meantime, after all Ed’s bragging about his wilderness survival skills, there was at least some value in observing his abilities firsthand.
The Colonel wouldn’t admit it, but there was also considerable entertainment value in the kid’s discomfort—even if he was forced to share it.
A stinging nip made itself felt on the left side of Roy’s neck. He slapped at the latest in a long succession of mosquito assailants, and heard Ed chortle blackly a few steps behind him.
“At least I get to watch you share the misery,” the teenager quipped, unwittingly echoing Roy’s own thoughts about him. “Why don’t you just snap your fingers and incinerate the little buggers?”
The Flame Alchemist sighed. “I don’t happen to have my gloves in reach at the moment. I packed a pair for emergencies, but Hughes doesn’t care for my using them around Elicia—even though it’s perfectly safe.” On those words, he couldn’t help shooting a faint glare in the direction of Maes’ back.
Ed snorted, and it was the closest thing to a genuine laugh Roy had heard from him all morning. “Really? I didn’t think there was anything that could pry those things away from you.” He paused wickedly. “Then again, I didn’t think the uniform came off without a scalpel, either.”
With a slight flicker of indignation, Roy glanced down at the faded blue-gray fatigues he wore. They were a relic of younger years, lower ranks, and the dirty menial jobs that were all part of climbing the military ladder. Not exactly pretty, but suitable for the sweat and grime he had rightly anticipated as a feature of this trip.
“I can assure you that I have a more diverse wardrobe than yours,” he retorted. He glanced back at Ed, who for once had traded his habitual red-and-black ensemble for jeans and a light flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “For that matter, it’s refreshing to see you without that moth-eaten coat.”
“It is not moth-eaten! And you think I was going to wear it in all the mud and brambles out here? I have to do enough work fixing it, every time it gets torn to shreds by crazy alchemist nutjobs or ruthless criminals or rampaging chimeras—or whatever it is that just happens to be in every single town you send us to!”
“I have no idea what you’re insinuating, Edward.”
Several yards farther up the trail, Maes was shaking with silent laughter.
Idiot, Roy thought silently, in a fleeting moment of resentment. This is probably the whole reason he dragged us out here: to get a kick out of watching me spar verbally with Fullmetal.
Yet on the very next thought, Roy’s irritation faded, and he gave a mental shrug. The truth was that he really didn’t have enough opportunities to spend time with Maes anymore. He would have preferred this trip to be a male-bonding retreat for himself and Maes alone, but at least it was something. Gracia was always very understanding, after all. Once they were settled in at their campsite, perhaps she would keep the kids busy for a while, and the two old comrades-in-arms could still enjoy some private guy-time.
He was shaken out of his thoughts when Maes and Gracia abruptly paused on the trail ahead. After a brief whispered exchange, the couple backed up slowly, and Maes turned to grin at Elicia as Al brought her closer.
“Look there,” Maes said softly, pointing to a spot a few yards up the trail.
Following the gesture, Roy saw nothing at first. Then leaves rustled, and a small animal emerged from between the tufts of long grass—looking like nothing so much as a leathery, scale-covered hybrid of an opossum and a rabbit.
“Ah!—What is it, Daddy?” Elicia squeaked, hooking one finger into her mouth in a look of fascinated puzzlement.
“It’s called an armadillo, Sweetie. You don’t find them often in this part of the country. See those hard plates all over his body? They protect him from other animals.” Maes turned his smile from his daughter to the steel-shelled figure whose shoulders she was perched on. “When you think about it, the little guy’s got armor just like you, Al!”
At that remark, Alphonse flinched slightly. His helmet tilted downward in a sort of shy embarrassment, and a faint, nervous chuckle resonated beneath his chestplate. “Yeah… I guess he does.”
Roy glanced over his shoulder at Edward then, and was just in time to see the boy turn his face away quickly, his arms hugged tight against his chest to disguise pain as mere defiance. Complicated emotions of guilt and sadness cast shadows in his amber eyes; and in spite of himself, the Colonel felt a gentle pang of sympathy.
Maes meant well—but he didn’t know.
The hike deep into the woods was long but leisurely. Although the humidity was oppressive, the trees at least provided ample shade as the sun rose higher in the sky. Above and around them, birds were chirping and warbling constantly, and Gracia was delighted by the chance to mark an elusive species of sparrow off her birding list. Maes hoped Elicia would get to see a deer on this outing, but except for the armadillo and a lot of fat squirrels, the only mammals they encountered were two small rabbits.
But then, between Elicia’s enthusiastic chatter and the way Roy and Ed were sniping at each other, every animal in the forest was going to hear them ncoming from a mile away.
A part of Maes still felt guilty for pressuring Roy and the Elrics into making this trip, but for the most part, he was just enjoying it. The interplay between Ed and Roy was both hilarious and intriguing to him. He never ceased to be amazed by the openly contemptuous way Ed spoke to his superior—and perhaps even more by the Colonel’s tolerance of such insubordinate insolence.
Maes suspected that tolerance had to do with more than Ed’s youth, or Roy’s desire to keep the gifted prodigy at least somewhat placated and therefore useful to him. It certainly wasn’t pity either, because Roy would never give pity any more than Ed would take it. And it wasn’t mere fondness… at least, not exactly. It was obvious enough to Maes that on some level, Roy did genuinely like both Elrics; but especially with Ed, underneath all the posturing and meaningless antagonism, he felt there was something else.
Of course, that something was one of the mysteries Maes hoped to solve by watching them here. He had observed nothing yet to give him new enlightenment, but the venture was young. Eventually, this unaccustomed setting might lull Roy and the Elrics into opening up a bit more than usual… or else, it might stress them enough to crack their defenses just a little. Either outcome could achieve the same result for Maes, simply by getting them talking.
Another riddle Maes hoped to unravel was Alphonse. After more than two years of acquaintance, he had yet to see the younger Elric’s true face. By this point, he hardly expected the boy to shed his perpetual armor shell, even on this holiday of sorts—and besides, it was probably an excellent shield against insects and thorns. Even so, watching that steel-clad giant move through the forest was somehow more disconcerting than seeing him on a city street, and it only underscored the enigma of him.
Although Maes had the sensitivity never to question it, he sometimes heard the brothers trying to explain Al’s armor to other people. Their varied excuses were usually odd and awkward, and always rang false to his instincts. Like so many other unnatural aspects of the boys’ lives, he was certain the armor was related to the unknown tragedy that left Ed a double amputee. Had that trauma made Ed so pathologically afraid of seeing Al suffer injury as well that he insisted his brother wear the protection of heavy steel? Surely not. Ed was too practical, and his character was too strong to harbor such paralyzing fears.
The theory Maes came to favor was that the same event might also have disfigured Al terribly, driving him to hide his appearance beneath that all-concealing guise. If that was the case, Maes wanted very much to tell him it was alright, and the Hughes family would always accept him no matter what he looked like. However, still unsure, he didn’t dare approach the subject until Al himself was willing to make the first move.
Perhaps he could coax that first move to happen soon now.
It was just after noon when they reached the brook, a narrow winding stream that splashed pleasantly over a bed of smooth stones. The water was fresh and cool, and deep enough to harbor fish suitable for eating. After a pause to refill their canteens, they continued on along the bank, and it took only a few minutes for Maes to begin recognizing familiar landmarks: a large hollow tree trunk with ancient scars from lightning, a tall pine tree that stood out among the oaks and maples. Their campsite was near.
Finally, rounding a slight bend in the trail, they came upon the clearing Maes knew well and had been searching for. Here the firm high ground was level for a space of some twenty feet, tapering to a gentle slope that led down to the pebble-strewn bank of the brook. Patches of grass and wildflowers grew where sunlight fell through the surrounding trees, casting flourishes of green and yellow and pink amidst the brown leaf litter. Around the edges of the clearing, gnarled and rambling oak branches dipped almost to the ground, creating a sheltering mazework of boughs that invited the weary to sit and the adventurous to climb.
“Here it is!” Maes announced gleefully.
Just to be sure, he crossed the clearing to the base of the largest oak, and cautiously slid his fingers beneath a growth of vines that had crawled up the trunk. He smiled as he felt deeper ridges etched into the bark. Pushing the vines aside, he exposed a heart shape carved into the wood, enclosing crude renderings of the letters G and M.
“This is where I proposed to Gracia,” he reminisced warmly. “It rained on us the whole time—but it was wonderful.”
Roy and Ed both stared at Maes with flat disinterest, and he suppressed an urge to shake his head pityingly. The lack of romance in their souls was their loss.
“It’s a decent place for a camp, anyway,” Ed muttered, looking around with a relentlessly tactical eye. “High ground, fresh water, dry wood for fuel… Probably plenty of food to find nearby, too.”
Maes winced. Apparently Ed was still thinking as if the object of this trip was to make do with nothing. It was sort of sad, really.
“Come on, Ed, we’re not out here to live off the land—just to admire it a little.” The Major grinned encouragingly. “We brought plenty of food, and the weather’s going to be clear, so we shouldn’t even need our tents. All we have to do is sit back and have some fun while we enjoy the beauty of nature.”
“Yeah. You do that.” Ed slipped his pack from his shoulders and dropped it rather ungently on the ground. “I’m just here under orders.”
Ed would obviously need more time to warm up to the situation. Maes sighed and turned away; but his expression lightened immediately as he saw his daughter and her erstwhile bearer. Al had set Elicia down in a grassy spot, and she was watching eagerly as he wove her a pretty crown of wildflowers. His big leatherbound fingers worked with seemingly impossible gentleness and dexterity, lacing together the fragile green stems of the blossoms.
The adorableness made Maes want to utter a little squeal of delight. However, he suppressed the noise so as not to interrupt the pair, and went for his camera instead.
He really hoped he had brought enough film.
Just as Al was settling the crown of flowers on the child’s head, Gracia called out. “Elicia, do you want to play in the water while your daddy’s getting our camp set up?”
Elicia’s head turned so fast that the crown fell askew over one ear, and she jumped up with a happy squeak. “Yeah!”
In short order, Gracia took Elicia behind the bushes to put on her little pink-and-green striped bathing suit. Maes was a bit disappointed at the removal of his girls from his sight, but he heeded the task his wife had set for him, turning to Roy and the Elrics.
“Okay, well… I guess the first thing to do is start a fire.”
Both his gaze and that of the brothers shifted instinctively to Roy. The Colonel froze in the act of unrolling his sleeping bag, and the Elrics may not have seen his tiny flinch in response—but Maes did.
“Ah. Right,” Roy murmured, and began to reach for his pack. “I’ll get my gloves…”
The opportunity was more than Maes could resist.
“Uh-uh, Roy. You know the rules—not around my girls.” He noticed the wickedly amused light in Ed’s eyes, and added with a fiendish grin of his own, “Besides, you told the boys you wanted to use this trip for survival training. What kind of example will you be if you don’t show them how to light a fire on their own?”
Roy paled and glared daggers at Maes, but the Elrics were both watching him intently now: Ed with an unholy glee, and Al with apparent polite interest. Realizing he was put thoroughly on the spot, the Colonel rose with all the eagerness of a condemned man on his way to the gallows, and trudged off among the trees to collect suitable wood for fuel.
After a few minutes, he returned with a bundle of kindling. He dropped the dry twigs and logs on a bare patch of earth at the exact middle of the clearing, and kneeling over them, he began to spend an inordinate amount of time rearranging them in increasingly complex formations.
Cheerfully relentless, Maes bent down beside him, presumably to move a stray piece of wood onto the pile. “You’re stalling, Roy.”
The suggestion Roy muttered faintly between his teeth would not have been suitable for Ed’s ears, much less Elicia’s.
“I don’t think that’s physically possible.” Maes grinned at him encouragingly. “C’mon, Roy, I know you know this. We took survival training together back at the Academy… Or would you rather just admit to the boys that you don’t remember how to start a fire without those sparky-cloth gloves of yours?”
In the act of reaching for a piece of wood, Roy drew his arm back and discreetly elbowed Maes in the chest, pushing him away. Maes chuckled and backed off, to watch with vast entertainment as the scene played out.
Finally, Roy seemed to give up trying to light a fire with nothing but the heat of his wrath. He withdrew two sturdy sticks from the impressively geometric stack in front of him, taking one in each hand. After a long moment of staring at them with an unmistakable What do I do with these? expression, he placed one stick against the other, and began to rub them together vigorously.
…And half an hour later, it was a deeply mortified Roy who sat hunched up against a tree trunk and moodily massaged his aching arms, as his smirking young charge Edward sparked a pile of dry moss and leaves into flame in less than a minute.
Maes couldn’t help feeling a fresh twinge of guilt. This bit of humiliation hit Roy where he lived; but then, he probably deserved it, at least a little. The Elrics had spent the better part of the last two years performing dangerous field work, while, for the most part, the Colonel remained comfortably rooted behind a desk. Letting his outdoor skills lapse, and coming here unprepared for a task he had designated himself, was Roy’s own fault. With Ed’s increasingly obvious experience, they were really on his turf now. Besides, after the delight Roy took in teasing him about his height, the kid was overdue a chance to show him up for a change—harmlessly, and just this once.
After Gracia helped her wriggle into her bathing suit, Elicia came back to observe Roy’s futile efforts for several minutes, but she had long since lost interest and gone off to play in the brook by the time Ed took over. Gracia sat on a flat slab of rock at the water’s edge, attentively watching over her daughter, but she looked back toward the men with a smile as the breeze caught the scent of wood smoke.
“Oh, good. Maes dear, if you’ll watch Elicia, I can see about warming up some of the soup we brought. It’s past lunchtime!”
More than happy to oversee his little mermaid’s noisy splashings, Maes started moving toward the brook, but he paused to glance back at Roy and the Elrics. “Hey, fellas, what do you say we break out the fishing tackle, and see if we can convince some trout to join us for dinner?”
He was almost certain he saw an eye roll as Roy lethargically stood up. Ed hardly looked more enthused, but he shrugged in acquiescence, and Al responded with a cheerful, “Yes sir.”
Within a few minutes, Maes, Roy, and Al were settled beside the brook, casting lines they had fastened to makeshift rods cut from the trees. On the other hand, Ed apparently had a very different interpretation of fishing. Having stripped the branches from the strong sapling he cut down, he declined to attach a hook and line, and proceeded to shave one end of the rod into a viciously sharp spear-point instead.
Typical Ed: opting for the most violent available solution to a problem.
With her crown of flowers still perched on her head, Elicia was wading in the shallows near her father, collecting shiny pebbles from along the bottom. Maes happily held his fishing rod in one hand and snapped pictures of her with the other—but when Ed approached the water’s edge, with spear held high and an aggressive gleam in his eye, the Major instinctively pulled his daughter closer to him.
“Just be careful with that thing, okay Ed?”
“Relax, Major. I told you, I’ve been doing this since I was…” Ed paused to jump over to a flat stone that jutted out of the water three feet from the bank. “…just a kid.”
At Maes’ side, Roy muttered “You’re still a kid” under his breath. Ed heard the murmur and glanced up, clearly aware that he had been served with some kind of insult, but its faintness limited his response to the generic glare that covered just about anything Roy might say to him.
Groping for a distracting topic of conversation, Maes turned to Al with an uneasy chuckle. “So, uh… do you ever do your fishing with a spear too?”
The effort to lighten the mood fell flat, as the armored boy fidgeted noisily.
“Ah… I used to,” he said, with a peculiar awkwardness. In a seemingly nervous movement, he scooted back a little more along the fallen log he was seated on, and Maes suddenly noticed the distance he was keeping between himself and the wet, slippery stones of the bank. Compared to the positions Maes and Roy had taken up, Alphonse was almost two feet farther removed from the water.
Poor kid, he’s really that worried about rust…
Maes was drawn from his thoughts by a sudden movement at the corner of his eye. With an almost unsettling predatory grace, Edward lunged forward and thrust down with the spear clutched in his steel hand. The sharpened tip flicked into the water without splashing a drop, and then Ed brought the spear up quickly, to reveal a fat trout neatly skewered on it.
A smile of grim triumph lighted Ed’s face—but the wind was instantly taken out of his sails when Elicia yelped and half-hid behind Maes’ knee. “Eww, Daddy, that’s gross!”
Ed frowned at her. “This is dinner! And it’s a lot quicker and nicer to the fish than making it fight on a hook.”
“I won’t eat that!” Elicia squealed, and Maes was pained to see her eyes starting to well up in alarm. He quickly set aside his rod to lift her into his lap and squeeze her, damp bathing suit and all.
“Shh, Baby, it’s okay! You don’t have to eat the slimy old fish if you don’t want to! We brought lots of nice good food just like we eat at home. We’ve got wieners and marshmallows—you like that, don’t you?”
As he spoke, Maes rubbed his cheek lightly against hers, and that did the trick as always. Elicia squirmed and gave a token giggle at the friction of his stubble on her skin. “Tickles, Daddy.”
Maes grinned and pulled away a little, patting her back. “There now. Don’t you worry. This is just nasty boy stuff—but in the kinds of work we do, we need to know it sometimes. The reason Ed and Al and Uncle Roy came with us is to practice, so they can take care of themselves when they’re working away from the city.” Rather reluctantly, he set her down on the bank. “You just go over and help Mommy do her nice girl stuff instead, Sweetie. I’ll be right here if you want me.”
Mollified, Elicia smiled, nodded, and trotted off to her mother by the campfire. Maes sighed, and with an apologetic shrug, he glanced around at his fellow fishermen. It was hard to tell what Al really thought behind his steel mask, but Roy and Ed both appeared to be highly unamused.
“Survival training,” Ed muttered acidly, and shot Roy a look with eyes burning hot enough to boil water.
© 2012 Jordanna Morgan
:: 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5 :: 6 :: 7 :: Epilogue ::