Fullmetal Alchemist: Roughing It (3/7)

[jordannamorgan]

Title: Roughing It (3/7: Fireside Reflections)
Author: 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.



The four males of the party spent more than two hours fishing, pausing only for a lunch of canned soup Gracia had warmed and ladled into tin cups. It didn’t surprise Maes at all that in the end, Edward and his makeshift harpoon accounted for just as many fish as the rest of their hook-and-line efforts combined. The boy had exceptional reflexes—and a perfect control of his nerveless steel hand that few fully-fleshed people in the world could hope to match. Even at his disadvantaged size, it was easy to see why he was as splendid in a fight as Maes had witnessed him to be.

Ed’s gloom was not visibly brightened by his bragging rights to half the catch. Once the chore of cleaning and preparing the fish was done, he stalked off into the woods on his own. His only explanation, in response to a query from his brother, was to mutter that he wasn’t in the mood for fish.

Late afternoon slowly rolled over the wilderness, warm and muggy and still. Elicia dropped off into a nap on top of her sleeping bag. Al tended the fire or sat with his big steel carapace propped against a tree trunk, gazing up at the sky between the overhanging boughs—seemingly quite used to periods of empty quiet time. Maes, Gracia, and Roy rested from the morning’s hike, with only sporadic intervals of conversation.

The light of day was just starting to fade when Ed wandered back into camp. His solution to being undesiring of fish then became clear: he was carrying the skinned and dressed carcass of what had probably been a rabbit. After Elicia’s reaction to the fish, Maes was at least grateful for Ed’s foresight in having butchered the animal in the woods, reducing it to several pieces of meat that a child would not recognize as a once cute and fluffy critter.

…Truth be told, even Maes didn’t want to think too much about how Ed had achieved that catch.

Perhaps Ed’s very real survival skills shouldn’t have surprised Maes, but somehow these demonstrations still took him a little off-guard. In his two years of familiarity with the Elrics, he was used to hearing Ed complain about the bad food and hard bunks at the Central barracks, or about the weather when rain or cold made his automail ports ache. To listen to him then, one would think he was being slighted by anything less than the lap of luxury; and yet here he was, easily and immediately turning feral in the forest, as if he spent most of his life living that way.

Al was just as puzzling, all passive acceptance where Ed was all objection. He never complained about cold or rain, or the heat that should have made his armor unbearable—and while he presumably shared Ed’s survival skills, he seemed to be in no such hurry to go native. In fact, apart from his intense concern for Ed’s closeness and well-being, he rarely seemed to express any particular want or need or discomfort at all… and if there was anything about him that really did unnerve Maes, it was that. Not even the protection of steel could make someone that immune and indifferent to the conditions of his surroundings.

Still, whether they responded to it or not, Maes wanted to give the brothers any ordinary comfort he could. Deep down in his paternal instincts, he was sure he felt their painful need for even the most simple of kindnesses, no matter how firmly they refused to admit to needing anyone but each other.

At least to appearances, Roy certainly wasn’t much of a patron for the boys to rely on. As if sending them from one end of the country and one crisis to another wasn’t bad enough, he had the temerity to protest that Maes spoiled them with the breathtaking generosity of good food and a warm bed. It was unconscionable, really. Maybe it was just as well if he never figured out what to do with Lieutenant Hawkeye besides point her at things to shoot, because the man would obviously be a terrible father.

Even so, there was something more to the story. If Maes hadn’t sensed that much, Roy could never have been the man to whom he gave his friendship and his faith.

As darkness deepened over the forest, Edward cut a long skewer of green wood from the brush just beyond the camp. Then he sat down by the fire and made a kebab of his rabbit meat, along with a handful of vegetables he had produced from somewhere: brown mushrooms, and things that looked like onions and small potatoes. As far as Maes knew, these were not foods anyone had brought along on the trip.

Extraordinary. Maes wondered suddenly where he had missed the part of Ed’s file that read Raised by wolves. At this rate, the kid would be wearing a freshly-skinned fur loincloth by morning… and maybe a necklace made from the teeth of things he’d killed.

“What have you got there, Ed?” Maes asked a little warily, adjusting his glasses to study the boy’s hunter-gatherer fare.

Ed fingered the vegetables on his skewer. “Ground nut, wild onions… I don’t know the name of the mushrooms, but I recognize them from Yock Island.” A slight, wincing smile crossed his lips. “We found out the hard way what we could eat there.”

“And you just went out in the woods and found all that?”

“It’s easy enough, when you know what you’re looking for.” In spite of himself, Ed’s smile widened—and it was an expression Maes treasured, because that look of satisfied pride was a purely boyish response to an adult’s admiration. Then he placed his steel hand on a small bundle that sat beside him, and the Major recalled seeing it fastened to his belt when he returned to camp. “I brought back plenty, and some blackberries too. Help yourself.”

Darting a glance at Roy, Maes was equally intrigued by the fleeting look on his friend’s face. Lips curved with subtle pride of a different kind, even as dark eyes glinted with something that might have been the very faintest trace of… envy.

Now and then, Maes had wondered if Roy was a little jealous of Ed, at least in some ways. Between his inexplicable power of alchemy without a circle, and the sheer depth of knowledge and skill absorbed by his natural genius, there was much in him worth coveting—but even if the facts were unclear to Maes, the scars of Ed’s body were enough to tell him the boy had paid dearly for his gifts. The only real question was whether those scars had driven Ed to become such a marvel, or had somehow been a tragic consequence of what he was to begin with.

The awakening of his daughter spared Maes’ mind from wandering any farther down that depressing road. Elicia yawned and stretched on her sleeping bag beside Gracia. As she opened her exquisite green eyes, her little nose twitched at the aroma of roasting meat in the air.

“Hungry, Baby?” Gracia asked. Receiving a smile and nod in reply, she turned to their backpacks and started rummaging for the wieners Maes had promised. It was a special treat, just for this first night; they had to be eaten before they spoiled, after all. Canned food, fresh fish, and other forage finds like Ed’s would be the staples for the remaining two days of the trip.

While Gracia was skewering wieners, Elicia followed her nose to where Ed sat with his kebab… and Maes quietly reached for his camera.

“Whatcha got, Ed?” the toddler asked sweetly, looking at the speared pieces of meat that were sizzling over the fire.

Clearly mindful of Elicia’s earlier reaction to the fish, Ed flushed deep scarlet. “It’s, uh… chicken!” he blurted out quickly, and shot a glare over his shoulder at Roy’s silent look of vindictive amusement.

Elicia’s lips quirked with interest, and Maes wasn’t sure whether to chuckle or wince. Chicken was not an unfamiliar food to his daughter, but she knew it only in the form of the tasty breaded nuggets she enjoyed at home. The fact that those were made from the flesh of real birds was still an innocently abstract concept for her.

“Can I try some?” she asked, fluttering her eyelashes at Edward, and he grimaced uneasily.

“Well… Yeah, sure, if you want…”

Ed carefully pinched off a sliver of the rabbit flesh with his metal fingers, and after blowing on it to cool it, he offered the sample to Elicia. She nibbled on the meat with an adorable frown of intense discrimination, which Maes made certain to capture on film.

“Doesn’t taste like chicken,” she pronounced at length, and Ed gulped, looking as if he would have liked to melt into the ground.

Gracia had the kindness to rescue him from that awkward moment, holding out a loaded skewer. “Come on, Elicia! You want to help cook the wieners?”

As Elicia eagerly skittered over to her mother, Ed slumped with an audible sigh of relief—and then scowled at the other men of the expedition. Roy was discreetly hiding his mouth behind his hands, and Maes was fairly sure he even heard quiet giggling from inside Al’s armor.



Supper may have meant rabbit for Ed and wieners for Elicia, but for the rest of them, it was the fish they had caught. Fillets of fresh trout were soon grilling over the fire, along with some of the wild vegetables Ed had unearthed. The party settled into their meal in earnest… and not for the first time, Maes noted the sleight of hand Alphonse Elric seemed to perform with his food.

Maes had been mystified by Al’s eating habits from the first time he invited the brothers into his home, on that eventful occasion of Edward’s twelfth birthday. As far as he and Gracia could tell, the younger boy’s helmet always remained firmly in place throughout the meal; yet his plate was invariably empty by the end of it, and somehow, no one ever seemed to witness exactly where the food disappeared to. Either the kid had a secret hatch somewhere on his armor, or Ed must have been an accomplice to this stealth consumption. Or perhaps both.

However Al did it, the trick that had long been a puzzle in the Hughes family’s dining room was even more impenetrable by shifting firelight. Although Maes made a deliberate effort to watch the boy, he still couldn’t figure it out beneath the forest shadows.

…Not that his focus on anyone else could ever be all that sharp when Elicia was around.

A case in point arose halfway through supper. The smoke from the campfire had evidently been some help in repelling mosquitoes, but a few of the pests managed to brave the odor and exact their toll on the group. At length, Elicia sulkily abandoned her second wiener to approach Maes’ knee, scratching her bare arm.

“My ’skeeto bites are itchy,” she asserted plaintively.

She instantly had her father’s full attention, and he scooped her up in his arms, smitten with apology for taking her out into a world that might subject her to the slightest bit of unpleasantness. “Aw, I’m sorry, Sweetie! Where does it itch?”

The child pointed to a spot an inch below her elbow, and Maes kissed it—only to have her wrinkle her nose at him with precocious wisdom. “Daddy, it’s an itchy, not a boo-boo.”

“…Oh.” Deflated, Maes wilted a little. Then he grinned and rubbed his unshaven chin against her arm instead. “How about if Daddy scratches the itchy with his beard?”

He was not too carried away by Elicia’s peals of laughter to notice that Ed stood up then, slinking off into the dark of the woods. The teenager was absent for several minutes, and when he returned, he was carrying a bundle of fleshy weeds with small yellow flowers.

“Elicia?” he called, retaking his seat next to Al. “Come here a minute.”

Reluctantly, the girl extricated herself from her father’s arms and toddled over to Ed. Maes watched with interest as he crushed the plants in his automail hand, forcing out a milky sap with a faintly sweet, herbal fragrance. With his flesh fingers he began to rub it onto Elicia’s exposed skin, and she squirmed and giggled.

“This’ll help,” Ed assured her, with an encouraging smile—one of those rare sunlight smiles that reminded Maes of just how beautiful a boy he could be. “It’s better and safer than any bug spray you can buy in a store. It doesn’t smell bad to us, but mosquitoes think it stinks!”

The toddler laughed at the words and the slippery feel of the insect-repelling sap on her skin. When he had finished applying it, she beamed up at him, and favored him by briefly throwing her arms around his neck for a tight squeeze. Then she happily went back to her place between her parents… and it was Ed’s turn to fidget, the hot blush on his cheeks enhanced by the glow of the firelight.

“How about sharing some of that?” Roy muttered from the other side of the fire, as he swatted a mosquito on his arm.

Recovering his wits, Ed shoved the handful of vegetation behind his back with a triumphant sneer. “What’s the matter, Mr. Survival Training? Can’t find your own?”

Roy sank back a little, visibly simmering, and Maes had to stifle a violent snort of laughter into a cough.

In spite of the predictable hassling between Ed and Roy, Elicia’s affectionate glomp seemed to mark a turning point in Ed’s mood. He softened visibly, looking less like some kind of standoffish wild cat, and all the charming awkwardness of his gentler side slowly crept out of hiding. This was the boy who smiled sweetly beneath melancholy eyes that had seen too much; the boy who wanted to be warm and kind, but seemed just a little unsure of how to open himself to anyone but Al. It was rare and heartbreaking and wonderful, and even if Roy didn’t appreciate what Ed could be when he wasn’t fighting, Maes felt that mere glimpse made the entire trip worthwhile.

When supper was finished, it was time to toast marshmallows. Even Elicia must have sensed Ed’s mellowed and approachable mood by then, because she wandered back to him, carrying her skewer and the bag of puffy white sweets Gracia had given her. Ed watched her with a sort of wary bemusement as she plopped herself down by his left side, like a contented puppy. She stuck her first marshmallow into the fire, a little too low over the flames—and on some childish whim of fondness, she leaned her cheek against Ed’s denim-covered metal knee.

This new level of uninvited familiarity caused Ed to catch his breath a little, his eyes wide and body stiffening. It was a reaction Maes observed with a pang, for he knew just how tender Ed could be with little girls. He could still close his eyes and see the Elrics in the snow with an adoring angel-child, so much like Elicia, who clung and laughed and called them her Big Brothers…

But then, Nina Tucker was the very reason little girls made Ed’s heart hesitate most of all.

After two astonished seconds of staring down at Elicia, Ed apparently smelled burning sugar. Looking up in alarm, he quickly seized her skewer to pull the marshmallow out of the fire. A brief, unintentional hilarity ensued as he extinguished the gob of flaming stickiness… but when the crisis had been averted, he simply gave her a wry smile and a shake of his head. She giggled shamelessly, cuddling up to his leg once more, and he showed her how to hold the skewer at just the right angle to make the outside of a marshmallow turn crisp and golden.

Naturally, Maes captured it all on camera—with a few discreet pauses to lean back from the viewfinder and wipe the corners of his eyes.

For a while after that, it was all so nice.

Ed gave Elicia the blackberries he had found, and in turn, she insisted on sharing her marshmallows. Even more surprising, between mouthfuls of the gooey sweets, he was gradually coaxed to tell some of the simpler and funnier stories from his far-flung travels with Al. (During which, only Maes’ constant warning looks restrained Roy from adding his own acerbic commentary.) Ed even relaxed far enough to laugh for real: not his typically dark and sarcastic snickers, but a light, warm laughter of genuine enjoyment. This change clearly made Alphonse much happier as well, and he likewise became less quiet and more playful.

Later, when Ed’s storytelling had wound down, he entertained Elicia with alchemy. From the hard-packed earth of their campsite, he transmuted whimsical clay figurines shaped like animals and people. Elicia was enthralled, playing with the figures, giving them voices, eagerly asking Ed to create this character or that to fit into the stories she made up for them. Al joined her game with the enthusiasm of a boy half his age, although Ed primly resisted any desire to play with the toys himself—at least in front of Roy.

Of all the adorable things Maes had been blessed to see as a parent, this scene had to be very near the top of the list… and fatefully, the scene was still playing out when they learned they were not alone in the woods.

It was Roy who noticed the presence first. Ed had just transmuted a clay elephant for the rajah of a colorful myth Al was relating, and all three members of the Hughes family were absorbed in the tale Al acted out with the figures; but Roy’s attention was less focused. Maes wasn’t sure whether this was due to his deeply-ingrained alertness, or a more impolite boredom. Whatever the case, some faint sound caused him to look to the edge of the trail that stretched beyond the clearing, leading still deeper into the wilderness.

Maes was aware of the reflexive way Roy’s fingers tightened, even absent his gloves. That was definitely well-trained instincts kicking in.

“Hello?” Roy called out clearly, prompting the Elrics and Gracia to halt their amusements and pay attention.

For a second or two, there was only silence in the darkness beyond the firelight. Then the bushes rustled, and a man stepped to the edge of the clearing—almost as if he was a little chagrined at being noticed.

He was a big man to move with such stealth: a tower of muscle in cargo pants and a sleeveless blue shirt, with a blond crew cut and a face that looked like it had been introduced to its share of fists. Maes pegged him immediately as military, or at least ex-military, and he knew Roy would likely be drawing the same conclusion.

“Sorry if I spooked ya.” The man grinned awkwardly, rubbing his thick jaw. “Didn’t know anybody else was around here. Some buddies and me are camped a ways up the trail. I was just headed down to the creek for some water.” To illustrate his point, he lifted the large canteen that was clutched in his meaty hand.

It was rather unexpected to meet anyone else that deep in the woods, but not unreasonable. Although most people on casual holidays rarely strayed from the well-groomed, well-equipped campgrounds near the main tourist lodge, this guy certainly looked like a rugged type who would take on rougher excursions. It also made sense that he and his friends would pick a campsite not far from the Hughes’ favored location, for the same practical reasons of nearness to fresh water and the trail back to civilization.

With an amiable shrug, Maes waved a hand toward the brook. “Help yourself, pal. It’s not our water.”

Murmuring something like half a thank-you, the man strode off toward the edge of the brook. His boots scraped on the stones in the darkness, and he wandered back a minute later with his canteen full and dripping.

“Okay.” His eyes passed slowly over the camp once more, with the appearance of idle interest. “You folks have a good night.”

Then he was gone, his now heavier and more obvious steps fading as he trudged back up the trail toward his own camp. After a moment, Maes and Roy exchanged a long look that silently asked and answered each other’s questions; and by mutual agreement, they both relaxed.

Just another camper.

“So, Al,” Maes prompted with a grin, turning his attention back to the children. “What about that elephant?”



Happily full and worn out, Elicia began to nod off before long, and was asleep by ten o’clock. Conversation was stifled then by the necessity of keeping her repose undisturbed. The camp became quiet, and Roy Mustang thoughtfully watched his companions, now stripped of the frivolity that had stood between them and the vast silence of the wilderness.

Edward leaned back against Al’s metal side, exchanging soft words with his brother now and then. He looked pensive, and yet… more content, somehow, than Roy had ever seen him. How strange that Fullmetal, who depended on man-made steel limbs, should in some ways seem more natural and at peace in a forest than in the supposedly civilized world. As for Alphonse, his emotions may have been difficult to read on the surface, but the Colonel had known him long enough to tell he was unusually happy. Without a doubt, that had everything to do with the fact that Ed’s spirits had been lightened for once.

In an odd way, perhaps Maes did know what he was doing, without actually knowing what he was doing. Perhaps all this absurdity was worth it after all, if it gave any sort of roundabout comfort and respite to Al…

To both of the Elrics.

Then Roy’s attention was pleasantly diverted. While Gracia hummed a lullaby and tucked Elicia gently into her sleeping bag, Maes had been digging in his pack—and at last he produced two bottles of beer. As he held them up, he grinned at Roy and jerked his head slightly toward the woods. The invitation was unmistakable, and Roy stood, ignoring Fullmetal’s look of eye-rolling disgust.

Carrying a torch lit from the campfire, Maes guided Roy a short distance away, to a smaller and more overgrown clearing among the trees. After a few minutes of sweeping away leaf litter and piling up wood, he was able to create a small new fire from the dwindling torch flame. Then he sat down heavily with his back against a tree trunk, and offered one of the beer bottles to Roy.

“Thanks,” the Colonel murmured dryly, accepting the obvious peace offering as he sat down opposite Maes. It was a very good brand of beer, at that. Not cold, of course, but anything by way of a drink sounded welcome to Roy just now.

His friend shrugged good-naturedly. “Figured I owed you at least that much for putting up with all this.”

That opening remark was an invitation, too. Maes knew this forced trip seemed like some kind of bad joke to Roy, but in turn, Roy knew there had to be a reason for it—and Maes had planned this quiet little drink, away from his family and the Elrics, to give him the chance to ask.

For a short while Roy said nothing, savoring a few gulps of his beer, while he considered the best approach to his questions.

“Listen, Maes… I know you think alchemists have a way of attracting the bizarre,” he began tentatively at last. He stared at the fire, turning the bottle between his fingers. “I know what it means for you to trust us around Elicia and Gracia, even in a situation as harmless as this. But I have to admit… I don’t know exactly what you pushed us into this for.”

Maes chuckled low, but the twist that made its way across his lips could not quite be called a smile.

“Tell me this. On Ed’s official record, are you aware of who he lists as his only contact in the event of his death? Besides Al, I mean—which is really just a formality, as inseparable as they are.”

Roy blinked at the question that seemed apropos of nothing. As Ed’s commanding officer and his advocate for the State Alchemy exam, it went without saying that he knew every detail of his charge’s record, so he merely raised an eyebrow and waited for the point.

“It’s Rockbell Automail, Resembool.” Maes lowered his chin slightly, giving Roy a hard glance over his glasses. “Not a mother or a father. Not a grandparent or aunt or uncle, or any other relative—but the people who made the prosthetics he has bolted to that half-dismembered body of his.”

“Mrs. Rockbell raised the Elric boys for a while after their mother passed away.” That fact was also a matter of record.

“Yeah. I learned that from running his mandatory background check, but… still.” The shadow of something unpleasant flickered across Maes’ face. He took a long, thoughtful swig of his beer, absently tossed a stick into the fire, and was silent for a moment before he continued.

“Look, I may not know what their deal is, but anybody can see those boys are damaged goods… and, that. It’s…” There was a strange tension in Maes’ voice. He cleared his throat to dispel it, shrugged his shoulders, glanced away. “I like those kids, Roy. I want them to have a chance to know what normal is.”

“And you think that’s doing them a favor?”

The State Alchemist way of life. Conflict, sacrifice, pain; it never stops. Visiting normal every once in a while is just a tease.

Maes winced. His eyes darted back to Roy’s face, but his stubbled jaw stiffened a little.

“So.” Roy spread his hands expansively. “You let your darling family coddle them. Throw ’em birthday parties. Take them on barbaric little field trips like this. Show them bits and pieces of a life they can never get back, even if—” He caught himself abruptly. “Even if they were to achieve the goal they’re searching for, because nothing would ever erase the hell they’ve gone through to get it.”

An unexpectedly harsh breath rasped in and out of his lungs, and he grimaced in a lightless rictus of a smile. “Sounds like fun.”

For a moment, Maes stared. The knuckles wrapped around his beer bottle were white.

“I didn’t think even you could be that cynical.” His voice was hard, but quiet; sadness. Pity. Not anger. “To think there can’t even be any good in somebody just caring.”

In a flash, Roy remembered a thousand conversations: over drinks, over a chessboard, over stacks of paperwork, over fists poised for punches. Dark secrets. Tears. Hysterical laughter, of both the good and the bad kind. Quiet confidences, or merely silent, comforting presence.

And he said not a word to reveal it, but he softened… and Maes knew.

“So why drag me into this trip?” Roy ventured, after a short interval. “You know I would never have come along if you weren’t—”

“A suicidally curious moron who knows ten times more about you than anybody should know about anybody?”

“I was going to say persuasive. But that covers it pretty well, too.”

Maes relaxed, letting his shoulders slump back against the tree trunk behind him. Chuckled, shrugged, pushed his glasses up on his nose in a familiar gesture.

“I’m with Investigations, Roy.”

It was his excuse for so many things, and it never meant quite the same thing twice; but Roy understood it every time.

“I see. Classic interrogation technique: throw your subjects into an uncomfortable situation. Tip them off-balance and see what spills. Nice.”

“Look at it my way. A torn-up kid who’s some kind of freakishly gifted prodigy, his so-called ‘little’ brother who nobody’s ever seen outside of a flippin’ huge pile of armor… and you. Uncle Roy, the pyromaniac babysitter.” Maes smiled crookedly. “Sure, I’ve had wierder puzzles, but not many. And not knowing stuff doesn’t sit well with me. How do I help you when I don’t know the pieces you’re lining up on the board?”

Pieces. Roy wondered if Maes had deliberately stopped just short of saying pawns.

“It isn’t only that,” he said through clenched teeth, feeling a stir of vague anger that was somehow not directed at Maes in the least.

Another keen look over eyeglass rims. “Roy, old buddy, if I didn’t know you well enough to realize that… Well.” Maes’ smile abruptly turned just a little too light, and Roy thought interestedly about knives.

Small, exceedingly sharp ones, hidden beneath shirtsleeves.

“…You’re a good man, Maes.”

“I’m a father.” The grin took on a maniacal edge. “And speaking of, when are you gonna start yourself a family, hmm? I’m telling you, it’d even make a better man out of you.”

Roy sighed windily, and knocked back the rest of his beer at one go.

“Maybe it isn’t fair for you not to know all the facts of the Elrics’ case,” he admitted tiredly. “And maybe those boys do need someone else to trust… but that isn’t my call to make. There are personal matters involved that are their own business. What they decide to share with you is up to them.”

“Which is what brings us, exactly, here.”

The conversation had returned full circle to Roy’s original question, and now he understood the answer. This wasn’t about camping, after all; they were really on Maes’ own personal fishing trip.

“I’m going to bed,” Roy said flatly.

He rose and moved to the edge of the firelight. There he paused for a moment, with his back turned to the fire and his friend.

“Keep up the good work.”

---

© 2012 Jordanna Morgan


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