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Ed waited until Mustang was called back into the office to ask.
Al was poking through the stolen box to see if any of the other film reels were labeled; Hughes was sitting on the bed across from Ed, brow furrowed as he scribbled something in his notebook.
“Hughes?” Ed asked. He got a vague hum in response. “Why…why wouldn't Mustang want us to see any combat footage of him in Ishval? I mean, not up close, but other than that–it’s not like we haven’t seen him use flame alchemy on missions. Why would it be so different?”
Hughes froze; then slowly he set his notebook down. His expression, when he looked up, was a terrible combination of grim and gentle.
“Ed,” he said quietly, reluctantly, “What you’ve seen him do–that’s barely a glimpse. That’s him using it as little and as, as small and targeted as possible.”
Ed’s brow furrowed; across the room, Al went still.
“So it was more like…artillery? If he’s making explosions.”
Hughes grimaced. “Not…quite.”
“Then what ? Why won’t you just tell us, it can’t possibly be worse than–”Ed stuttered to an involuntary pause–”than what we already watched, so what the hell is the problem–”
“Ed.” Hughes finally met his eyes. “If he wanted to, Roy could burn Central to the ground.”
Al cocked his head. “Like–in a couple days?” he said uncertainly. “If no one stopped him?”
Hughes looked away from them again, dropping his gaze to the ground as tension crept back into every line of his body.
“In an hour,” he said at last, and both Elric brothers froze.
“In–he–what?” Ed managed into the stunned silence.
Hughes sighed. “That’s why he doesn’t want you two to see, or to know at all–the way people treat him who saw what he could do in Ishval, the way they look at him…you two have never seen him as a weapon. You’ve never been afraid of him, or called him a monster or a demon or–anyway.” Hughes visibly cut himself off, clearly upset on his best friend’s behalf. “He thinks that if you find out, you’ll hate him.”
Ed swallowed hard, thinking about the Mustang he knew–the one who had just rushed across town because Hughes said they needed him, who gave Ed a purpose and a path forward to getting Al’s body back, who would jump in front of a bullet for any of his men. Who took naps in the records room and made fun of Havoc’s dating life and played chess with Breda. And then of the Mustang he had just seen in those videos, a teenager in a war zone shaking apart in his friend’s arms, a commander who would do anything to protect his men and earned their absolute loyalty in return, an injured soldier bleeding out in the sand. He tried to imagine hating either of those versions of Mustang; it was even harder than imagining a Mustang who could, and would, burn a city to the ground in less time than it took to drive across it.
“We would never hate him,” Al whispered. “Why would he think that?”
“Because…” Hughes sighed. “Has he ever talked to you about Ishval? I mean, before today.”
“No.” Ed shook his head.
“No, he wouldn’t have.” Hughes took off his glasses, rubbing briefly at his eyes before pushing them back into place. “I don’t want to go behind his back on this, but–that reporter talking to his men? The one who called him a monster?”
Ed clenched his fists. “Yeah?”
“No one who really served with Roy believes that…except Roy.” Hughes' shoulders slumped. “He thinks that if you find out what his alchemy is capable of you’ll hate him for it, because he does.”
Al’s rattling gasp would have been a sob if he had the ability. Once again it felt as though Ed’s world had cracked apart; it had been hard enough seeing what the war had done to a younger Mustang, but for Hughes to say that the confident, calculating officer they knew now still thought…still felt…
“We would never hate him,” He repeated Al’s assertion even more vehemently.
Hughes looked between them both, a terrible shadow of doubt still in his eyes.
“Just…if he has to really use his flame alchemy someday, on a mission you two are on, remember some of the things we talked about today.” With that he rose to his feet. “I should head home.” Fixing them both with a sharp look, he added, “if I leave those films here for the night until I’ve got a place for them, will you two swear not to watch them?”
Remembering what they’d already seen, Ed flinched.
“We won’t watch anything,” he promised.
“Good.” Hughes paused in the doorway for a moment before stepping back to put a hand on each of their shoulders. “I’m sorry you boys had to see any of that. If you’re–worried, or anything, you can call me or Roy. Neither of us will mind.”
Ed dropped his gaze to the floor.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. “We…we will.”
With a quick squeeze Hughes was gone. Ed looked around their room in a daze. It looked identical to that morning, before they’d left for the library for what they’d expected to be a normal day of alchemy research; and yet, between now and then, so much had changed.
. . .
Two weeks later the entire team was sent north to confirm–or deny–reports of a former state alchemist smuggling some sort of experiments across the Drachman border. Their orders were to apprehend the alchemist and confiscate any useful research they found, or at least that was what Mustang had told Ed; but he’d seen Mustang and Hawkeye trade apprehensive glances over the mission briefing when they thought no one was looking.
[mission things happen, they find the rogue alchemist and track him back to his base]
“Oh, hell,” Havoc breathed as he peered over the top of the hill. “It’s not an alchemy lab, it’s a whole Drachman compound.”
“What?” Mustang shoved himself up the slope beside him. Following Havoc’s gaze, he swore. “Shit. That’s definitely not what we were briefed.” He dropped back down to where the rest of his team, plus Ed and Al, were standing.
“All right, new mission,” he ordered. “Havoc, Ed, and I will head down there and see what we can find. Hawkeye, I want you and Breda to find a good place to watch us from that gives you some options if we get into trouble. Fuery, see if you can tap into their communications. Al, I want you to stand guard and watch Fuery’s back while he’s head-down in the radio. Everyone understand?”
A chorus of “yes, sirs,” plus Al’s nod and Ed’s muttered affirmative, ran around the circle. Looking at the flint-hard black Mustang’s eyes had become, Ed was uncomfortably reminded of another conversation he’d had with Hughes just before leaving for this mission.
“So why does Mustang have a team, anyway?” Ed was sprawled on the couch in Mustang’s office, the man himself absent for yet another meeting while Hughes finished up their report on a joint investigation. “I mean, the other state alchemists I’ve met are all high ranks, but they’re usually just doing research or assisting on investigations and stuff as alchemy experts.”
Hughes paused, posture suddenly tense, and a sudden apprehension gripped Ed. He couldn’t have stumbled on something else terrible, could he?
The investigations officer abandoned the report for the moment and swiveled the desk chair to face Ed.
“You know that Roy and I met at the military academy, yeah?”
Ed shrugged. “Yeah. What’s that got to do with it?”
“So, Roy went to the Academy before he got his state alchemist certification. He trained and commissioned as an officer first.”
“So…” Ed trailed off, still not quite sure what Hughes was getting at.
Hughes sighed, propping his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. “Most state alchemists are researchers who get a military rank with their certification that justifies their funding and makes them answerable to the command staff. A few, the combat alchemists, deploy as one of many assets, like a specialist or a squad
“Or a weapon,” Ed muttered, looking down.
Hughes grimaced. “Or a weapon–that can be moved around as part of a larger strategy. But Roy isn’t just a researcher or a combat alchemist. He’s a trained commanding officer, and he’s good at it. He’s a strategist and a field tactician, as well as an alchemist, and his main role in the military these days is far more officer than researcher.” When Ed’s brow still furrowed, Hughes shook his head. “Most state alchemists are researchers just assigned a rank. Roy is a soldier , a career one. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a brilliant alchemist, and of course he has quite the reputation as one, but it’s just as much his abilities as an officer as his alchemy.”
“Oh,” Ed said softly. He thought back to that soldier in the interview, the one who had said he would follow Mustang into any hell. Alchemy alone wouldn’t earn that kind of loyalty. “I think I get it now.”
Back in the present he followed Mustang towards the compound, moving from shadow to shadow and waiting with held breath each time a guard patrol passed by.
“These are Drachman regulars,” Havoc whispered as another set of guards went by. “What are they doing here?”
Mustang’s expression was set in hard, unforgiving lines. “Nothing good.”
At last they made it to what seemed to be the center of the compound, an enormous warehouse-like building that was eerily silent as soon as they slipped through the doorway.
[they sneak all the way into the central lab, somehow]
Ed’s eyes widened in horror as he finally realized what he was looking at.
Beside him, Mustang swore, low and vicious.
“What?” Havoc whispered, looking between the two alchemists. “What is it?”
It was Mustang who answered.
“Automatons,” he said grimly. “But not mechanical–he’s powering them with alchemy somehow, and from the looks of that circle and the stains on the floor it’s some kind of alchemy fueled by blood–or worse.” He shook his head. “And if he’s working with Drachma, and from the looks of this lab getting funding and manufacturing straight from the Drachman military…” he glanced to Havoc, expression gone even darker. “Imagine an army that doesn’t need to sleep or eat, can’t be injured, and is nearly impossible to kill.”
Havoc turned white. “Fuck.”
Tearing his gaze from the terrible, too-familiar stains spattered across the enormous array in the middle of the lab, Ed found himself staring at the automatons themselves. These ones seemed not to have been activated yet, but there were already arrays traced over the steel joints and copper pistons that stood in place of muscle and bone.
“We’ve got to get back out and report this,” Havoc muttered, and Ed nodded agreement.
The colonel, though, paused.
“Mustang?” Ed ventured. “We need to report this, right? Someone can take care of it, send some more soldiers up here or something?”
“To who?”
Ed blinked. “What?”
Mustang turned towards him, a look in his eyes that was hauntingly, horribly familiar–the same one that he’d seen on a much younger Mustang in those stolen films, declaring that the military didn’t even consider him human anymore. “If we report this, command will use it. Probably put researchers on it and take it even farther.”
“But–but it’s powered by–”
“Ed.” It was worse, he thought, that Mustang’s voice was gentle. He would’ve rather been yelled at. “You saw what they did in Ishval, what we did on their orders. If they find out about this, they won’t hesitate.”
Ed’s shoulders slumped. “So then what do we do?”
“Let’s meet up with the rest of the team first, see what they found out. Then we’ll make a plan.”
. . .
Fuery and Al met them at the top of the ridge before they even made it back.
“The army!” Fuery gasped out as he ran towards them. “The Drachman army, sir, they have the alchemist making something they’re calling ‘deathless soldiers’ and there’s already 400 of them down there–”
“Alchemical automations. We found them.” Mustang’s lips pressed to a thin line. “You said 400 already?”
“Yes, sir.”
Havoc stepped up next to them, swinging his rifle off his shoulder and into his hands. “What’s the plan, boss?”
Mustang looked back at the Drachman compound, sprawled through the entire valley, then back at his team. “Where are Hawkeye and Breda?”
“They went up the ridge to the west, sir, but I’m not sure where exactly,” Fuery told him.
“Havoc, go find them and bring them back here.” The blond soldier took off without another word.
“What are you going to do about the automatons?” Al asked, voice much smaller than usual. “They sound bad.”
Mustang grimaced. “They are bad, Al. How he’s making them–” a flurry of breaking branches cut him off and he whirled around. “Hawkeye?”
“I’m afraid not.” The rogue alchemist they’d been sent to find stepped out of the trees with a smile far too wide to be sane. A dozen automatons flanked him on either side, eyes glowing the curdled red of dried blood. “I suppose I should be flattered that they sent the Commander of Hellfire himself out to retrieve me.”
“Vanek,” Mustang said flatly. “Selling out to the highest bidder, I see. And how many people have they let you murder to power these things?”
The other alchemist laughed, a high wheezing giggle that made Ed’s hair stand on end. “Oh, Mustang. Always did have a clever tongue. Rather a bold move, though, don’t you think? Accusing anyone else of being a murderer?” He made a gesture with one hand, the silver ring on his thumb glinting with sudden alchemical light, and every automaton took a step forward. “I have you surrounded now, though, and you won’t find my lovely creatures as easy to kill as people.”
Mustang swept the clearing with his gaze once again. To Vanek it might have looked like panic; to Ed, though, it looked more..calculating. Marking his team’s positions. But why–
Just as Vanek opened his mouth to speak again Mustang whipped his right hand out of his pocket. Ed had only a second to register the familiar white ignition cloth and red-stitched array; then the colonel snapped.
Fire roared instantly across the other end of the clearing, blazing so incandescently white that it hurt just to look at. Ed flinched away, closing his eyes, but it didn’t help; the afterimage flashed against the backs of his eyelids as heat struck him like a sledgehammer.
Then just as suddenly it was done and he was blinking in the aftermath, the absence of light and heat and sound so striking that for a moment it seemed there was none to be found in all the world. Where the automatons had stood were twenty-four puddles of slag, quickly solidifying in the cold of the northern winter. And where Vanek had been–
Ed swallowed hard, mouth gone suddenly dry. Where Vanek had been standing was absolutely nothing, not even ash.
“I guess,” Mustang said into the emptiness, “they weren’t that much harder for me to kill after all.”
At that moment Havoc, Hawkeye, and Breda all but tumbled down the last slope.
“Sir, are you–”
“Hawkeye.” Mustang cut her off. “Did Havoc tell you what we found?”
The lieutenant straightened. “Yes, sir.”
Their eyes met, locked into a flurry of communication no one else could catch.
“You know what I have to do, then,” Mustang said at last. An emotion Ed couldn’t read crossed his features, bleak and terrible.
Hawkeye nodded once, her gaze steady on his. “Yes, sir.”
The colonel looked around at all of them once more; this time, though, he seemed almost to avoid looking at Ed and Al, eyes skittering away from them as though it would hurt him to see.
“Right.” He straightened his shoulders and turned back towards the Drachman compound. His right hand with the ignition glove was rock steady as he raised it up; then, of all things, he closed his eyes.
Ed, reeling and baffled and terrified of–of what, he wasn’t even sure, and that just made him angrier–started to say something; then Mustang’s eyes snapped back open.
Whatever emotion might have been there before had vanished; his expression was utterly blank, face set in steely lines that turned him into a stranger.
Then he snapped, and the world exploded.
Ed staggered back against Al as the entire valley below filled with fire and smoke and the roiling billows of explosions. He’d thought the last time had been loud, but now he learned that he didn’t know the meaning of the word as booms that threatened to vibrate his bones out of his body echoed off the valley walls and back again until they blurred into one long howl.
The shockwave hit next. Ed would have fallen over completely if Al didn’t catch him; the rest of the team braced themselves, bent nearly double as the ground shuddered underneath them.
All except Mustang. He stood tall even as the gale-gust whipped at his long coat and his hair, hand still raised, eyes fixed resolutely on the absolute desolation below.
Long after the bright orange of fire vanished and everything below them for miles was pressed beneath roiling clouds of smoke the terrible echoing noise still continued; for what felt like an hour but couldn’t have been more than ten minutes they just stood there, Ed and Al at least struck dumb.
He could burn down Central in an hour. As the memory of Hughes’ voice came back to him Ed realized that until this moment he hadn’t believed him.
“Let’s pack up and get out of here before someone sees the smoke and comes to investigate.” Mustang turned away from the destruction as Havoc, Breda, Hawkeye, and Fuery immediately went to follow his orders, heading back to the clearing they’d been using as a base to retrieve their packs and put away Fuery’s radio. Only Ed and Al, it seemed, were having trouble processing.
Or–Ed looked around, registering the complete lack of surprise in the faces of the rest of the team. Or he and Al were just the only ones that hadn’t ever seen what the colonel could really do with his alchemy.
Ed knew Mustang. The man sat beside his hospital bed when he was hurt and grumbled at Hughes and caved immediately when Elicia asked him for anything. He kept Ed and Al’s secrets and protected them from the military and, even if Ed had never admitted it, was the closest thing they had to a parent.
Commander of Hellfire. That’s what Vanek had called Mustang. And now the colonel was packing up supplies and discussing the best route south with Havoc while a miles-wide military compound and half the valley around it lay burned to utter ruin a mile away.
“Brother,” Al said quietly. “I see why Lieutenant Colonel Hughes made us promise, now.”
Ed thought about the look on Mustang’s face as he snapped, the way he couldn’t seem to look at Ed and Al in the moments before or since. He swallowed hard.
“Yeah,” he said, just as quietly. “I get it, too.”
. . .
The first few hours of their journey back south were mostly silent, Mustang in the lead and still not looking at Ed and Al where they trailed silently at the back of the group. When they emerged from the forest at last to a village with a tiny train station Ed just slumped onto the single bench, Al hovering beside him; the rest of the team gave them occasional looks but otherwise left them alone. Mustang and Hawkeye had a brief conversation off to the side, examining the train schedule.
“All right,” Mustang announced as they rejoined the group. “There’s a night train back to North City leaving in an hour, then no trains for three days, so we’ll be travelling overnight. No sleeper cars, but it’s not the roughest we’ve slept on this mission.” His gaze darted briefly to Ed and Al and then away, expression still holding that awful blankness. “Let’s get ready to go.”
[the train comes, they board]
Ed hadn’t thought he’d be able to sleep, not after everything that had happened that day; the long hike and the sneaking through the compound combined into enough physical exhaustion, though, that not half an hour into the train ride he found himself nodding off.
At first his sleep was dreamless; then the fog slowly turned into images, resolving itself into familiar faces, and even in his sleep Ed shivered.
He was back on the ridgeline above the Drachman compound, explosions ringing through his ears and the colonel standing in front of him with the flame alchemy array flashing on his upraised hand. Smoke was rising from the ground, through the trees, quickly closing in around them; only Mustang was still clear of it.
Then the colonel turned around, and it wasn’t the colonel.
It was still Mustang; just not the Mustang Ed was used to. Instead it was a teenage Mustang in his desert combat uniform, his upheld hands shaking but his eyes empty. He snapped again, but this time there were no flames in the valley below; instead they started rolling up his arms, his chest, crackling into his black hair as embers started to eat through his sleeves, and still he didn’t make a single sound as he snapped again and again and again–
Edd bolted upright with an aborted scream on his lips. Around him the train car was dark and quiet; Fuery snored lightly on the next seat over, Havoc stretched out next to him. Al had gone into the dining car farther up to read before Ed fell asleep. He twisted around to see the rest of the team sleeping quietly on the benches behind him, all except–
His heart thudded instantly into his throat. All except Mustang.
Trying to be both as quiet and as fast as possible and probably failing at both, Ed moved towards the front of the train car where a light still shone under the next door. Logically he know nothing really could have happened to Mustang, but between the nightmare still holding him in its grip and the blankness that hadn’t left the colonel’s eyes since Vanek stepped out of the trees, he couldn’t help the panic. He’d spent half the day in a daze, trying to reconcile the man he knew with the one who had just snapped his fingers and destroyed a military base larger than all of Resembool. The nightmare, though, horrible as it had been, had reminded him how much he didn’t want to lose the colonel; and of what Hughes had said, when he’d found them with the videos of Mustang in Ishval and later when Ed had asked about flame alchemy.
He quickened his pace until he was practically running, throwing the door to the next train car open to find–
Mustang, sitting quietly at the other end, completely unharmed.
“E–Fullmetal? Is something wrong?”
Ignoring Mustang’s question, Ed scanned him from head to toe. No blood, no flames, his regular black coat instead of desert white. He was fine.
Except…as Ed’s heart rate finally dropped back towards normal and he could think clearly again, there was still something out of place. Mustang was sitting alone in this empty train car instead of sleeping with the rest of the team; and he was still wearing his ignition gloves. He’d started to call Ed by his name and then switched to his title, dark eyes still guarded.
And just like in Ed’s nightmare, his hands were shaking.
“He thinks if you see what he can do, you’ll hate him.” Hughes' voice echoed from Ed’s memory. “That if you find out what his alchemy can do you’ll hate him for it, because he does.”
Ed marched determinedly between the empty bunches to stand directly in front of his Mustang, pretending not to see his commanding officer’s aborted flinch. Before Mustang had time to react, he dropped to the bench beside him and flung his arms around his shoulders.
“I don’t hate you,” he declared into Mustang’s chest. “I don’t hate you, and Al doesn’t either.”
“Fullmetal–Ed–”
“No.” Ed shook his head, tightening his grip at the brokenness in Mustang’s voice. “We’re sitting here until you believe that I don’t hate you and I don’t think you’re a monster.” He buried his face in the lapel of Mustang’s wool coat. “And until I know that my nightmare wasn’t real and that you’re–you’re still alive.”
At that Mustang’s arms finally came around him, though much more gingerly than usual.
“Come on,” Ed grumbled. “I know we don’t hug that much, but you’re usually better at it than this.”
He felt more than heard Mustang’s sigh; but the hand on his shoulder wasn’t shaking anymore.
“All right, kid.” The deep baritone rumbled against his ear, at last losing some of that awful, haunting blankness. “If…if that’s what you want.”
“It is.” Ed settled even more stubbornly against him, curling sideways to better hear Mustang’s heartbeat. “And Al will tell you the same thing in the morning.” Already he was falling back asleep.
Just before truly nodding off he felt Mustang smooth his hair gently out of his eyes, the rough ignition cloth that meant fire and terror to so many nothing but familiar and comforting against his skin. Despite everything that he’d seen that day, it still meant safety to him; Mustang was there, and he didn’t have to worry. Someday, he thought drowsily, he should maybe tell Mustang that he and Al thought of him more as a parent than a commanding officer half the time.
But not tonight.
. . .
A few hours later, Al crossed through that particular train car on his way back to the team and found both of them asleep, Ed curled up against Mustang’s shoulder; and if he took a picture to remember the moment by, well…no one but Maes Hughes would ever have to know.