11. Pinako Rockbell gave him a dark look the moment he walked in the door. Roy was unable to gauge the look since as far as he knew, the woman had come to accept the notion of his occasional prescence in their lives. He concluded that the look had something to do with the fact that he was accompanied by her somewhat estranged surrogate grandson.

"I'd wondered where you went." she said to Ed, looking Roy up and done several times times, one eyebrow raised and her pipe hanging out of the corner of her mouth.

Once upon a time Edward would have balked beneath those words; drawn his shoulders up in a sulky pose and maybe shot her a glare. Now, however, he simply shrugged and muttered, "I had some business to take care of in Central." before asking flippantly, "Where's Al?"

"Out in back. Somewhere." Pinako answered without taking her eyes off Roy and just like that Ed left him alone in a room with one of the last people in the entire world he ever wanted to be alone in a room with.

They stood in silence for a few seconds until Roy realized that he was holding Edward's jacket- hadn't even noticed that the young man had flung the thing at him in the first place. He went to hang it on the coat rack when Pinako asked: "So, how have you been General?"

Roy froze and felt his body tense as he answered: "Please, Ms. Rockbell, I'm off duty." 'Besides, the title is only a formality'. He didn't say that part out loud, however.

She stared at him apprasingly for a long, silent moment while he clenched the shoulders of Ed's jacket in both hands.

"Well," she said curtly, "The next train doesn't leave for two weeks. You might as well make yourself useful."

----------------

The next few days settled into what could nearly be called a comfortable routine. Roy had lived in the city his entire life. When he was a boy his parents used to tell him that it was a shame, really, because children should be raised in the country. They made it implicity clear that the city was a place for adults. Children, they lamented, should be allowed to run free among the trees and the grass and the wind. City children spend far too much time inside reading about things they shouldn't know and playing with things that aren't real. They have far too much time to draw into themselves, build a wall around their emotions and become far too comfortable inside of it.

City children are born adults.

Needless to say, concepts such as chopping firewood, fixing broken porch doors and even peeling vegetables for a strew were completely foreign concepts to Roy Mustang. Pinako Rockbell had lived in both the country and the city and had decided that she rather liked the country better. She knew how city people worked and that the best and quickest way to make them uncomfortable was to strip them of their inborn city pride and set them about doing forced, manual labour.

Roy was no stranger to this sort of work having been in the military for most of his life (when he was nineteen years old a commanding officer had demanded he dig a pit five feet deep and one foot wide in less than an hour. Although this had seemed a daunting task at the time, he now snickered when he realized that this was approximately the size of Edward Elric), but Pinako seemed determined to work him harder that he had ever been worked before. Roy began to wonder if he were finally paying penance for the murder of her children through, of all things, excessive housework. She seemed to require an entire year's worth of firewood (either that or she had been assigned to provide for the entire town of Rizenbul that winter), and she needed it immediately. Roy often wondered where Edward disappeared to during most of the day and why he wasn't attempting to come to his rescue. Then he realized that the young man would probably garner an unhealthy amount of enjoyment from the sight of his former commanding officer in a plain white shirt, wilting under the sun as he bent under the harsh commands of his "Auntie Pinako" to bother intervening on Roy's behalf.

Mrs. Rockbell watched him like a hawk, sometimes grinning; sometimes scowling, but always unreadable. Whenever he thought it was safe to take a break and wipe the sweat from his brow, Pinako would call from the window: "I don't hear chopping, Mr. Mustang! When the Brigandier General Armstrong was last here, he chopped ten times that by lunchtime!"

And there was the other thing- she was absolutely enamoured with Alex Louis Armstrong. It was bad enough that Roy almost wished that he could senf a letter to his younger self warning him to never allow Armstrong to go within a hundred mile radius of Rizenbul under any curcumstances whatsoever. He tried several times to explain to Pinako that he most certainly not the same kind of soldier as Armstrong, and in fact, Armstrong was really one of kind in the Amestris military. Roy was rusty from nearly a decade of desk work not to mention sustaining more than one life-threatening injury in his youth. He thought (once) of casually mentioning that he once nearly had an imploded lung via a sword thrust viciously in his chest. He also considered mentioning that the reason he wore an eyepatch had a lot to do with a bullet wound delivered to the left side of his face. However, in the end he decided that it was in poor taste and instead he did as Pinako asked and cleaned out the storm gutters while she stood on the ground and said: "It's been a while since we've had a man around here to help out with the yard work."

"That's not true, Auntie," Al replied, a bit scoldingly, "I could have done it! And so could have Winry for that matter!" Pinako just tapped the end of her pipe and went inside.

Al really was a sweet kid. He even came over to check on Roy when he tumbled backwards off the ladder and laid prone in the grass mumbling something to himself about military tours.

"Are you okay Mr. Mustang?"

"That woman," Roy answered listlessly as he stared at the sky, "Means to kill me. And she means to do it with a straight face."

"Don't take it too personally," Al said calmly. Roy lifted his head and sheilded his eye from the sun to look curiously at the younger Elric brother. Al shook his head lightly and a smile crinkled warmly under his eyes. That was strange- Edward only ever smiled on his lips, "It's just Auntie's way of saying that you're welcome here."

Roy dropped his head back into the grass and closed his eyes with a sigh, "Really? Is that what it is? I never would have guessed?"

Speaking with Alphonse Elric was a disorienting experience to say the least. Roy had never gotten to know Al as well as he knew Edward- he was mild mannered, he was polite and respectful and unnervingly reserved for a fourteen year old boy. Roy had always found Edward easier to relate to. Edward was prideful, voliatile and bursting at the seams with more intelligence and ambition and potential than he knew what to do with. He always knew where he stood with Edward, or at the very least the difference between where he wanted to stand with the boy and where he actually did stand. Although he hated it bitterly, Ed was well suited to the military in some ways. As irrational, emotional and downright ridiculous as he could be, in the end Edward still knew how to be ruthless.

Alphone was the sort of person you would never find in the military. So content to stand back and play second fiddle to his brilliant brother. Roy supposed that he was somewhat like Hughes in that respect (not that Roy had ever understood him either). Al without his memories should have been an entirely different creature. Should have been being the key concept. He was a little less wise, a little more fustrated. Oddly enough, a little more adult. This was the Alphonse Elric who would have existed had he never lost his body to the Gods of Equivialent Trade- an Alphonse Elric who technically should have never existed. He was a walking, talking violation of the rules that govern an alchemists life and it never failed to unnerv Roy how similar his voice and expression was to the empty suit of armour he met cowering outside an operating room in Rizenbul so many years ago.

Sometimes he caught Edward shooting his brother that strange, thoughtful and almost mournful look. Roy recognized that look from the past and had always gotten the impression that Ed was looking at his brother and seeing the human child within. Now Roy wondered if all Ed could see when he looked at Alphonse was an emotionless suit of armour.

He opened his eyes again to see Al still grinning down at him with that warm smile, mingled with a stare that was something akin to a student studying for a term paper. Al always looked at people he knew from his former life like that. Roy could tell that it bothered him how easily the banter came between himself and Ed- snarky, quasi-hostile, tellingly intimate pratter that Al knew should have been familiar but wasn't. He knew that the boy was bothered by these things, but he never spoke a word about it to anyone. Unfortunately, Al's body language was about as opaque as handblown glass.

"Can I help you, Alphonse?"

Alphonse drew back quickly, blinking in embarassment, "Ah- I'm sorry." he rocked back in the grass on his heels and gestured towards the house, "My brother wanted to talk to you. He's in the kitchen."

Roy propped himself up on his elbows and stared at the house, debating whether he should make the elder Elric brother wait. He could picture Ed pacing in the kitchen, glowering and grumbling about unreliable old farts who can't even follow simple instructions and figured it was even payoff for the workload Edward's honorary grandmother had piled on him.

"Why didn't he just come get me himself?"

Al 'hmphed' a little half laugh under his breath and replied, "My brother said that you were getting pasty and out of shape. He told me that you needed to get some exercise before your joints seized up and the rest of your hair turned gray."

Roy immediately ran a hand through his hair as he felt his heart stop for a few beats.

The rest of his hair? The rest of his hair? Since when was any of his hair gray in the first place?

He was on his feet, stalking towards the house before Al could finish giggling. Roy could almost hear Edward smirking tirumphantly.

----------------

It wasn't a particularily attractive notebook- all bent spined, dog-earred with tattered pages sticking out at all angles. Roy would even go far as to say that it was the rattiest block of paper and leather he had ever seen in his life because, in that condition there was certainly no way he was going to call it a notebook.

Ed slid the tome across the table and Roy caught it, lifting it gingerly, "What exactly is this, Edward?"

"It's my old alchemical journal." Ed answered frankly, resting his chin in his palm and fixing Roy with an uncomfortably intense stare. Roy glanced at him briefly before carefully letting the... "notebook" fall open in his hands.

March 15th, 1912: today Al and i visited Crestheim and really i have never seen any place so lifeless as this stupid town. i nearly went INSANE with boredum since theres absolutly nothing to do in this shit hole. they always say that Rizenbul is boring as hell but at least we have forests and rives and feilds and valleys and stuff. i bet that bastrd back in east city is having the time of his life laghing his ass off at me. i dont know where he gets the nerve to send me and Al alllllll the way out here on sum stupid wild goose chase when...

... well, i guess that the people here sorta had a problem. and I sorta fixed it, which i suppose counts as official military business. Plus the local inn had what was possibly some of the best stuw i've had in years. it's still not as good as mom's (and this part was crossed out heavily) the train ride wasn't so bad this time either. Al and i usually get the entire cabin to ourselves since most people are uncomfrotable sitting next to us so we get to enjoy the silence and wach the scenery...

"And before you say anything, the grammatical mistakes were... mostly intentional."

"Mostly?" Roy smirked and Ed just rolled his eyes.

"Hey- they don't teach stuff like reading and writing here. Al and I learned how to read from studying the Old Man's alchemy books. And while that's all well and good for teaching you about chemicals and compounds, it doesn't teach you how to spell useless words like 'boredom'."

"It's spelt with an 'o', not a 'u'. In case you were wondering."

Ed groaned and rapped his fingers on the table impatiently, "Just shut up and read."

"I did." Roy snapped the book shut and Ed nodded.

"So?"

"So, what?"

"What do you think?"

"Travel logs. Interesting choice, Edward. Even most other Alchemists would probably have disregarded this as typical military protocol."

Ed furrowed his brow, "That's not what I meant. Can you understand it?"

Roy opened again to the page he had been reading and studied it a moment longer. When he was finished he handed to book to Edward and began, "You were on a relatively unimportant mission in which you had to apprehend a relatively untalented rogue alchemist who was abusing his power in a small, costal town. You unintentionally used a new technique to beat him at his own game and later tried to map out an array based on it. You used your brother's name in conjunction with array mapping mostly, I suppose, because he's better at it than you."

"Hey," Ed interrupted, "What makes you think-"

"He'd have to be. You wouldn't. Anyways, the technique involved chemical transmutation, mostly focusing on the oxygen found naturally in the air. You compressed it and combined it with highly charged hydrogen atoms, using the low air pressure that day to your advantage. The result was something like lightning springing from mid-air. Unfortunately, the array you crafted didn't work."

He threaded his fingers beneath his chin and smiled charmingly, "Did I miss anything, Edward?"

On his part, Edward look pale and rather insulted. He flipped the book shut and muttered, "I really hate you sometimes." Roy only laughed, "Is my code really that simple to decipher?" he demanded, glaring at Roy with flashing eyes.

Roy stopped laughing and narrowed his eye slightly, "Not necessarily. However, remember that I do know you fairly well. Besides- you chose me to represent abstract chemical transmutation for a reason, remember? The subject of that particular entry just so happened to be my specialty."

Ed pursed his lips and began thumbing through the journal, a determined crook in his eyebrow, "So I suppose that by law of equivialent trade, if I ever happened upon your journal I'd be automatically privy to all the great, alchemical secrets of Roy Mustang?"

"Mmm, I wouldn't be so sure."

Ed shot him a wavering look, "Are you trying to tell me that after all those years that you know me well enough to decode my journal at a glance, but not vice versa."

"Well," Roy began delicately, wincing at the loud creak in the chair as he eased back, "The subject of my journals are suitiably oblique. In your case, I bleive that it may be a somewhat foreign topic."

Ed stopped his thumbing and looked up at Roy with what could only be described as absolute disgust, "You don't mean..."

"Yes."

"You write your alchemical journals on the subject of women?" a deep shudder ran up Edward's spine and his shoulders shook.

"What better subject is there?"

Ed sighed sadly and went back to his page-flipping. Roy watched him quietly and after a moment, Ed added (without looking up): "You really like women, don't you?"

Roy responded, "Yes, I do." without even stopping to consider why Edward would be asking such an aimless question in the first place. It was the second sigh that jogged his memory and he wondered how he possibly could have forgotten what exactly had transpired the night before they left Central.

"Edward-" he was glad when the blonde shoved the journal at him since he had absolutely no idea what he had meant to say.

"Try to decode that." Ed practically had his nose in the air he was looking so smug with himself. He folded his arms across his chest and waited. Roy lifted the notebook from the table and began reading again.

August 3rd 1911: this place is pretty nice. not much is happening, but i think that Al & i really needed a break. i went for a long walk alone this morning and it gave me time to think some things over. even when you make mistakes it's always possible to undo them, right? well, it's what i figure at least. most people will just sit there on their asses waiting for some sort of stupid "God" to answr they're prairs. i can't understand relying in someone who's existence is still in debate to solve all your problems for you. if you really want things to change, you have to make them change using your own power. one truth in this world is that you can only rely on your own power, not the power of some dumb guy sitting up in the clouds who your not even sure is real anyways.

i saw a... crap, what was it called. one of those birds that Winry relly used to like when we were kids. it brought back memories and it made me consider for once getting a camera to take pictures and stuff for auntie and winry. I think they'd like to see all the cool places al and i get to visit now that we're n the military. well, maybe Auntie no so much since she travelled when she was young, but i know Winry would DEFINITLY want to see it and Auntie would be happy just knowing that we're safe.

well, i could always buy a camera and write letters, but i know that i'll never send them. I haven't talked to them since before we... did that thing that wuld probably have made Auntie mad. with our house. it was necessary but i'm not quite sure i want them trying to send me mail all the time since it would just end up going through that bastards inbox. i never send the letters Al gives to me either. he's probably wondering why they don't write back, but i'd rather not tell him just yet that i've been chucking the stupid things. we agreed when we left home that we were on our own anyways. that's how it is- two brothers vs the world.

after I got back we went out to eat. i really do miss mom's stew, but they served decent steak at the inn. it's still weird that Al can't eat. I always order him a meal accidently and i can tell that it makes him feel like crying, but he never says anything about it.

if i could remember the name of the place i would highly recomend it. but i can't so i won't.

Roy's vision was blurring as he dragged his fingers across the messy words. It was beginning to get dark and he was glad that the entry was over. He was surprised that Edward would have written anything so deeply... personal in his alchemical journal. Then he realized just how ingeniuous the boy really was- the more personal the entry sounded, the more personal it felt, the less the reader is going to search for the deeper meaning behind the words.

"What's it mean?" Edward asked impatiently.

Roy shrugged and shook his head helplessly, "I'm at a loss here, Edward." he had been such a bitter child. Roy tried to imagine an Edward Elric who hadn't attempted to revive his mother. An Edward Elric with four flesh limbs, a smile that reached to his eyes and a lot less swaggering hubris.

He couldn't do it.

Ed's metal jabbed the page and the blonde caught Roy's blurry gaze with a very serious stare, "That," and he tapped his finger on the page for emphasis, "Is a perfect formula for soul transmutation. And I am going to teach it to you."

Roy raised an eyebrow and Ed just broke into a slightly wicked grin.

Soul transmutation? At this point, Roy was just about ready for anything.