Thanks for all the reviews along the way!

Final chapter! I might elaborate more on this AU eventually, but for now, at least, Dragon Roy will get to rest without me tearing him to pieces. For now.

Enjoy, and thank you all for reading! :D

By the time Maes wandered his way back over to Marcoh's street, it was late at night, the moon and stars out and the street lamps on, and he was no less lost than before.

Ed had been gone for hours, now, vanished every since this morning, and Maes wasn't really expecting him back any time soon. He'd looked miserable and reluctant when he'd prodded him out the door earlier today, and Maes had known right then and there it was going to take more than short chat with Roy to get that look off his face. The young alchemist probably wanted to be alone, if he wasn't still either with Roy or with Marcoh, and had sought out something to eat or the library just to be by himself. If Al had been here to talk with him, then perhaps-

Well, Al wasn't here.

It was all Maes.

And Maes didn't have his wits about him enough cajole a prickly, irascible Ed into coming out of his shell today.

God, he wished.

After reading as much of his best friend's file as he could get through, then thoroughly regretting every last bit of it, then processing it enough to get himself out of that stricken stupor, Maes hadn't been able to sit still for any longer, either. He'd choked down an unhappy, queasy meal and quick shot at the hotel bar, knowing he'd had to, then found himself back wandering the streets of that damn town without any sense of purpose or any desire at all except the desperate need to clear his head.

In the end, he wasn't all that surprised when his aimless search about the small town took him back to Marcoh's street, and he wasn't all that surprised that when he realized where he was, he could not bring himself to turn away.

Maes hesitated again. He lingered on still a little way's back, feet numb and uncertain as he stared back up the street towards that same little out-of-the-way, nondescript house they had found yesterday, that house that had changed everything.

The file he'd spent the day reading through, containing essentially all of his best friend's meager childhood, stayed heavy like lead under his arm.

Then, with a heavy, aching sigh, and the nerves that had been building ever since Roy had looked them in the eye and said I'm not human, Maes started back up the street.

If Ed was still there, talking with Roy, then Maes could perhaps gently nudge him into going to get something to eat. Of if Ed was too stubborn for that, then-

His stomach knotted in virulent, unbearable disgust.

Ed would certainly still have plenty to talk to Marcoh about.

Pictures of a young, teenage Roy, bruised and grappling for support, that scientist behind him helping him to stand... that scientist who looked a hell of a lot like a much younger Marcoh...

Maes' teeth gritted so hard his face hurt.

Oh, yes, he and Marcoh would certainly have plenty to talk about.

Folder still securely grasped under his arm, fists clenched so tightly he could feel the nails digging into the palms of his hand, Maes took a deep gasp of a breath. He squared his shoulders, willed his heart to calm, and when that didn't work, clenched his fists, instead, to at least stop the tremors working through him from head to toe, and set off forwards again.

Except...

There, on the roof... was that...?

It was a little hard to see, in both the dark and the distance away. But once the shadow had caught his eye and he'd looked closer, there was no longer any questioning what it was.

There, sitting up on the roof, leaning against the shadow of the chimney and pale as the chipping white paint in the moonlight, was Roy.

Maes drew to a surprised halt, and for several moments, couldn't manage anything at all except staring up at his friend.

His immediate instinct was worry, but it didn't take long for him to forcibly smother that into quiet. The roof was plenty big and not that steep, and even from here, he could see Roy was in no danger of falling. Even if he had been, unless he somehow took an upside-down tumble and cracked his head open, the worst he'd get was a sprained ankle or bruised face. Besides, no matter how unsteady Roy had been on his feet before, he obviously felt well enough to climb his way up onto the roof now- if he was steady enough to climb up there, surely he was steady enough not to fall.

Sitting up there like that, back to the street and face upturned, leaning to the chimney as if trying to hide himself in its shadow-

Guilt swept through him, and once again, Maes' footsteps faltered.

Knowing Roy, he probably just wanted to be alone.

Except... you don't know him, do you.

Not really.

A second waver of guilt tightened in his throat, and Maes' feet again went numb underneath him. For a heartbeat, every last bit of certainty fled away to crumble like ash, and continuing to approach that house would've felt like climbing a mountain.

He did not know how well he really knew Roy, anymore. He didn't know how much of what Roy had told him over the years had been fabrications, either stories he'd been ordered to say or outright lies that he'd made up on the spot. He didn't know how much of what he thought his best friend was just wasn't true.

If he was being totally honest with himself, standing down there on the street and looking up at Roy, all but miles away-

If he really was honest about it, Maes did not know if Roy actually cared about him at all.

Thought of him as anything beyond a useless nuisance who'd somehow spent ten years shoving his way into his office and pictures in his face, but had never once managed to not be so self-absorbed that he couldn't look beyond the surface to realize that the man he called his best friend wasn't a man at all.

Standing down there, shivering in the dark and staring up at his withdrawn, cold friend, Maes felt so abruptly sick with himself he wanted to scream.

Roy probably didn't want anything to do with him at all.

Roy probably couldn't stand him.

Had never been able to stand him.

Maes sucked in another gasp, guilt tightening around his heart until it cracked. Six weeks spent hunting for Roy as hard as he could but now that'd he finally found him, now that he could see him right up there alone and waiting and stepped on-

Now that his friend was finally there, right within arm's reach, Maes didn't know if he could face him.

But he also knew that backing away now would do more harm than facing him ever could.

Tucking the folder more securely under his arm, Maes jogged back up the dusty street, keeping his head down and his hands still buried into his civilian jacket's pockets. There was a garden lattice nearby, surely what Roy had used to climb up himself, and Maes cast it only a cursory shudder of a glance before just gritting his teeth and grabbing for it. The wood was frail and half-rotten, crumbling with splinters and disuse just like the whole rest of the house, and putting his weight on it seemed to be just asking for trouble- or a broken neck- but if it had been able to hold Roy...

Maes hitched a leg up, holding his breath. Then, grabbing as gingerly as he could, he hitched up another. The flimsy wood groaned underneath him, so thin that he felt it strain with every step he took. He gulped.

Roy, if I break my neck for you, I swear...

Somehow, Maes doubted it was luck because none of them had been anything approaching lucky, lately, he clambered his way up to join his friend on the roof without hitting the ground. From the creaking, clamorous cacophony, each additional groan of the wood horribly loud in the quiet night, there was no way on earth Roy hadn't heard him coming.

But no matter what noise he'd made, Roy had never turned around to greet him.

He still just sat up there on the roof, silent and utterly still. Propped up against the chimney, in an exhausted slump with hair as dark as the sky and badly in need of a trim spilling over the back of his scarred neck, and head tilted back towards the sky.

From here, behind him, where Maes could only see the back of his best friend's head, it finally looked like Roy again.

Except, that wasn't who Roy was.

It never had been.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up," Roy murmured.

Maes winced again.

I'm sorry, he wanted to say. I should've realized, he was a splitsecond away from gasping. This never should've happened to you. I'm so sorry it did, and I'm so, so sorry that I never saw it for myself or that you felt you couldn't trust me enough to tell me.

His throat was so suffocatingly dry, nothing came out but a pathetic, tiny little cough that made his face burn and his heart clench.

Roy laughed, very small, very quiet, very careless. "If you're wondering, I got tired of being locked up in that stuffy basement, and since I didn't need to hide from the two of you anymore, I came out here for some fresh air." He paused and tilted his head back, just a little, just enough for one pale blue eye to meet his. "You've also probably noticed I make a habit of hanging out on empty rooftops, so... you found me. ...I suppose it's immaterial now, but- oof!"

Whatever Roy had been trying to say, Maes was probably never going to find out, but that didn't matter, because whatever he was trying to blow off as unimportant now was far less crucial than this:

Throwing his arms around Roy, and pulling him into the tightest hug that he could.

He felt his friend stiffen in immediate surprise, going utterly still and alarmed in his arms, and Maes might've regretted making him flinch but it was honestly just a too late for that. If Roy tried to fight him off, he'd let him go, but for now, he just couldn't stop himself.

He needed to feel Roy was alive, Roy was okay, Roy was not that shattered chimera he'd spent all day reading about.

That Roy was the same Roy he'd known for so long, no matter how much about him he now understood was a lie, because he was still Roy.

He had to be.

"...Maes?"

His breath caught in his throat again, and for a heartbeat his voice was too thick to get out at all. Trembling, Maes buried his head down against Roy's infectiously warm shoulder, breathing in several times and clutching him in sheer, broken anguish.

"Y-yeah, Roy?"

Roy was quiet for another moment, remaining almost unerringly still. But then, against his shoulder, he felt just the faintest impression of a smile. "While I appreciate the sentiment- I think- is it too much to ask that you at least be careful, and don't try tackling me again until we're both on solid ground?"

A wet chuckle struggled past the lump in his throat, pathetic even to his own ears, but still, somehow, he managed a nod. It was, somehow, just so Roy, that it was enough. Oh, yes, Maes was still completely lost and left reeling, dizzy as if on a flimsy piece of driftwood in the middle of a hurricane- but it was Roy. Scarred and physically changed to hell and back, almost unrecognizable as his friend, even his voice too low to be right, to even be fully human, those few words were all he needed to hear.

This was still Roy.

"Deal," Maes rasped weakly, swallowing the lump in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, burying his head deeper against the hot shoulder, and then at last made himself unlatch his arms, and pull away.

Roy tilted his head to look back at him, eerily pale in the moonlight and eyes utterly unfathomable. For several moments he was too silent and unreadable to bear, just sitting there wordlessly in the darkness as he watched him like a predator evaluating a threat.

Then, he simply turned away again to stare back up at the sky, and with one great, heavy sigh, relaxed.

"In answer to the question I know you have," Roy started, "no, nobody else knows. Hawkeye got the closest, but... she did not find out, either, Maes." He smirked faintly again, exhaling another sigh, but the sigh was so hot Maes could feel it even from a foot away. "She approached me, after Ishval. Pulled a gun on me, actually- she's lucky she did it that early on. I'd report anyone who did that to me now."

"S-she-" Maes shook his head, even more hopelessly lost than before. "Hawkeye did what?"

Shrugging aimlessly, Roy shifted himself back a little more against the chimney, leaning his head against the cold bricks to glance at Maes just out of the corner of his eye. "Flame alchemy is apparently the Hawkeye family business. She was very insistent on figuring out just where I'd learned my alchemy from, and at that point in her life I don't think she really cared if she got arrested for threatening to execute a so-called war hero in his office. It took quite an amount of convincing for her to believe I hadn't robbed her father's grave, but in the end, I swayed her without telling her the full truth. Believe it or not, I actually interpreted it as a test, at the time... thought she'd been sent from the scientists to ensure I would not spill my backstory at the first opportunity." He paused again, a tiny, restrained smile working its way across his face. "No one else has ever gotten that close to getting it out of me."

It took Maes several moments to be able to keep his head on, after that one. He rubbed a hand over his face in stricken disbelief, then just sagged back onto his hands to roll his eyes up at the sky.

He remembered, very easily, being stunned to find out Roy had suddenly taken on an adjutant at work- even more stunned to find out that it had been the famed and terrifying Hawk's Eye. That had been still long ago, way back during his... bad days. When Roy hadn't done pretty much anything more than just exist and scare the hell out of Maes with every opportunity, and certainly not been in any shape to be taking on assistants- or, hell, being a functioning human being who didn't self-destruct if left alone for too long.

Then, one day, he'd just turned up with one Riza Hawkeye assigned as his adjutant.

At the time, when Maes had asked him about it, Roy had just gone dead silent. Sat there on the cold floor of his cheap apartment and kept his mouth firmly shut, and refused to say even a single word until Maes had given up, and at last changed the subject.

Roy had done that a lot, back then, actually... just clammed up whenever something came up that he clearly did not want to answer.

That, Maes now understood, he couldn't answer- not truthfully.

After spending all day reading that terrible file, Maes no longer had to wonder why his best friend had used to just shut down, whenever confronted with something that wasn't safe or he didn't know how to answer.

And speaking of that file...

"Roy?" Maes asked again, swallowing tentatively. Anxiety squirmed in his chest, and he swiftly silenced it as best he could. This was a conversation that they were just going to have to get through, no matter how uncomfortable it made him or how much he never wanted to think about that file ever again. He sat there in silence, waiting until Roy had finally turned just enough to acknowledge him again, and then, with a deep breath, Maes tugged the folder out from under his arm, and held it out to him. "I think you should be able to decide what happens to this."

Roy narrowed his eyes, for a moment saying nothing, and Maes couldn't help but shudder and wish that whatever Marcoh was doing to help him would hurry up, because that look on Roy's face, when his face looked like that, was nothing short of unnerving. But the worst thing he could do now would be to flinch away because of what Roy looked like, so he kept himself calm as Roy first looked him over, and then, searched pale eyes down to the folder in his outstretched hand.

For several moments, his face remained utterly impassive. A withdrawn, closed off mask that Maes couldn't read anything from at all, blank and expressionless as he flipped the file open in his lap and slowly began to read.

He made it about five long, anguishing seconds into the thick file before his face contorted with sick realization. He opened his mouth once, eyes shocked wide, then made a small, shocked noise in the back of his throat, and slammed the horrible file back shut.

He looked stricken, almost physically winded. Actually hurt, for just that moment, gutted by nothing more than words and pictures on a page. Maes had never seen that look on Roy's face before, and that was all it took for him to know that he never wanted to see it again.

"Y-you've-" He choked, voice thick and wavering, then stopped to shake his head, eyes squeezed shut and hands fisted and shaking. "So. I... I guess you've already read all of this, then?"

Maes flinched, equal parts shame and apology burning in his eyes. That look was all he needed to regret every last bit of it, to wish he'd never even opened it, to wish that file had never even existed in the first place, but after all that had happened, he simply could not lie to him. "I'm sorry," he whispered, unable to face him. "I shouldn't have read it, I know, Roy. I'm so sorry, I... I had to, and I already had the file, I couldn't just get rid of it! I... wanted to know, and I- couldn't-"

"It's fine."

"-I had t-to... what?"

"It's," Roy said again, "fine." He gave a cold, dispassionate shrug, as detached as his voice was flat, and the faint smile he turned onto him was so insincerely fragile it made his heart crack. "Considering the circumstances, I would've been curious, too. ...Thank you for returning it to me, all the same." Roy flipped silently through the file, the pages flickering through his fingers even while his gaze stayed turned away- turning so fast that even if it hadn't been dark, even if Roy had been trying to look, he would've found nothing but a blur. "So?"

So? That was all Roy had to say about it? So?! Shivering violently, Maes hugged himself in the dark, warring with his own sense of disbelief and guilt and hurt that fought so thickly in his throat he could barely get any words out. "So... what, Roy?"

"What do you want to know?" Smirking coldly again, Roy shifted about a bit to cross his legs, balancing himself so he was looking at Maes straight on instead of up to the sky. Despite all appearances, he actually did not seem all that annoyed with Maes, or upset that he had read that file. In fact, by the look on his face, the only one Roy was really all that annoyed with here was himself. "I'm sure you have questions, Maes. Well, go ahead and get them out now. I'm here. I'm listening." He pushed his hair back, the messy black strands ruffling in the cold breeze, and that unsettling, expectant smile stayed in place all the while. "I would really rather get this over with sooner rather than later, Maes, so by all means- ask away."

The words stayed disturbingly calm, all the way through, and so did that chillingly detached look on his face. Everything about it was just too at ease to be anything but downright wrong.

But Roy was sitting there, waiting in silence with all expectations on him- and for the first time in six weeks, Maes found himself face to face with his best friend, and free to get all the answers in the world.

Problem with that was, they were far past the point where this was something that could just be talked out.

"Why..." Maes coughed, swallowing shakily. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't will his voice or his heart steady. "Why didn't you ever tell us? Any of us, Roy?"

Did you really not trust me?

All this time, have you really never once trusted me?

The look on Roy's face darkened again, that fragile pale and scaled skin clouding over once more in his usual withdrawn, detached mask- the mask that Maes had spent years watching Roy wear against the rest of the world, and he'd thought he'd understood, but was only now finally realizing just how little he'd ever really known. "Do you remember how we first met? In Ishval?"

If this had been before tonight, that question would've taken a moment or two to think on. But after yesterday's bombshell, Maes had spent every waking moment combing through everything he knew about Roy- that, of course, included the day that they'd met. "Of course," he said, nodding. His voice caught a little in his throat again and he coughed dryly, still cold and shaken, inside and out. Now wasn't the time for him to crumble apart. "There wasn't anything special about it at the time... one night we ended up passing time around the same campfire. There was a whole group of us at first, but somehow it ended up just being the two of us. Then the next day, we wound up on the same mission, and... the rest is history, I suppose."

It was a memory Maes had used to look fondly upon.

Now, it tasted bitter and sour, just like everything else about their friendship.

At the time, Maes had recognized the pale, pseudo-alchemist sitting blankly on the other side of the fire, staring with glassy eyes and only answering about half the time with just monosyllabic grunts, nodding in all the wrong places and staring at him in befuddlement. The Dragon Alchemist had been a figure of increasing fame known all around the encampment, always startling quiet and staring, and that night, Maes remembered thinking the man had been in some sort of shellshock.

As it turned out, he probably had been.

But that night, Maes had not known any of what he'd known now. That night, Maes had only known the famous, silent alchemist sitting across from him didn't seem to have a single friend on the face of the planet, and had looked stricken, lonely, and scared.

Maes hadn't really expected to wind up being Roy's friend, that night.

But he had figured that Roy had really looked like he could use one.

And looking at him sitting there across from him now, eyes averted, shoulders hunched, arms stiffly folded around himself in the cold and the dark, he didn't look all that different now.

"Right," the colonel sighed heavily, and his eyes flickered shut. "You spent about an hour talking about your girlfriend back home, and trying to guess if I had one. That night, after you finally gave up, I asked Marcoh what I had done wrong."

"Done... wrong?"

Roy nodded once, his features still distant. "Yes. I thought you were another one of the scientists, there to keep me in line. They'd tested me, a few times before, making sure I wouldn't let anything slip if Marcoh wasn't there to stop me... I couldn't fathom why else anyone would sit down and talk to me like that." His mouth twitched again, tightening down into a thin line that seemed to restrain vague amusement, or even a little laugh. "He had to explain it to me that you had nothing to do with the program... that you were just being friendly. I still didn't get it. It took him ten minutes to get me to understand what that was, and even then it was only because he called you the Dr. Watson to my Sherlock Holmes. My only conception of what friendly was was from the books he'd read to me at night- I didn't have the first idea what it looked like in the real world until I met you."

Maes didn't completely follow, but, after all that he'd read today, he wasn't totally sure he even wanted to. The calm, almost sickeningly amused look on Roy's face right now was more than enough for him to never want to understand, ever again.

Even back then, Roy hadn't trusted him.

Roy had thought he was one of them, from the very instant that they'd met. Maes had only wanted to just give him a little bit of company that miserable night, and all he'd done manage to make him feel even worse.

He was so, so sorry...

"And the day after that-" Roy continued on, still blithe and calm, still so infuriatingly calm. "Remember? We had a mission together."

"I... yes." It hadn't been his first mission, with the Dragon Alchemist, but it had been his first after actually meeting him and talking with him- or at him. From what Maes remembered, it had simply been a mission like any other.

Roy's eyes flickered back open again like the wings of a jarred moth, gazing at him half-lidded and forcibly detached, as if he was looking down on the situation from far, far away. Perhaps that was the only way he could look at a past this painful at all. "I was escorting you and your squad into enemy territory. I'd been that way before, so I knew that we'd be going through a warehouse filled with gunpowder- I'd known I'd be escorting you through there for days beforehand. No one told me anything officially, but... Marcoh tried to keep me informed."

This was going nowhere. And, as much as Maes didn't want to push his friend, he was still hopelessly lost. "All right," he started, trying to be gentle, but- god, Roy was not making this easy. "I'm sorry, I guess I just don't see-"

"Gunpowder explodes if you ignite it, Maes."

What on earth was Roy going on about? "Yes,Roy, it does, but-"

"Maes." Roy smiled dryly again, licking his lips, his fangs, looking entirely too at ease for every last bit of this conversation. "You're all really slow on the uptake, aren't you? I've told you everything, but you don't want to hear the answer."

Oh, god damn it, Roy. "Buddy-" Maes started, trying to be gentle with it, but hell was his friend not making it easy-

"I was going to kill us, Maes."

Maes blinked back dumbly.

Huh?

His friend sighed heavily, leaning his head back again in his continued mission to apparently never once risk looking him in the eyes again. "Marcoh knew. I'm not sure how, but he knew I was planning on turning that mission into suicide. He could've reported it, but he didn't. The night before he told me he was trying to make things better, that he was talking to our superiors to try and give me a chance, but the morning we left he didn't even try to talk me out of it. He just told me that he was proud of me, and that he hoped he'd see me soon." He smirked a little, eyes still averted, and gave one cold, heartless shake of his head. "He looked so fucking miserable when he said that it made me want to do it even more."

Roy had been...

On that mission-?

"But-" Maes choked, head swimming. He thought back desperately, combing through the memory in rising alarm. But he had been on that mission, with Roy. Not just him; ten other soldiers under him, Maes leading the mission while Roy had been assigned under his command as a weapon for him to direct. He didn't even remember it now; Roy had been pale and twitchy and silent as ever, pale, twitchy, silent, but effective, and the mission had gone as smoothly as any other...

Roy had been planning to kill them?

Oh my god...

Then again, after what he'd read in that sickening file-

Could he even blame him?

But, Roy obviously hadn't done anything, Roy was here, with him, both alive, so- so-

"I was going to kill us," Roy said gently again. "I was going to kill myself, and I was going to do it in a way they could never blame on me or do anything to me ever again. I didn't care that that meant killing all of you with me... I'd already murdered a hundred people; what was a few more?" He spat out a soft, cruel attempt at a laugh, cruel and heartless and stuffed with so much self-loathing it took Maes' breath away. "But when I left that morning, and realized you were on the mission with us, I couldn't do it."

With an unerring sense of calmness, Roy tilted his head back further back, exhaling a warm breath that was more smoke and heat than flame. Fire or not, it still expanded between them, a little warm heartbeat against the cold of the night.

Somehow, it only served to make Maes shudder a second time.

"You were the first person to ever just treat me like a normal person, Maes. Others in the camp had talked to me before but you were the first one who did it to treat me like a person, not a... a malfunctioning, mentally ill weapon." Roy gave a loose shrug, breathing out warmly again. "I'd never wanted to hurt anyone- not anyone besides myself. But no matter how much I wanted to I couldn't make myself hurt you."

Not for the first time, Maes' head swam. He had to grapple for the rough tiling on the roof to keep himself even halfway steady, so shocked and reeling he quite nearly toppled straight down onto the floor.

He'd talked to Roy that night as barely more than an afterthought. He'd been exhausted and hot, but not willing to sleep just yet after whatever horrible day he'd had, and Roy had been there so Maes had just turned his attention on him. If it had been any other day, any other mission, any other damn campfire-

Neither one of them would be here today.

Despair swelled up in his chest, potent and toxic, and Maes found himself grateful for the darkness around them to disguise the burning in his eyes.

He hated Marcoh. He hated Bradley. He hated the Ishvallan war; he hated the entire dammed military.

Somehow, even while sitting here listening to Roy tell him about his plan to murder him and his entire team in a blaze of fire, he could not hate him.

"...Roy?" he mumbled at length, voice wavering and thick. With a violent shudder, Maes wiped his eyes, then forced himself to look back across at his friend.

Roy chuckled once again, hand waving back and forth like an absentminded wind chime. "If you're going to hug me again, please wait until we're on solid ground."

"You..." Maes sagged backwards, a warm, almost liquifying affection squeezing around his heart so tightly it hurt to breathe. "How transparent am I?"

"Transparent enough." Shaking his head, Roy continued to breathe faint clouds of smoke and abject heat, staring almost dreamily up to the sky and with a faint smirk that was so much Roy it made everything right and everything hopelessly wrong in the same heartbeat.

His smile slowly faded, creasing back into a thin, flat line in his scarred face, and Maes' own temporary rise of spirits fell with it.

"Marcoh left, not long after that. You kept hanging around, and I think when he realized I didn't need him to keep me halfway sane, he realized he had no reason to stay." Roy shrugged heavily, his shoulders scraping back against the rough bricks and his mouth twitching once again. "He fought for me, with Bradley. He was the first one to try and argue that they should give me a chance, when the war ended. He knew he couldn't get the military to let go of me so he fought for me to just get a little bit more freedom instead, and when he'd gotten it, he told me that if I ever needed help, I could find him here in Kiel. ...then, he left."

The words came out sedate and calm, detached just like the rest of him. But underneath them was a cold, familiar loneliness, too. A loneliness that Maes had seen in Roy before, but never before recognized the origin of it.

If Maes had been closer to him, he might hugged him around the shoulders, or nudged his arm, or at least done something to get that awful look off his face. As it was, a good few feet away and trapped in an almost enforced silence, Maes found himself helpless and quiet, unable to do anything at all to make this right.

Roy stayed entirely too quiet, and entirely too unbothered.

"Um, Roy?" he asked after a few seconds, leaning forward just a bit closer. He thought about trying to touch him, but one look at the slowly fading, twisted blue scales on his hand made him think otherwise. "I was wondering about that, too, actually. How did you end up, this... a colonel? An officer at all?" Scratching his head, Maes glanced down once to the shut, waiting file, biting the inside of his cheek through a shudder of sheer revulsion. "I get why they used you in Ishval, but everything that happened after it, just... I don't get it, Roy."

But Roy just gave him a wane smile once again, rolling his eyes skyward to emanate an air of carelessness so thick and strong it was suffocating. "I think you're right about what their original intentions were. But by this point, from their perspective, they had sunk thousands of man hours and millions of cenz into me, turning me into the perfect soldier. Ishval was my final exam, and I passed it with flying colors. From their view, why stick me back in a lab at all? If I didn't snap on the battlefield, I wasn't going to snap doing paperwork." He barked out another cold chuckles, eyes gleaming in the pale light. "It wasn't as if they had a choice to begin with. I'd succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, so much so that the Hero of Ishval was already in the papers back in the city. Soldiers recognized me, knew who I was. The public knew my name. They couldn't exactly just vanish me back into a lab to never be seen again... so they stuck me in their second best cage instead."

"...as an officer," Maes breathed.

Roy nodded once.

And now, Maes understood.

Roy was right. He wasn't sure how much of it was details that his friend had pieced together years later, because he sincerely doubted those bastard had told him anything at the time, or ever, in his entire life, but- he was right. The Dragon Alchemist had become a nationwide phenomenon at the time, half the country celebrating him as the hero who'd finally ended the civil war while the other half reviled him as a murderer, but all of the country had known his name.

Known his face, and been waiting for him to come home.

Unless Bradley had wanted to kill him off in a freak 'accident', Roy wouldn't have even been able to just disappear, back then. He was a public figure, and public figures didn't vanish into military labs in the middle of the night to never be seen again.

So they'd made him an officer, instead.

Stuck right in military HQ, eight, ten hours a day. Under constant supervision, given orders to follow and nothing at all beyond it. Even could get a few promotions, if he was an obedient enough dog, but surely wouldn't have ever gotten any higher than colonel. Because his job- his orders- had been to sit obediently and do what he was told, and unlike Maes, unlike Riza, unlike Ed, those had not been orders that he could ever refuse.

And that was how, then, Roy had ended up in Central with him.

He could understand it all, now. At last, every last horrible detail of those agonizing long days after Ishval made sense. Now it made sense, that day the war had been declared officially over, why Roy had been one of the only ones not to celebrate and instead had just sat there, reading his transfer orders with an agonizing slowness over and over again, tracing and mouthing the words and half-dead. It made sense why, after Maes had finally stepped back home to hug Gracia and all but melt down with the relief of it- Roy had been greeted by no one, and instead had simply smoothed his uniform down, then followed two stone-faced soldiers all the way out of the station.

Why Roy had calmly shown up in perfect uniform for all the parades and commendations and ceremonies for weeks after, yet after each and every one, Maes would have to take him home, because the one time he hadn't Roy just shut down, and not gone anywhere at all. A corporal had found him sitting on the steps the next morning, silent and shellshocked, waiting in a blank-eyed stupor for his next order.

Everything about his friend, after ten years of just thinking him a little odd, a little strange, eccentric, and weird, now made perfect and horrifying sense.

The lump in his throat caught and swelled, and for several moments it hurt so badly he could barely even breathe.

"...Roy?" he finally asked again, only when he's somehow managed to clear his head just enough to at last pathetically grasp himself down to the edge of coherency again. He swallowed dryly, trying to think, then refocused back on his pale friend. "That day when you said... when you told me you wanted to become Fuhrer..."

Maes didn't know how to go on- couldn't put it into words himself. That, well... Roy could not become Fuhrer, had never been able to become Fuhrer, and that as new as this revelation was to Maes, Roy had to have known this ever since he'd said the words himself.

Luckily, by the newly grave look on Roy's face, he did not have to explain.

It had taken months, after Ishval, for him to finally be able to sit down with Roy and have that discussion with him. Maes had been at his wit's end, the then-major functioning as a perfect soldier during work hours only to decompensate helplessly when his duties were done. At that point, Hawkeye had been assigned as Roy's adjutant and had helped him as much as she could, but nothing they'd done had changed the fact that Roy was so bad off it had been terrifying. He'd barely slept. He'd barely ate. He'd carried out whatever mission was assigned to him with a mechanical skill and meanwhile, Maes had been pretty sure if his best friend had had the option to just stop existing, back then, he would've taken it in a heartbeat.

At the time, when he'd been able to sit down with Roy and get him to commit himself to something in the future, just see himself as something worthy of even having a future, it had been such a huge, dizzying relief he could've burst into song.

Now, understanding it had all been a lie...

Like nearly everything else that had happened, these past few weeks, he just didn't know what to think.

"You're right," Roy muttered after a long pause, folding his arms to frown away into the cold night. He glanced over the other roofs with distant eyes, focus leaving Maes again as if he just couldn't meet his gaze. "Being Fuhrer was never an actual option for me. To be quite honest, I was stunned when I was even promoted this far. But I knew I was only being given as much freedom as a master could afford to give an especially obedient dog... you might take a leash off a well-behaved pet, but no matter how well he sits still, you're never going to give him the run of the house, are you?"

Maes flinched.

Roy was smiling as he said it, not quite genuine but sincerely amused, all the same, sardonic and cruel. He glanced back at Maes, half-expectant, and his smile broadened just a little more.

Maes badly wished that he'd stop.

When Maes did not reply, Roy just shook his head and turned away again, smirking into the chilling silence. "Well. Yes. I was never deluded into believing I could actually become Fuhrer, one day. But, to me... the end goal was never really important, Maes. Just what I could accomplish along the way."

Maes breathed in deeply, forcing himself to keep still. "And?" he asked, the word coming out stiff and almost cold.

Seeing his best friend sitting there like that, hugging himself and painfully, undeniably alone, was more than enough for Maes to want to end this conversation right now. To forget about all of it and move onto something that didn't hurt either one of them to remember, to just fall back into everything that they had used to have, and just get that damn look off his face.

But that wouldn't help.

That wouldn't help Roy at all, and that wouldn't make this go away.

They had to get through this now.

"I wanted to try and- not make up for what I did in Ishval, because I can't. But at least try and help those that had survived. That part was true. I also hoped I could maybe stop another Ishval from happening again; at least, while I was still alive. That was true, too." He scrubbed a hand through his hair, seemingly exhausted from the inside out. "I also hoped I could stop another me from happening again."

Maes' eyes burned. Somehow, through some miracle of the thing, he said nothing.

He badly wanted to.

He wanted to tell Roy what he's told him for years, now; Ishval was not solely his fault or responsibility- now that he Maes knew just how his friend had ended up in that sand-crusted and blood-soaked hell, he wasn't so sure he could say it was his fault at all. But Roy had never listened to him before, and somehow, he wasn't all that confident he would listen to him now.

"And..." his friend went on heavily, eyes still turned away and distant, "I wanted to protect everyone, too. Really, Maes, nothing that I told you was a lie, so much as just... double-speak, I suppose." He glanced at him, then exhaled another ring of smoke with a smirk. "I don't know how much you're aware of, concerning dragon biology, but we've got more of a pack mind, than humans. My dad was our pack's alpha. Since my older siblings all died, and no one ever successfully challenged me for it... I'm, technically, an alpha, Maes. The only human alpha in existence, probably."

Not for the first time- god, not for the first time at all- Maes couldn't manage a single thing more than just sit there, utterly dumbfounded, and stare at his best friend.

Roy was a human alpha.

Okay, then.

That was a thing.

"At the time," Roy said, "when I said that, I mean- I was a human alpha without a pack Being Fuhrer is, quite literally, in my blood. I knew I could never be Fuhrer, but I couldn't just exist there without looking at the chair at the top, and if I didn't have a choice but to be in the military..." He trailed off into another distant and morose shrug, but there was a smile on his face again; a fragile smile that Maes didn't know what to do with. "All I know is how to be a good soldier. I couldn't keep going down the path I was; even I could see that, I was miserable. The only way I could continue to earn my freedom was by being the best soldier I knew how to be. ...telling you I was going to strive to the alpha's uniform was as honest as I could be."

Maes paused, considering this. This conversation felt like it'd be more at home in the closest thing this town has to a bar, over a shared, extremely stiff drink... Roy had never been the biggest drinker- now, Maes wasn't so sure Roy could even physically get drunk in the first place- but Maes could really use the mind-numbing buzz. However, there was no moving from this roof, and he knew he really wanted the distraction more than anything else, and a distraction wasn't going to help either of them through this.

"At the time, you said," Maes went on at last. "So what's different, now, then?" He raised an eyebrow, trying to keep Roy looking at him instead of staring back down anywhere else again.

"At the time... ah. Yes." Roy gave another faint smirk, rolling his eyes. "Like I said. Back then, I was a somewhat human alpha without a pack. ...now, I believe, I have spent the last ten years collecting humans into a pack of my own."

Maes blinked.

His friend fidgeted after a few moments, giving him another weak smile that came across as insecure, somehow, which felt wrong, because Roy was everything but insecure, but- there it still was. "I mean that as loosely as I can, of course. Not- I know real humans have... different feelings about pack ownership, Maes. Not that I own any of you," he rushed to say, "I know it's not the same, but it's always helped to think it, and I- just-"

"Roy," Maes silenced. It was late, and he was entirely overwhelmed, and everything about this was wrong in too many ways to count, so right now, all Maes knew was that he wanted to get that dammed look off his best friend's face as soon as possible, because it did not belong. "Shut up, and get over here so I can give you another hug, damn it."

His startled friend spluttered into quiet, face warming even underneath the scales and the shadows. He worked his mouth and tried to speak once, even, then twice.

Then, with a frail, resigned smile of his own, Roy accepted his outstretched hand, and allowed himself to be tugged carefully back across the roof to settle against Maes' side in another hug.

Maybe they could never have normal again, because the normal Maes had believed in for so long had never really existed in the first place.

But, he considered, feeling the burning warmth and new roughness but still the same Roy sitting next to him as ever before, they could at least have this.

Or...

Maes swallowed. His hopes struggled, then crumpled in his chest, manifesting as a bitterness in his mouth and defeat in his throat.

Or they could've had this.

If Roy hadn't just had every last bit of his life destroyed, and given no way to go back to it.

Maes shut his eyes, and for several moments, wanted so badly not to face it, he couldn't speak at all.

"So... Roy." He left his eyes shut, instead only to feel the steady, unnatural warmth of his best friend under his arm. "You-. I..."

Roy chuckled, giving his side a faint push with a hand that still didn't even feel quite right. "Spit it out, Maes."

His friend really was entirely too okay with this.

This-

Having his life taken and decimated, over and over again; having everything he'd worked for destroyed, having everything that he had taken away from him, being left sitting on top this lonely house with nothing at all-

All of it.

Tears still burned in Maes' eyes, and he just didn't even have it in him to wipe them away.

"What are you going to do now?" he asked quietly. Unable to help himself, the arm around Roy's shoulders tightened, pulling the figure next to him closer to his side as if, that way, he just maybe could be able to protect his best friend from the entire rest of the world; protection that he'd never had before and badly needed now.

He could keep Roy safe.

No matter the sacrifice it took, Maes knew, here and now, that he would do whatever he had to for it. He would keep Roy safe, for perhaps the first time in his entire life.

The military was never getting its hands on him again.

However, Roy's safety was not the answer to the question what now?

For several long moments, his best friend was quiet. Head still tilted back to the sky, unerringly bliss and calm. The look on his face alone was enough to answer Maes' question and then some, but he still kept quiet to way for him to say it on his own terms.

"I... don't know, Maes. ...I really don't."

Anger tightened in Maes' throat again- not at Roy; Maes wasn't sure if he could ever be angry at Roy again- and it took just about all of his self-control to keep it restrained back firmly into his throat. Coming out swinging and yelling with a still skittish, badly hurt best friend next to his side was probably a historically awful idea. "You don't have to," he said, the words grinding out past clenched teeth. "You don't have to decide that now. Right now all that's important is you getting somewhere safe; everything else, I'll take care of it. I promise, Roy, I'll-"

"Maes." Roy caught his hand before he could get any further than that, squeezing absently with fingers that were too hot and a smile that was too sure. "Before you follow Ed's example, and make a promise you're not so sure that you can keep- you're not doing anything except turning yourself back around, at going back to Central."

"Roy!" he gasped, aghast, but Roy's little smile did not even waver.

"Think, Maes- think like you should've been doing even when you decided to trek out here after me in the first place." The now former soldier shrugged a little, worming Maes' arm down just enough for him to turn to face him. "You have a wife, a daughter. You have a career, a-"

"A career?" Maes spat. "I don't want- if that's- if you're what the military does, I don't want-"

"You have a family and therefore require a means to support them. You have a career where you help people, no matter what other branches of the military may or may not do. You have friends who are not me, and yes, Maes, you have a wife and very young daughter who I rather think you should talk to before you decide to uproot them, and put yourself at risk of being arrested for desertion for the rest of your life- or worse. Maes-" Still with that small, half-miserable, half-dead, but all the way through genuine smile, Roy guided his hand back down to the roof.

It was only then, that Maes realized it was shaking.

"Listen to me," Roy ordered, because as he'd said himself, being a commander was in his blood whether he wore the uniform or not, whether Maes was his subordinate or not. "You are going to go back home, pretend that you had a nice vacation, and be a good and quiet soldier from here on into the foreseeable future. Ed and Al are still going to need support from the military, and Riza will do what she can but they'll need all the help they can get. There's no good to be accomplished by any of you abandoning everything for me, Maes; do you understand that?"

"And you still didn't answer my question, Roy!"

"Because I don't have an answer!"

Maes tightened his jaw, almost trembling there next to his pale, abruptly distressed friend, and once again found himself fighting as hard as he could to keep himself restrained. "I don't have the answer you want from me, Maes," he gritted out, impatience biting into his voice at last. "I have never once actually had to answer the question, what do I want to do. I've never had that choice, and believe it or not, I've never exactly spent the time to wonder about something I believed I would never have. Now that it's here-" He cursed once under his breath, shaking his head back and forth like a wet dog, then spat out a weak, almost hysterical bark of laughter. "God, Maes, I don't know. There's no leash round my neck for the first time in my entire life and it turns out I really don't know what to do without it. I- I mean-"

With a gruff, aggravated breath, the chimera let go of Maes' hand at last only to drag it through his messy hair instead, tilting his head back once again to gaze to the sky. He was still smiling wildly, as if he'd lost his grip a little sometime a long the way and even now was scrabbling miserably to get it back as it fell further and further out of reach. "You know one of the first things I did, when they turned me loose in Central? Fuck, I know you do, Maes- they gave me an apartment; I'd never had a space that large all to my own and had no idea what to do with it, I couldn't stand it, so I went to the roof instead. I've never flown before, did you know that? Dragons can't fly straight away, and they took my wings before I was old enough. I'm half-dragon, Maes, and the closest I've come to flying is staring up at the sky like- like some lovesick school girl-"

And then, Roy was just laughing again, shaking his head to himself, and Maes was too stunned to help him. "You were-" He blinked dazedly, putting a hand to his head. All those years ago... "That's what you were doing, up there?!"

"Yes," Roy laughed again, his voice weak. "What? Did you think I was planning on throwing myself off the roof instead?"

"I- yes!"

Roy glowered for a heartbeat, looking silently wounded at first, then just caved and held up his hands in defeat, as if to admit, that's fair. It wasn't fair, not really, but his friend had already turned away again with a mournful shake of his head, and Maes got the sense that he wasn't interested in any more apologies tonight, so he bit his tongue instead, and waited silently again.

"...I don't know," Roy repeated at last, his voice sagging quieter with something akin to defeat. "Marcoh's already told me he'll try and help me do anything at all that I want. It's apparent I'll have your help, too, as much as I'll consider safe to allow. But as to what I'll do with it all- I don't have any idea how to exist as anything but a soldier."

Maes hesitated again, something undefinable in his throat. He wanted to say something, anything, but even if he'd had the slightest idea as to what to do, which he did not... this was Roy's choice. It had to be. He'd never had one even once before, and Maes could not even think of taking this one away now- even with something as simple as a suggestion.

There were no words to fix this, because he could not be the one to fix any of this at all.

Roy was going to have to do this one on his own.

"You're right," Maes said at length, trying to will his voice to be warm. With as deep a breath as he could, he held his hand out again, hopefully to float the suggestion without words that they at least climb down, now, before it got any colder or darker. "We may not be able to do much, but... you're right. Whatever we can do to help, we will. And don't- Roy-" He'd have grabbed his face if he thought he could get away with it, and instead had to settle for just squeezing his hand, trying to force the point past his walls so brutally that it tore them down. "Don't disappear."

His friend raised an eyebrow, his smile still a bit weak but hell, at least a little bit calmer now, too. "I'm afraid that might be a bit dangerous, considering I'm now technically a fugitive..."

God, could Roy be anything but difficult as all hell? "Yes, but..." Maes groaned. "I mean don't disappear from us, you dolt."

Roy blinked again, surprise flickering through his eyes for a beat, only for them to soften back into calm. Maes hoped his eyes darkened to their usual black soon, because he was not ever going to get used to Roy looking at him with pale blue eyes from a scaled face- but he was going to have to get used to some part of this, at least, and that was the point.

Roy was right, that he couldn't afford to drop everything that he had to come babysit his new fugitive of a best friend. He hated it, but he was right. If it had been just him on his own, perhaps, but he had Gracia and Elicia. He couldn't do that to them. He didn't even want to do that to them.

However, Maes had also meant it when he told Roy he wasn't going to disappear, because they weren't going to stand for it.

Not just him. Ed and Al, too; he knew that without even asking them, because if they'd come with Roy this far, there was no question they'd keep going even farther. Marcoh would... though Maes still had his poisonous doubts about he much he really wanted that alchemist to have anything to do with his friend in the foreseeable future, no matter if Roy claimed to have forgiven him or not. Riza, of course, and the rest of his team- it was going to require extreme caution and care to get the truth to them, but he would, eventually, and when he did he had no doubt that they would promise to lend everything they had to Roy, too. They'd thrown their loyalty behind him when it had concerned treason. There was no earthly reason why that would be acceptable, but this, all that the military had done to him, would be too much.

All of them were going to do everything they could to help him. He still didn't know what that would be, because Roy himself didn't know, but if he knew Roy...

Yes. Maes nodded to himself once, banishing away the rest of those black clouds of doubt by sheer force of will alone. He did know Roy. He might not have known the whole truth about him, but what did that matter? He'd never been best friends with Roy, the human; he'd never been best friends with Roy, the alchemist, Roy, the well-adjusted smug bastard who didn't talk about his past but someday was going to be Fuhrer.

He was best friends with just Roy.

And that was the only way he had to actually help, right now.

Stay friends with the person he'd been friends with for ten years already.

Looking at the Roy sitting next to him now, still smirking a little and head tilted back, eyes bright with the same confidence and inner will he'd accidentally cultivated out of him years ago...

Well, Maes thought, smiling, I'm pretty sure I can do at least that much.

"Come on," he said, sticking a hand out. "If we stick around up here all that much longer, we're gonna attract attention."

Roy smirked faintly again, but there was only amusement behind it, nothing more. With a slight shake of his head, Roy accepted his outstretched grip, and pulled himself up to his feet.

Coincidentally, that was also when Maes learned just how strong Roy actually was, and if he hadn't already braced himself against the chimney to begin with, he might well have been overbalanced and toppled straight to the ground.

Roy brushed his hair back with his free hand, loose and relaxed and utterly, almost infuriatingly, at ease. He glanced back at Maes through the corner of his eye, pulling his hand back to himself, and- once again- smirked.

Hell.

"You're can be a real piece of shit sometimes, you know that, buddy?"

Roy rolled his eyes as he paced ahead, kneeling to get a better grip on the same flimsy garden lattice that Maes had climbed his way up on, not all that long ago. "Insulting me already?" He shook his head up at Maes and tsked quietly, even inch of him radiating an insincerity as thick as syrup. "And here I thought that I was going to have to bear you coddling me, for at least another few- ah!"

"Roy!"

And with an earsplitting crack and crumble, the already failing wooden lattice snapped, and Roy dropped out of sight to fall all the rest of the way to the ground with a solid thump.

Maes was there in an instant. Too many weeks had gone by with his protective instincts on edge, and as shocked and panicked as he was, he was already on the way, his heart pounding in his ears but feet moving as he launched himself to the ground, right by Roy's side. His ankles and feet stung badly from the jump, aching pain lancing through his back and he gasped, but the instant his head stopped ringing his hands had already shot forwards to his friend's prone form. Roy had landed flat on his back and lay there even now, face utterly shocked instead of pained in the low light; for several seconds, he didn't manage anything at all but a stunned blink. When he finally did move, it was with a breathy cough and shake of his head, seeming utterly winded but by the shaking waves of his hand, still, somehow, in one piece.

"Dammit, Roy," Maes gasped, hands already fluttering half-uselessly, checking for broken bones or worse, "I told you to be careful!", which was categorically untrue, actually, but he'd meant it, at least- "You stupid- are you okay? Roy?"

"I'm-" he coughed, rasping, "I'm- Maes-"

His name came out utterly exasperated; nothing else did, because after it he was overcome by another round of coughs, but that had been enough. The fall really hadn't been that far, not even ten feet, and Roy had landed flat on his back instead of anywhere more delicate like his face or neck. By the way he was fidgeting around, he could tell nothing important in his back had broken, either, and the only crucial thing about him that had been bruised was his pride.

Not that that quite stopped his heart from beating so hard and fast it nearly lurched out of his chest...

"Well..." Maes sighed, sitting back on his trembling heels with a grin so weak and exhausted it felt like he just might pass out. His friend sagged back shakily on the ground, draping an arm over his still stunned face, and this time did not try to push off the hand Maes left down on his shoulder. "How's that for your first flight, then?"

Roy went still, with little more than a spluttering gasp. His eyes went wide and his shocked tremors went still, and for a beat, Maes' heart went cold, and he couldn't help but fear that he had gone too far.

Then, with a great, weary sigh, his friend slumped back into the ground with a smile as big as the wings that were gone. "I think I'm going to have to tell Ed I might be more at home on the ground."