A:N: Written on complete whim. For Sapphy. Beta-ed by Chev and Ore. 3
Disclaimer: I do not own the FMA crew. But I do own green eggs and ham (not the book. The food). Enjoy?
The Art of Getting Lost
By LCM
This is how it works:
Ed doesn't know where he's going. He never knows, when he is going like this. It's like circles but not, because Ed gets circles and moving in circles, and Ed simply doesn't get this. The first step is to get lost, and that's the hardest part because Ed knows Central like the back of his hand and each time he goes he has to forget. It's a silly stupid thing, but in the night when he doesn't know what do with himself – lying alone in a tangle of flesh that almost misses the metallic sharp tang of automail – silly and stupid sounds just about right. So every other night, sometimes twice in a row, he'll go into the city and forget all the little back alleys he'd learned long ago. And when he is lost, well and truly lost, he'll have something to do again, something to be again, and feel as whole as he was when he wasn't.
He has Al of course. But Al is trying to live out six years in three; he's already in love and blushing and wed, and while he loves Ed more than anything in the world, he loves Winry too, and Ed cares about him to much to pout over that.
It's not that he isn't happy.
In the beginning there was something to do. Mustang's coup draped a heavy blanket of chaos over the land and Ed was as busy as he had ever been when he was searching for the stone. There had been places to go, people to see, nominal villains to face. It was a good time, and the best he had had since his mother had died, so many years ago.
Then the jobs had trickled down, peace had crept in like somebody's kitten, and one day Ed woke up with nothing to do.
He'd taken a pet after that, because Al had suggested it. It was a round eyed, gold-spotted rascal of a puppy and oh, but the jokes he'd received from those at the military. Mustang was worst, of course. But then again, he always was. Ed owned the thing for all of one week, and then he lost it – out through a hole in his too-domestic yard and its too-domestic white picket fence. He'd looked for it, not really attached but because it was something to do late at night when the moon was a half sickle in the sky and the house was just the right temperature in a way that he couldn't stand.
So he gets lost now, in the middle of a city that he knows like the back of his hand – the left one, not the right, because he's still relearning the contours of that – and hopes against hope that he'll go to work the next day and there'll be something to do besides filling out papers.
When Ed gets lost, he tries to find coffee shops, not as easy a task as a person might think. Just a little past midnight and everything's closed, with only so many of the places to begin with and times he can forget them. Sometimes, when he's walking, he fancies he understands Psiren; the thrill of stealing, outwitting, doing, and that lot. But when it comes down to it, Ed's not the kind of person who could take up thievery for amusement's sake, and he gives up the idea. Still, it's one of those attractive notions, a bit like tragedy; a sea of pretty what-if's that never manages to be half so magnificent when put into practice.
It's been three months now and he's not found the puppy. Occasionally he wonders what happened to it. He could search harder, he knows, more single minded, but he's afraid if he finds it everything else will come to an end. That's what happened before, after all. So instead sometimes he pictures it – sitting in his too-comfortable chair – and imagines that a kid has found it. Ed doesn't need it, really; he's not really a kid anymore, never mind that that kind of scares him. Never mind that he probably never was, or, hasn't been for a very long time.
Sometimes, he sits at his desk, and waits to wake up; goes back to the times when everything happened. He knows it's selfish, and he really doesn't wish for the difference, but…. Excitement might be nice, just once in a while.
When Roy called him into his office for the first time in months it was the day after two consecutive evenings of sleepless wandering, and where Ed might have normally leapt up in joy at the thought of having something to do the lack of rest made him irritated at the summons. He could never seem to find it in himself to remember Mustang kindly. And damn it if he wasn't quiet sure Mustang wasn't faking that eye patch. Ed wouldn't put it past him; sneaky, manipulative bastard. One day some one would pounce him on his blind side, and low and behold the man would pull up the black flip, stare his attacker down with two narrowed dark eyes, and proceed to blast the living hell out of them. It was the Mustang thing to do.
Ed wondered if he'd live through the process.
Despite hopes, in the end, Mustang had nothing new to say; he was trying to get out of paperwork. It seemed everyone was trying to, nowadays. But Mustang was sneaky about it, Mustang was tricky about it, and Ed had resigned himself to another large load by the time the Fuhrer was done with his speech.
"…and as you can clearly see ---"
"I'm bored." The interruption came in a random moment; something he'd been considering bringing up for a bit now. Seemed as good a stop-gap-measure as any in slowing Roy down before even more work was dumped on a hapless blonde head.
Not that it surprised Roy. He knew Ed too well not to. Simply quoted, "Boredom is the sign of the undisciplined mind, Fullmetal." The eternal smirk widened and sat – cat-got-canary content – for all of a minute. "Don't be so small minded."
The comment was intended to bait, and Ed spazzed out, true to form, while Mustang held him back by the collar.
"WHY YOU BASTARD SON OF A TOO-TALL CYCLOPS! WHO'S SO SMALL THEY CAN USE A GRAIN OF SAND FOR A BEACH BALL? I'LL TEAR YOUR OTHER EYE OUT YOU---!"
Some things never change. And so forth. The Fuhrer was nearly maimed, and Ed almost hung himself on his own shirt trying to reach him. Hawkeye had to fire – twice – to get them separated. She tilted her blond head and gave them both a kind of incredulous, aren't-you-a-little-old-for-this look that managed to be indulgent all the same. Ed grumbled something. Roy smirked unrepentantly, and then offered a swallowed apology to the barrel of a gun. Satisfied, Hawkeye moved on.
… It was the most fun either of them had had in a very long time.
Silence.
"So. Paper work, Fullmetal. Get it to me by Friday."
Ed mumbled out a less-than-pleased response, snatched up the packet and made to leave.
"Thank you, Fullmetal."
It was a dismissal and it was not and Ed wasn't quite sure what Roy was thanking him for.
The inkling urge in the back of his head returned, and he had a sudden desire to snatch off Roy's eye patch and see if the bastard really was maimed, or if it's just an elaborate gimmick after all.
"I walk," He said, because he could, and because it was just a little less random than making to see if the most powerful man in the world had one eye or two.
Roy didn't bat an eyelash. Ed didn't expect him to. Did, however, ask,
"Excuse me, Fullmetal?"
"I walk." He said, a grin stretching the corners of his mouth up in a superior smile. "At night. And I get lost."
Roy blinked. Once. Score.
"I fail to see where you're going with this, Fullmetal."
Ed considered. "So do I."
Roy caught himself from blinking, the second time; just sat – calmly, coolly, waiting for an explanation.
"Some company might be nice."
He left.
Alone in his office, Fuhrer Roy Mustang had no idea what to think.
And this is how it works.
R/R is always appreciated