Final Alchemy

Chapter II: Those Who Wait

'The worst way to miss someone is to be sitting right beside them, knowing you can't have them.'

-Unknown

Roy Mustang, contrary to popular belief, was an intellectual. Or, at least, he liked to think of himself as one. As his driver (deaf and mute, or at any rate, responsive only to road directions) took him from the train station to his office, Roy found his thoughts wandering.

They were generally harmless thoughts. Chess games with the retired politicians, Hawkeye's iron discipline for paperwork, dating escapades, and the like. It was only when they drove past a graveyard – a military graveyard – that his thoughts took a turn for the worse.

Most of graves belonged nameless soldiers that were killed in action. These were the generic, grey, expressionless graves; undisturbed and unvisited save for the occasional flower from friend or family. Some graves, along with their occupants, were forgotten.

He visited two particular graves regularly. One belonged to Maes; Gracia and Elicia had probably already laid a fresh batch of flowers there. Roy made a mental note to drop by and check on them later.

Then there was the other grave. There were always fresh flowers there – its occupant was famous and had many admirers. Roy had made sure of it when he had the media release the entire story, giving the public a heart wrenching tale of a teenage alchemist, brilliant and charismatic, who sacrificed himself to save the nation from a dark conspiracy. While Roy couldn't help but laugh at the public's impression of Elric, he hoped that massive media coverage would increase the chances of someone spotting the young alchemist, wherever he was.

Even after three years, Roy couldn't bring himself to believe that the kid was really dead.

He was jarred out of his thoughts when the car screeched to a stop in front of Central Headquarters. He looked up, and as expected, Riza Hawkeye was already there, standing smartly at attention and ready to escort him back to his office. Punctual as ever.

"General. You're late." Her words were terse, brief enough to be mistaken for rudeness had they not known each other so well. He paused for a moment to check if his customary, self-satisfied smirk was in place before turning to face her.

"If you missed me, you could have just asked to come along." He teased, "You need a vacation."

"And you, clearly, don't," she calmly replied. She fell in step beside him as they walked towards the office and handed him a thick, yellow manila folder. "These are all of the applicants to the State Alchemist Exams that have yet to be reviewed. Most of them came in yesterday."

Roy frowned as he opened the folder, commenting, "If they procrastinated until now, then they're either incompetent, or unreliable. Or they just like being troublesome."

"Says the one who's about four days behind schedule in paperwork." Hawkeye gave him a sharp, reprimanding look, and Roy inwardly cringed. Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye controlled his paperwork with an iron fist. It was a good thing he forbade any of the staff from carrying firearms to the upper office levels, or he might have found himself being forced to work at gunpoint.

He flipped through the applications lazily and read them off for Riza's benefit. "Rylzek Qahartz. Can't pronounce his name. Rejected. Bryan Courier? Didn't he fail the last…five times? Rejected. Yeslov Huinnet. Looks like a gorilla and about as smart as one too. Rejected."

Hawkeye sighed. "General, you need legitimate reasons to reject applicants."

"Those were legitimate. Oh. Who's this?" Roy stopped mid-step, gazing at the application in front of him. Riza glanced over his shoulder and managed a sharp intake of air in surprise when she saw the photo.

"Adler Hederich. Age twenty-two. Amestrian heritage, but lived in Drachma for most of his life. Specializes in mechanics and biophysics." Roy Mustang mused over the photo, quickly noticing Hederich's strikingly gold eyes. "The age is wrong, and the hair color too, but I could have sworn that face was Elric's. Gold eyes aren't common."

"Is it him?" Hawkeye asked, fixing the photograph with a distrustful glare.

Roy glanced down at Hederich's form. The spaces under 'Family', 'Prior Military Service', and 'Goals' were suspiciously blank, but there was enough information on the application form to run a background check on.

"Riza, take this to 'Foreign Archives'. I want you to run a level two background check on this guy. I've got to arrange something with a few people." Without leaving her anytime to protest, he handed the manila folder back to her and made a beeline for the driver still parked outside the building.

"General? General Mustang!" He ignored her. She frowned, and shouted, "Roy, what about your paperwork?"

"Give it to Havoc!" came the lighthearted reply, before he disappeared into the car.

Riza sighed. Some people never change.

He let out a long and aggravated groan before setting the newspaper back onto the table.

So Mustang was leading the country now. Great, just great. Roy would see his application form, then, and run a background check because the man was a paranoid freak. He had planted the necessary files into the database already, which meant that as long as the investigation wasn't too thorough, he was safe.

But it also meant that Mustang would be suspicious of him, which also meant that he would have role-play 'Hederich' twenty-four seven. He groaned.

Life sucked.

Well, at least he knew the bastard was alive. Even if he would never ever admit it, he trusted Roy implicitly and felt just a little better knowing that Amestris was in capable hands.

Didn't change the fact that man was still an irritating bastard though.

He glanced at clock on the wall. Two-thirty; his train left Central in another hour. He grabbed his overcoat and hailed a cab to the train station.

Al struggled to keep his luggage from being trampled as he was jostled along with the rest of the crowd. Central's train station was chaotic – Al was dazed by the sheer number of people and shipments flooding on and off the train. It seemed that there were signs everywhere telling him where to go, and all of them either contradicted each other or pointed back the way he came.

He was too busy trying to find an exit to notice where he was going, and ran head on into someone.

"Oof!" Al lost hold of his luggage and landed in a confused sprawl. He looked up and saw a man who was just a little older than Winry, dressed smartly in an ironed white shirt and black slacks. The intellectual glasses and neat black ponytail completed the aristocratic look.

"I'm sorry." Al scrambled to his feet and bowed a quick apology. The man looked at him oddly and Al felt twinge in his chest as he met the man's gaze. Gold eyes.

Weird. The man seemed incredibly familiar, but Al couldn't remember when or how he knew the man. Maybe it had been someone he met during the years that he had forgotten?

"Sir? Do I know you?"

The man's expression flickered between a thousand different emotions - surprise, pain, sorrow, relief - before a mask-like, faint smile slid into place. He picked up Al's dropped luggage and handed it back to him.

"Be careful," the man said quietly. "Central isn't a safe place." Then he ruffled Al's hair and boarded the train just before a crowd of people squeezed between them; by the time the crowd cleared, the man was already gone.

It was odd, how familiar the man seemed, but Al shrugged it off as a strange coincidence. It wasn't until his cab had almost reached his Exam living quarters that realization struck.

That gold-eyed man resembled his father.

It had been raining ever since Al left for Central the day before.

Winry let out a frustrated sigh and slammed her wrench back onto the workbench. She hated the humidity – it made the metal joints rust and the electric circuits go haywire. But the weather seemed oblivious to her troubles and just kept raining, and raining, and raining.

She couldn't hear anything except rain. The house was all too silent for her liking.

"What's wrong?" Pinako asked, looking up from her own automail. "Did you miss a wire?"

"No, it's nothing, Grandma. I just hate the rain," Winry answered. She flopped back onto her chair and complained, "The house is just too quiet, I guess. I mean, Rose moved out, Izumi and Sig already went home, and now Al's gone too. It just feels weird without them here."

Pinako nodded knowledgably. "In other words, you miss them."

"Yeah, I miss them. Ever since…I really hate it when people leave," she said softly, "It feels like I'm being left behind. Again."

"You miss him," the old woman deduced immediately. There was no need to specify who she was referring to.

Winry picked up her wrench again and absentmindedly tightened the joints. "It's been three years, Grandma. Three entire years. He should be home already, or at least have contacted us by now. Al still believes in him, but I'm not sure anymore. I want to believe, but…I just don't think he's coming back."

"Winry-"

The air suddenly shook with the roar of thunder, and the house went dark. Winry leapt out of her seat in surprise before realizing that the thunder had caused a blackout.

"Hang on, Granny, I'll go get the candles," she hastily offered, groping her way towards the door through the dark.

The moment the door was open, Den jumped on her, whimpering and barking excitedly. Winry knelt down and soothed, "Calm down, Den. It's just a blackout. They'll fix it soon."

The dog, however, refused to calm down. He kept barking and whimpering frantically, occasionally jerking on the bottom of her work jeans, as if he wanted her to follow him. Winry frowned – Den had been through blackouts before, and he had never reacted so excitedly to them. Maybe something else was bothering him?

Den jerked on her jeans once more before padding down the hallway, pausing at the corner expectedly. Winry hesitated, and then followed, keeping a hand against the wall just in case she tripped.

He led her through the living room and into the kitchen before sitting down in front of the backdoor, tail wagging excitedly. Winry tentatively stopped in front of the kitchen's backdoor as well, glancing around.

"What is it, Den? I don't see anything."

Just then, another bolt of lightning flashed outside, and Winry's heart missed a beat.

There was a silhouette of a man outside the window. A strange man was circling their house. Winry felt cold fear slide through her – during a blackout, none of the telephone lines worked, and the nearest neighbor was a ten minute walk away.

"Den. Go find Grandma." Winry whispered. The dog looked at her quizzically, but she pointed firmly down the hall and Den grudgingly complied, slinking out of the kitchen towards the workshop. Once the dog was out of sight, Winry tightened her grip around the wrench in her hands and creaked open the door as quietly as she could.

It was still raining hard outside. Winry squinted through the darkness as she slowly sneaked her way around the corner. She swallowed nervously – she could see the strange intruder now; he was a head taller than her, and wore a dark overcoat. Definitely dangerous.

He was glancing around the next corner, his back to her. She snuck up behind him before taking a deep breath. Gripping her wrench and clenching her teeth, she swung at the back of his head as hard as she could.

At that exact instant, he ducked. Winry's swing carried her forward, into him, and in a split second, he had grabbed her arm and sidestepped her swing completely. She choked in surprise and lashed out with her foot before throwing another punch at him. In the confused scuffle, she lost grip of her wrench, and he pinned her down clawing and biting.

Winry struggled, but his grip was like iron. "Let go! I'll scream!"

To her surprise, he did.

"Winry?"

Winry froze. She knew that voice. He met her eyes, and she saw a flash of gold behind a pair of glasses in the darkness.

No way. There's no way it could be him.

"Ed?"

Author's Note:

STILL SEEKING A BETA READER

I'm still trying to get a feel for the characters, so I apologize for any OOC-ness. I can't quite get the chapters to flow properly from on scene to the next, but I'm working on it.

Again, if anyone spotted a mistake, or if there are any questions about the timeline, the characterization, or anything else, drop me a PM and I'll answer it.

~The Quiller