Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Roy Mustang doesn’t believe himself to be easily unnerved; he’s both feared and renown for his mastery over an obscure branch of alchemy, and his political career is going well enough for him to have no shortage of enemies.

Ever since Edward Elric breezed through the State Alchemist Exam like it was nothing, though, his life has taken a decided turn for the unexpected.

But he perseveres.

Even through Liore, through the secret behind Philosopher’s Stones, through Scar. Through conspiracies and faked deaths and real deaths, through the Homunculi. Through Maes.

It’s all coming to a point, to the culmination of something that Roy is determined to live through. But he’s bleeding, barely holding himself upright on top of an array that he would’ve been happy to never see again in his life.

It never occurred to him that if he didn’t play along with what the Homunculi wanted, that they would just… take it from him.

The Human Transmutation array flares with light, and Roy doesn’t think anything else.

Roy is still dizzy, head aching with Truth, and he can’t see—

He doesn’t realize anything is wrong, at first.

It take an endless moment, but his migraine slowly settles into something he can bear, even if through gritted teeth, and it’s. Quiet. He remembers that there were at least three other people in the room with him before the array activated, but he can’t hear any of them.

“What the hell is that?” Izumi Curtis snaps, and Roy turns his head towards the sound, swallowing bile because it doesn’t change a damn thing, he still can’t see, and strains his ears to pick up any more sounds.

“What is what?” Roy asks, after the silence grows long. His voice is rough, and he wonders how long he screamed, as he was dragged through the Gate.

“Feh, I thought you were dead.” Izumi scoffs, but Roy can hear the relief in her voice. Which means he can hear the thread of discomfort, too. “What did that bastard take, then?”

“I can’t see,” Roy admits, hating the way he wants to hold the words back. He can’t see and that’s a problem, but if he doesn’t tell anyone, then no one will know to try and help him. This isn’t the time for him to become a liability.

He doesn’t expect Izumi to laugh, though.

“Shit!” She sputters, laughing so hard that it sounds like she might’ve fallen over. “Maybe it’s a seeing-eye homunculus!”

Roy—mouth open, and to do what? Snap back at her?—pauses. Izumi stops laughing, and Roy wants… He wants her to laugh again, because the indignation in his gut would be easier to face than the concept that he has no idea what’s around him right now. Indignation would be better than Izumi’s implication that something came back with him.

His hands are shaking, but he reaches out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There’s nothing to his left, or immediately behind him, or to his right. He grits his teeth and reaches forward.

Cold, he thinks first. Then, contrarily, Warm. Something hard, like armor, but not metal. Ridges and segments, heat hovering between the gaps. Spines and sharp points at what feel like joints. A shoulder, maybe, taller than his sitting height. Thick arms—legs?—and a wide chest and—

It. The. Something moves, when he runs his hand along it, a full-body ripple that raises and resettles those broad plates. His fingers are trembling, but he follows the lines of the body before him, leg to back to neck to head to—

It’s. It’s too big to be a dog, and it doesn’t have fur, but it has at least four legs and a broad head and it growls warningly when his fingers brush over its nose. Rounded snout and a wide head; definitely not a dog.

“What…?” He starts to ask. He doesn’t know who he’s asking, and his head is still throbbing, images flashing in his mind of Truths he doesn’t have the time to face right now—

“Are you fuckin' done?” The body rumbles, and Roy can feel the vibration of its voice—it can talk—run up his arms, rattle his chest and settle firmly in his hindbrain as blaring klaxons and teeth, the word D A N G E R painted in high, broad strokes.

“Holy—” Izumi Curtis hisses.

“You… talk.” Roy’s voice sounds faint to his own ears. He feels lightheaded.

“So do you,” the thing answers, drily. It’s so much like Roy’s own brand of humor that the laugh tumbles out of his mouth of its own volition. It doesn’t take long for the laughter to turn hysterical, into caught breath and impending tears.

He’d barely managed to get himself on his feet—he hadn’t, so much as he’d used the… whatever it is as a means of holding his weight. His knees buckle and he slumps back against a broad side with a jolted laugh.

And here he thought he was doing so well. That everything was going according to plan. That was before he was forcibly used as a conduit for the foulest alchemic array to ever exist, before he met and saw and witnessed the Truth, before something came back with him.

The thing’s side rises and falls behind him, but Roy doesn’t have the strength or the inclination to pull away. It’s warm, which is the one bright silver line that Roy can see.

He laughs again.

Because he can’t see. His whole world has gone straight to hell, along with his plans and his sight and—

It doesn’t move. It shuffles, at first, but Roy is too busy laughing until he chokes, until those chokes break and shatter into sobs. He’s too busy trying to muffle his own tears because it’s neither the time nor the place to fall apart. He’s too busy trying to muffle his own tears because he’s spent his entire military career cultivating a certain image and said image definitely does not include him slipping between wild laughter and harsh sobs, in front of who knows how many people.

There’s at least one thing he knows for certain, Roy can’t help but muse. The Truth didn’t care that Roy hadn’t activated the array of his own volition, and he knows, now, he knows so much.

He knows his vision is gone. Not just gone, but as good as non-existent .

He laughs. Cries. Chokes on his own inhales because what’s the point.

It’s been… some time, Roy imagines. But the… he really needs to figure out what it is. It hasn’t shrugged him off or pulled away. Roy’s throat is sore and he doesn’t think his body is even physically capable of producing tears at the moment. Without a word, Roy tries to shove himself up, and the thing braces its own weight to support him. He stands on two uncertain feet and can feel the faint heat of another living being as high up as his ribs.

So, it’s fucking enormous. And it can talk.

“A chimera?” Roy asks, as though he hadn’t spent the last… however long completely losing control of himself. He remembers that the room, the sacrificial altars had been made of stone, ceiling to floor. From the sounds of it, some part of the ceiling must’ve caved in, because it feels cramped.

His idle thoughts are confirmed when Izumi Curtis is the only (human) one to speak, again.

“Could be,” she offers, just as the creature scoffs: “No.”

There’s a pause. Izumi is probably staring and Roy knows his eyebrows are raised. He reaches out with his right hand, slow. Drags it from shoulder to head, before an—an ear, nearly as wide as his palm, flicks and he draws back.

“Well then, what are you?”

The creature makes a noise, and then peels away from Roy’s side. Roy doesn’t stagger, but only just so. He feels the loss of heat—of support—like. Like his sight. Like a limb. He must make a noise, or a face, because Izumi goes:

“Whoa, whoa—”

And then the creature is back, the long line of its back pushing up against his fingers. It moves quickly and quietly for something that must be the size of a lion, at least.

“There’s no word for it here, I don’t think.” It says. Its voice is deep, he can’t help but note, deeper than Roy’s own voice, a low rumble about the same timbre as... as Scar, of all people.

“Here, as in this side of the Gate?”

“That too.” It answers. “Mostly I meant your language is fuckin’ horrendous.”

The creature has an accent, hardly noticeable. If not for that statement, Roy would’ve chalked the slight susurrus of its words to the fact that it probably doesn’t have a mouth made for human speech. It has an accent, which means it speaks something else, another language. There are more, then. Somewhere, on the other side of the Gate. More creatures who can talk, who are large and dangerous enough to be mistaken for chimera.

“Why are you here?” Roy asks.

For a moment, there’s nothing. Roy’s not one to panic, normally, but. There’s nothing normal about this, not at all. Something taps the side of Roy’s face, nudges it to the side, and Roy has to fight down a flinch. It feels flat and narrow, whatever it is, perhaps the point or side of something. There’s heat too, where there wasn’t before. Izumi makes a strangled noise of aborted protest.

“Someone’s idea of a joke.” The creature replies, its voice sounding from much higher up than Roy was anticipating, and he’s jerking his head back without thought. The creature is—standing up? leaning up? Its head is above Roy’s own, from the sound and feel of it, and some part of its body is tapping Roy’s cheek, gentle enough not to break skin. He didn’t even hear it move.

Roy swallows down his ire, his discomfort, his fear, pushes it down, down. Not the time. Useless.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Izumi grumbles, and this time, Roy feels the displacement of air as the creature shifts away. Still close enough to touch, but probably angled in Izumi’s direction.

“I’m getting us out of here,” the creature says, completely ignoring Izumi’s question. The woman sputters, and starts to snarl out something else, but Roy is much more concerned with the feeling of heat in front of him like a steel wall. It’s as though every time he thinks he has a vague understanding of the creature, it changes.

“S'it alright if I touch you?” It asks, and Roy blinks.

“What are you going to do?”

A snort, with an accompanying puff of air, at height with Roy’s hairline. It’s definitely taller now, or at least standing up all the way.

“Bring the whole thing down. Don’t like small spaces, me.”

“I,” Roy starts, but then a thought occurs and he changes tack. “Can you use alchemy?”

The idea alone is. Terrifying.

Roy can hear the smile in the creature’s voice.

“Let’s find out.”

Roy’s ears are still ringing from the mountainous clamor of falling stone. The creature—the chimera that says it isn’t—still has his right arm in a light grip, a point of heat and sharp edges.

Roy breathes out. His vision has, damningly, remained dark, but he can feel the wind now, can feel the warmth and heat of the sun, and feels better to know that he’s no longer trapped underground.

“Ugh,” Izumi Curtis groans, sounding nauseous. She sounds close, perhaps just to the other side of the creature. “What was that.”

There’s a rough scrape, rock against rock, and then a short billow of hot air. The creature—bipedal now, standing just on two legs—is… shrugging? laughing?

“Told you,” It says, blithely. “Don’t like cramped spaces much.”

Was it alchemy? The homunculi—the other homunculi?—had abilities fueled by alchemical energy, but they never, to his knowledge, used transmutation circles themselves. It could’ve been alchemy. It could’ve been anything.

How is Roy going to do anything, vision newly gone and head crammed full of knowledge long ago forbidden?

He’ll have to adapt. He’ll have to.

At the very least, he takes heart in the teasing hint of jagged coronas of not-quite-light that ripple and waver across the dark when he turns his face to the sun.

Deep breaths. Nothing else for it. Today is the day that it all comes to a—

Wait.

“It’s too quiet,” Roy murmurs, listening intently for the sounds of—anything, really. There should be the sounds of battle, or a confrontation at the very least. Fullmetal and his brother were off to find Father, and yet, it’s quiet. No soldiers. No civilians. No Homunculi. Nothing.

From beside him, there’s a curious pause, then a sound like a distant siren or bell, the drag of a wet finger around the rim of a wine glass, a strange wobbling tone that makes Roy’s bones ache from head to toe. Izumi Curtis utters a strangled curse, and by now, Roy has a solid theory of why Fullmetal is just Like That sometimes. The chimera-that-isn’t says, “Movement, underground.”

A sigh, long and exhausted. “Those boneheaded students of mine, no doubt—”

The ground explodes.

Or, Roy assumes that’s what happens. There’s a noise, so loud that it drowns out all other sounds, and Roy throws his hands up, uselessly, because he can’t see where anything is happening. Gravel and dust and more noise, a sting along his arms and face, a rumble that doesn’t end. There’s screaming, words lost beneath the cacophony of rending metal and shattered brick.

“—tang! Mustang!”

A hand pulls at Roy’s arm and he twists away on instinct, his fingers falling into the automatic poise of a snap—

But he can’t see. He can’t see. How is he supposed to aim if he can’t—

Another hand grabs him firmly, an arm curling around his back and pulling him away, just as something else explodes or crumbles, throwing more dust, more sharp shards of brick and stone and metal, more noise.

It feels like an eternity passes before Roy can hear again. He can hear Izumi’s gasping pants, interspersed with vulgarities. An arm like solid stone peels away from his side and Roy realizes that the low, deep hum he’d been timing his breathing to is coming from the Not Chimera.

“What,” Izumi Curtis growls, still short of breath, “are those?”

For a moment, Roy is overcome with anger, with frustration, a mass of discontent swelling in his chest, because he might as well not even be here for all the help he’s able to provide. He feels like he can choke on the loathing stoking within his gut, the visceral hatred he feels now for the Truth—

“Mannequins,” the creature says shortly. “Gods, but they’re ugly as sin.”

The Truth.

“I think I can see Ed and Al,” Izumi Curtis is saying, but Roy can barely hear her over the buzz of his own thoughts. He’s an idiot. He’s an idiot, like Master Hawkeye always chided, because he hasn’t been thinking.

The Truth.

“All these things are gonna be a pain to—“

“Are they alive?” Roy blurts out, mouthing moving almost of its own volition.

A pause. Roy can only imagine the looks that caused.

“What?”

“The… whatever they are,” Roy gestures ineffectively before him. Now that he’s listening—now that he’s not wallowing in his own self-pity, as though he’s never been stuck between a rock and a hard place—he can hear the scratch and scatter of many feet across the stone paths. “Are they alive?”

Roy has seen the Truth. It had been, in the moment, a painful torrent of information, his every nerve ending screaming in pain as the world fell into a clarity too grand for him to comprehend. He’s retained some of what he saw, felt, learned. Most of it, perhaps, if he can find a way to put the experience to paper before the memory starts to dull.

He’s never been a slacker or a dullard when it’s come to alchemy, and even less so with Flame Alchemy. But now…

“They don’t have souls,” the creature proclaims without a second of hesitation, “but they’re living things—”

“What do you mean they ‘don’t have souls’?” Izumi Curtis hisses, “How the hell would you even know something like that?”

“Mrs. Curtis,” Roy cuts in, not commanding, but more firm than he’s felt since before he saw the Truth. “How far away are the Elrics?”

Roy can feel the weight of their combined attention.

“About sixty yards or so. Why—?”

Roy steps forward, slowly, carefully, and raises his left hand.

“Wait a minute, what the hell do you think you’re—"

Sixty yards. Better to lowball it, or Fullmetal will never let him hear the end of it.

Roy snaps.

“—can’t even see what you’re aiming at, you reckless little shit—”

In the milliseconds it takes for the Ignition Claws to activate, Roy reaches for the Truth.

Living creatures produce and expend energy to move. Energy means heat. A snap creates a spark. Flame calls to flame. Roy might not be able to see, but he can feel the heat signatures, a mental map of red-orange smears: Two behind him. Countless hundreds clustered before him. One enormous group, with dots speckled here and there further out.

Sixty yards.

Roy has mastered Flame Alchemy, as much as anyone can claim to have mastered anything, but now the Truth rattles around in his head, giving name to what had once only been daring and cunning and instinct. Roy knows the elements, knows molecules, knows how to coax the methane from the ground, how to measure energy against distance against air, how to lay down a trail, how to touch spark to gas and give it just the slightest nudge—

The consecutive detonations shake the earth like a boat in a storm. Roy can’t see it—unlike the sun, the methane isn’t nearly bright enough to provide him with even the faint impressions of shadows—but each explosion thrums behind his ribs in time with his heart as the fire burns, consumes, destroys.

The—mannequins, the creature had called them—don’t have the oxygen left to scream. Spark becomes flame. Flame eats away until there’s nothing left and dissipates, smoke on the wind.

Roy exhales.

Vision or not, he’s not quite down and out just yet.

Chapter Text

At some point, Roy realizes that Izumi Curtis is no longer standing near him, hearing her bellow and the crackle of alchemy a ways off. Where before the courtyard was eerily quiet, now it is fit to bursting with noise, with moving bodies and the air heavy with the ozone taste of alchemy. He’d heard Fullmetal just the once, an angry shout there and then drowned out by the sound of imploding stone. So many voices that Roy can barely process them all.

The creature, for some reason, does not leave his side. It hums and makes the occasional comment, but otherwise seems content to just follow him around. When Roy asks why, it answers, “To see what happens next, dipshit.”

Roy can admit to himself that its presence is… some manner of comforting, even if he’s not entirely convinced that it isn’t a chimera.

The creature walks along sedately, pushing at Roy’s shoulder and hip to prevent him from running into any low obstacles or mumbling a quick ‘wall’ to save him his dignity. It never takes the lead, although even Roy knows that it would be easier to have him follow.

They come across many more mannequins, things of heat that shriek and leap at them, and Roy snaps and snaps and snaps, each detonation like a hymn in his ears.

"Sir," Hawkeye sounds as composed as ever, and Roy isn't above admitting that it soothes something in him. Whatever else has changed, Riza Hawkeye remains an unwavering constant.

"Lieutenant," Roy smiles grimly. He can only imagine what he looks like, probably covered in dirt and blood and ashes, to say nothing of the fact that he can no longer see. Does he still even have eyes? He’s not sure he wants to check.

"I see you found company," is all she says of the creature. That she remarks on its presence at all is telling enough for Roy to rethink what it must look like. He's only gotten a sense of texture and heat and relative height, but there must be something to it that gives it menace.

"I've found friends in stranger places," Roy says honestly. And the creature is enough of an ally to be called a friend, in the martial sense. Roy might be getting ahead of himself, but only his most stringent allies would've done so much to not only accompany but accommodate him.

"Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye," she says firmly, presumably introducing herself.

There's a split second where Roy has the irrational worry that the creature will strike out, will snarl or growl or otherwise reject the lieutenant's extended courtesy.

What happens instead is somehow worse.

"Hey," it says, and Roy can hear the sound of two hands clasping. "Looks like I'm the temporary caretaker of this wreck."

Roy opens his mouth to protest, but Riza beats him to it. He can hear the wry smile in her voice, "It's not a job for the faint of heart."

"Tell me about it," the creature says with an air of long-suffering.

"So," Roy interrupts, because if he leaves them to it, then they won’t stop until his soul breaks free of his body and sobs as it withers away. "Have either of you seen Fullmetal?"

In the pause before one of them has the chance to answer, something in the distance explodes magnificently, and Roy can hear, faintly, shrill familiar curses.

"... Nevermind."

Roy has gotten used to the creature covering him, sliding around him as he moves and striking out at enemies that Roy can no longer discern, as surrounded as he is by enemies and allies alike. So he doesn't think much of it when the creature barks out a rough, amused noise and Roy feels a brush rush of air as it moves quickly to his left.

Or, he would've paid it little mind, except that it comes back with someone else. Someone who feels like an inferno, rather than a spark.

And the only ones who could feel that way, who would feel that way are—

"Don't bother," the creature says, from the side of a homunculus. "You already got yours."

It takes Roy a moment to work his jaw open, and he manages to push out between clenched teeth, "I'm having a little trouble finding the words for this."

The creature steps forward, to stand between Roy and the abomination it brought back. Roy can feel the gentle waft of heat rising from its stone-like skin.

It leans in close, not whispering, but voice lowered. “Chill the fuck out. He’s on your side. Or, well, he’s not on their side. I’m not askin’ you to marry the guy, just don’t flambé him."

It is, Roy realizes after he takes a deep breath to try and clear the anger from his mind, perhaps the most that the creature has spoken. It is also the only thing that the creature, who has helped Roy in a way beyond measure, has asked of Roy.

"Which one?" Roy asks, after a moment.

"Greed."

Roy blinks, uselessly, because, "Greed's dead."

He knows it for fact: Fullmetal's report had been unusually thorough in that case.

"Issa new Greed."

“A… new... Greed," Roy repeats, unable to keep the weariness out of his voice. Roy doesn’t usually blame Fullmetal for some of the inane things he comes across, and he certainly can’t blame him for the absurd and terrifying situation that is homunculi turning the whole of Amestris into a giant human transmutation circle, but this particular bit reeks of Fullmetal™ intervention.

"Call it reincarnation," and that's the homunculus' voice, not nearly as deep as expected. If anything, it sounds young, hardly even older than Fullmetal himself—

"Please," Roy says, another huge wave of frustration sweeping over him. The day has largely been awash in adrenaline, but he is once again reminded that he is now blind, and that he really, really hopes his ears are playing tricks on him. “Tell me that this new Greed is not who I think it is."

There's a terrible, horrible, extremely disheartening pause.

"Depends on who you're thinking of, Mustang," Greed says slowly.

Roy is not thinking of Fullmetal's hasty, oral report of Xingese royalty in Amestris, somehow caught in the middle of this whole mess, after philosopher’s stones to consolidate the throne and unite the country.

Roy is very much not thinking about how Amestris would even begin to explain to the Xingese Empire that one of their heirs—or, given their luck, their new Emperor— is now a homunculus.

"On second thought," Roy amends, "Just... don't tell me at all."

By the time the fighting is over, Roy is exhausted beyond measure. There’s still rubble and bodies in the street, but he and his team are alive and Fullmetal ‘beat god to death’ with his bare hands.

Roy pulls his pocket watch from its customary place in his inner pocket, running his thumb over the ridges and bumps of its engraved cover. It’s a habitual motion, so second nature that he knows every curve and dip of the watch face with or without his eyesight.

The creature makes a noise.

“Is that,” it says, voice scratchy and trembling with some emotion that Roy can’t quite parse by sound alone. “Is that a watch?”

“Yes,” Roy answers slowly, still thumbing at the cover. “It’s a symbol of my status as a State Alche—”

“Holy shit, it’s a watch,” the creature says from right in front of him, big stone-like hands covering his own before he can gain his bearings.

“Would you like to see it?” The sarcasm has absolutely no effect, because his hands are already empty.

“Holy shit,” the creature repeats, and Roy can hear the sound of the watch cover being flipped open. “It’s 11:45. It’s 11:45!”

The Not-Chimera laughs, pauses and then laughs again, louder and rougher. “Fuck, that means absolutely nothing to me.”

“Are you… alright?” Roy tries, awkwardly.

The creature laughs, pointedly louder and over-articulated.

Roy takes that as a ‘no’.

“I don’t even know what day it is.”

“Tuesday,” Roy answers with more confidence than he feels. He’s still not sure how much time he lost in the Gate. It’s a weekday at the very least.

“That… don’t help.”

Roy takes a moment to think. “Eighth month?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s the 14th year of Bradley’s rule, year 250 of Amestris’ founding.”

“Sure.”

This is going nowhere. Roy restrains himself from rubbing at his temples.

“Well,” he says, in what he hopes comes off as a reasonable tone. “What’s the last date you remember?”

“I haven’t acknowledged time as a concept in like… iono, couple millennia, probably?”

What.

It’s close to midnight that Roy decided to try his luck.

“Do you have somewhere to stay?” He asks the creature, in the silence of his office. Fullmetal in on the couch, possibly asleep, and Hawkeye is at the other end of the couch, taking stock.

“Hah? What for?”

“I was hoping that I could convince you to stay a little longer,” he answers, calm and even.

“The fuck would I wanna stay here for?” The not-chimera snorts.

“Well”, Roy aims for an unaffected tone. “We still aren’t sure how to get you back without a human transmutation array—”

“What? Nah, I can leave whenever.”

It can what.

“You can leave whenever?”

A noise, one that raises the hair along Roy's arms and makes him clench his teeth out of reflex alone. Something is ripping. Something is tearing—

“What the fuck,” Fullmetal demands from the couch.

Another noise, like destruction in reverse, and Roy’s ears pop at a sudden pressure.

For the first time—and probably not the last—Roy is glad that he can’t see whatever reality-warping bullshit just occurred right in front of him. He decides to continue on, like the last two minutes never happened.

“I’d like you to stay here, in Central. With my unit. As a… consultant.” It’s a nicer word than bodyguard and more apt, too. Roy doesn’t need personal protection so much as… whatever the hell the creature can do, which at the moment remains unconstrained. He’d have it ride herd on Fullmetal—because he knows it could—if it wouldn’t bring about the next major extinction event.

“And what makes you a good choice? I could go hang out with anybody, if I wanted to.”

It could, but Roy silently begs, Please, please, don’t.

“We could… make a deal,” Roy offers.

“A deal.” The creature sounds skeptical.

“A simple offer. You help me out for a little while longer and you can have my State Alchemist’s watch.”

A derisive scoff.

“I don’t need your watch.”

Roy lets the silence simmer. In this case, he really doesn’t have to say anything at all.

“Fuck, I want the watch. We don’t need the watch. But. Fuck. A watch.”

Roy waits.

“Fuck off,” the not-chimera snarls, but it’s weak-hearted at best.

Roy waits.

“Fine. Shut up. Fine!”