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There were two beginnings to this story.
For Roy Mustang it began in the fall of 1925, when he returned from a meeting with General Smith only to find Edward Elric relaxing on his worn-down office couch. There were a couple of issues with this: for one, his office had been locked, not even Hawkeye allowed inside his sanctum while he was away, and two… Edward Elric had given up his State Alchemist title and all the privileges that came with it almost ten years ago.
It should be impossible for the young man in front of him to enter a military building, not to mention Roy’s private office.
Which was probably why he reacted the way he did.
“What the hell are you doing in here, Edward?”
Edward lazily blinked up at him, sleep still clinging to his movements as he slowly sat up. This was the face of a man with two small children and a third one already on the way. Roy shuddered at the thought of having two toddlers while simultaneously traveling the world and revolutionizing alchemy. Just being in charge of Havoc while trying to make up for his past sins was already challenging enough, but at least Havoc could use a toilet on his own.
“I said what are you doing here, Edward ? You’re no longer allowed to enter HQ without a formal invitation.”
“Relax, Mustang.”
“How did you get in here.”
“The window.”
“The win-?” Roy turned to look at the offending aperture. Indeed, the window had been opened a tiny bit, no more than the width of a finger, which didn’t negate the fact that his office was on the third story of Central Command. “We’re at least 50 feet up in the air! How the hell-“
“It doesn’t matter. Really.” Edward was smiling, the young man in front of him nothing like the angry teenager Roy first recruited fifteen years ago. “I just thought I should say hello to one of my kids since I’m in Central for the day.”
For a few blessed moments there was silence, Roy’s brain struggling to follow the nonsense coming out of Ed’s mouth. But his ignorance couldn’t protect him forever, shock probably the strongest emotions coursing through his veins, quickly followed by baffled rage, when he finally untangled the statement.
“What?! Have you gone crazy, Fullmetal?”
By now Ed was standing in front of him, the smile on his face somehow both sincere and impish. His hair was pulled up in a ponytail, the broadness of his shoulders straining the seams of his black jacket. At some point while Roy was busy, Ed had grown up.
But apparently not even two kids could force the crazy out of Edward Elric.
“Not crazy, no. If anything… it has come to my attention recently that you’re an orphan, Mustang.”
One blink. Two blinks.
“I’ve been an orphan for more than thirty-seven years by now.”
“And it is high time we do something about it!”
Edward was grinning.
Roy hated it. It reminded him of illegible mission reports and the angry yelling of high ranking officers who didn’t appreciate the Fullmetal Alchemist’s remodeling of their town square. It was the kind of grin that haunted his nightmares in the weeks before the financial revisions of his unit were due. The kind that kickstarted a revolution.
Dangerous things happened when Fullmetal grinned like that.
It didn’t help any that Edward was grinning at him. If anything, it made the unease in his stomach grow exponentially.
“I think it’s a bit late for a parental figure now, wouldn’t you agree?”
Maybe he had to tackle this delicately, less angry yelling and more subtle disagreement. It was worth a try.
“Nah, it’s never too late to get a dad. I talked it over with Madame Christmas – great woman by the way – and she totally agreed with me when I told her I wanted to become the father you never had.”
Of course, his foster mother was involved in this. She had probably cried from laughter when Ed first proposed this insanity to her before deciding to egg him on. By now all his adopted sisters and the girls working for her would know about it – hell, by tonight he would be the laughingstock of his entire information network.
“Edward, for the love of everything you hold dear, what the fuck has gotten into you?”
“Language.”
Ed was still a good two inches smaller than him, but somehow not even Roy’s fiercest glare could quell the shit-eating grin on his… well, Edward wasn’t his subordinate anymore, was he? Should he call him a friend? Or an annoying pest? Right now the latter sounded rather tempting. It didn’t really matter, did it? Not right now, at least.
“If you don’t answer my question in the next two minutes, I’ll call security on you and then you’ll have to explain to Winry how you ended up in jail not even a month before her due date.”
So much for the subtle approach.
“Geez, calm down. It’s really rather simple.” Edward moved past him with ease, until he stood in front of the heavy oak desk in the centre of Roy’s office. “I’m a great dad.”
“That’s not as good of an explanation as you think it is.”
“But it is! Listen – I basically raised Al on my own from when I was six up until I turned sixteen. I had help, sure, but I did most of the work on my own and look at him! He turned out great! A law-abiding citizen with a bright future!”
(Somewhere on the southern border of Xing, Alphonse Elric sneezed just as he finished signing a document with a forged Imperial Seal, something that would allow him to avoid property taxes while traveling through the outermost provinces of the Empire. Mei had helped him design the clever piece of forgery, as she was currently busy playing a political game of murder at Court.)
Roy’s only response was a raised eyebrow.
He was rather proud of himself for managing the maneuverer – as a teenager he had spent hours in front of the mirror simply trying to perfect the move.
“And Al is not the only example of my amazing parenting skills! I have two kids! Almost three! And they’re amazing. I mean, Melli’s almost five and she can count up to a hundred. And James shares my love for books and my distaste for milk. Great boy. All of this is enough evidence to suggest that I’m a great father – and, Mustang, you have many things, but you don’t have one of those.”
Edward fell silent with a huff, his arms crossed in front of his chest expectantly.
And Roy? Well, he was speechless, even if he didn’t want to admit it.
What the hell was he supposed to answer to that?
“Uh…?”
Not his best work.
“Glad we had this talk, Mustang. Family dinner every Sunday at 6pm. Call Winry if you can’t make it, but remember: she wants to see you too. Bye.”
Before Roy could answer – he wanted to yell and rage and maybe set something on fire – Edward turned around, his feet carrying him to the window as if this was a normal people thing to do. A surge of adrenaline made Roy jump forward, only to watch as Ed climbed onto the windowsill, ready to vanish into the brisk fall weather.
Finally, his voice came back.
“You know doors exist, right? You don’t have to act like a fucking lunatic every time we see each other.”
“Oh, but where would be the fun in that?”
And then Fullmetal was laughing, as he climbed over the sill and down the wall, before jumping the last two yards onto the green in front of the building. His landing was expertly executed, the ease with which Ed pried golden leaves and sticks out of his hair betrayed the frequency of this particular stupidity.
Edward waved one last time and then he was gone, leaving Roy and his churning thoughts behind.
What the fuck had just happened?
There were two beginnings to this story.
For Edward Elric it began in the winter of ’23. He was visiting Central for a couple of days while Winry relaxed at one of those new spa places in Rush Valley together with Paninya and Garfiel. It was the first proper vacation for the kids, Melli old enough to stare at everything in wonder and babble excitedly every time she saw something she found interesting. Which was – to be quite honest – every single moment of the day. James was eight months old, and thankfully a rather quiet baby, mostly asleep against his chest as Ed trudged through Central on their way to meet his old military buddies.
Ed had missed them, and he was glad this visit was possible – he grew antsy after staying in one place for too long, and not even his immeasurable love for his kids and wife could keep the wanderlust from clawing at his soul for long. So, a weekend trip to Central with two of his favourite people in the world it was - meanwhile Winry got some well-deserved relaxation with some of her best friends. A win/win situation, really.
As it so happened, this was also a stretch in time during which Melli decided that all adults called each other “Brother” as an honorific. Her vocabulary was still rather limited, but Ed suspected that she had acquired this particular quirk by watching Alphonse call Ed just that a whole lot.
One thing led to another, and Ed gleefully watched as Melli called Mustang “Brother” again and again, silently vowing to never let the older man forget just how hilarious his face had looked when Melli first confronted him with her brilliant deduction.
But this was just the first step in a series of events that would lead to Ed’s eventual adoption of Roy Mustang as his son.
The second domino came shortly after, in the spring of 1924 when Riza visited Rush Valley to catch up with Ed, only to complain about Mustang for most of her visit. Apparently the General was behaving like a child, refusing to sign any paperwork assigned to him by his current rival Major General Frank.
It was mostly a joke when Riza said “It’s like he’s a five-year-old sometimes. This man is intelligent enough to plan a coup d’état and walk away from it with heightened public approval, but ask him to file paperwork on time and he behaves like a toddler whose favourite toy was stolen” but Ed couldn’t help himself – he made sure to remember the anecdote, if only to later embarrass Mustang with it.
The final piece came almost a year later, when Ed was once again in Central, this time on his own. He stumbled upon Madame Christmas’ bar almost on accident, the working girl trying to convince him to enter only succeeding once she confessed to being Mustang’s older sister.
Ed learned a lot that night.
A lot about Mustang, that’s for sure, but also a lot about the realities of Central City’s illegal underground dealings – and cocktail mixing.
It was Madame Christmas who told him about Mustang’s childhood, and it was Vanessa who implied that Roy had always wanted a father figure in his life, after growing up surrounded almost exclusively by women.
In retrospect Ed’s pretty sure alcohol was to blame when he declared his intentions to become Roy Mustang’s father – but Ed was sick of dads who failed to step up (and yes, time had mellowed Ed’s anger at Hohenheim down to a soft twinge of missed opportunities and lost memories), so he would help any kid who needed a father. Even if the kid in question was almost forty years old and smelled like shitty whiskey most of the time.
Madame Christmas’ seal of approval in his pocket, Ed set his plan in motion.
Operation Adult Adoption was a go.
Roy would have forgotten about the strange occurrence if his phone hadn’t rung on Friday afternoon three days later. The office was busy with last minute activity, one last surge of efficiency before the weekend began to keep Havoc focused and Breda in check.
“Major General Mustang’s office. How can I help you?”
It was almost the end of the workweek, the non-existent enthusiasm in his voice making that rather obvious.
“Oh, hello Mr. Mu- Roy. It’s me, Winry!”
Winry Rockbell was the last person Roy had expected to call him. He couldn’t recall the last time he had spoken to the woman, his relationship with her always defined by his connection to Edward. Ah, there it was. Edward .
“How can I help you, Mrs. Rockbell?”
“Oh, call me Winry, please.”
Roy took a deep breath, not only because her voice sounded just how Edward’s evil grins looked. It was late; he wanted a drink. “How can I help you then, Winry?”
“I wanted to know if you can make it on Sunday?”
“Sunday?”
The entire office had fallen silent, five pairs of eyes watching him as he fumbled through the conversation. Riza’s gaze was burning a hole through his skull. ‘ Winry’s eight and a half months pregnant ’, her expression seemed to say, ‘ Don’t you dare stress her out any further ’.
Roy wasn’t planning to.
“Yes, Sunday! Family dinner – you remember? Ed said he made sure to invite you! Don’t tell me he forgot…” Winry’s voice trailed off, annoyance seeping into the spaces between her words.
“Ah, he did. He did mention it. I just… I wasn’t sure how serious he was. He did jump out of my third story window after all, and…”
A soft chuckle echoed down the line, “Ed has recently developed a dislike for doors – I think Lan Fan is to blame, but don’t tell him that. He wants everyone to think that he and Lan Fan hate each other, so I can’t make fun of him”.
This was new information for Roy – then again, he and Edward rarely talked. Every few months, Ed sent an academic journal or a book his way, asking for annotations and feedback, but their personal lives had never really intersected. Before now.
“Anyway… I don’t know if I’m free Sunday evening. It is a three-hour train ride to Rush Valley after all, and-“
“Oh, don’t worry – you can sleep here, we have an extra bedroom, and the trains leave early on Monday.”
Winry didn’t even let him finish. This wasn’t a spontaneous call – this was planned. At first Roy had assumed that this was simply Edward’s idea of a joke… but now Winry was in on it as well?
“I’m really sorry, but I don’t know if I am free on Mon-“
“Sir?”, this time it was Riza who interrupted him.
“Excuse me, Winry.” He looked up. “Yes, Hawkeye?”
“Your schedule is free on Monday morning.”
The Lieutenant wasn’t smiling, but her frown had a certain self-satisfied tinge to it.
“How do you know that?”
“I made sure of that myself, Sir. So you can attend family dinner with the Elric-Rockbells.”
Ah, so not only Winry was in on it, but his team as well.
Roy swallowed, his throat traitorously dry.
“Ah, thanks. In that case…” He focused back on the receiver in his hand. “Winry? Yes? Yeah, I can make it. Should I bring anything?”
The pure joy in Winry’s voice was almost enough to cover the stifling feeling that he had just been tricked.
Roy joined the Elric-Rockbells that weekend and he continued to join them every second Sunday following that.
The phone rang in the middle of the night, Roy quick to answer even as he struggled to recall who had access to his private phone number. Was it Hawkeye? Had something happened?
( don’t think about Hughes, don’t think about your best friend bleeding out while trying to call you, don’t think about Hughes )
It was Edward.
“Roy! Roy, it’s a girl!”
Ah, so something had indeed happened.
Not that Roy was awake enough to realize that.
“What?”
“I said it’s a girl! The baby! My daughter! Your sister!”
“Uh… good?”
“Yes! Amazing! She’s healthy! She’s heavy! She looks just like her mother – just you know… covered in blood and a bit slimy. Also really small because she’s a baby!”
Edward’s excitement was hard to deal with, especially at – Roy glanced at his alarm – 3:20 am in the morning. But finally, Roy’s struggling brain caught up with the avalanche of words coming down the line.
“A… baby? Your baby? She’s here?”
“Yes! A healthy girl! We’re thinking about naming her Aster, what do you think?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“You’re her older brother! Of course we’re asking- Oh, Paninya wants me to get back, and I still have to call Izumi and-“
“O-Okay…”
The line was dead before Roy could offer an intelligent answer. He couldn’t fall back asleep for the rest of the night, his chest painfully tight with emotions he couldn’t name.
The weather was quickly turning cold by the time Roy returned to his office following a meeting with Führer Grumman in late November. He immediately stopped short when he noticed a paper wrapped package on his desk. Only Havoc and Fuery were in the office today, as Hawkeye was busy overseeing the final exams of the new cadets on the shooting range and Breda was out in the field gathering information.
Roy looked at them, the package, them, and the package again.
Finally, he asked, “and what is this?”
“Oh, it came for you during lunch. Express delivery from Rush Valley. Don’t know who the chief had to bribe to get it here so quickly, but damn if I’m not impressed.”
Roy told Havoc just what he thought about the man’s assessment by raising one of his eyebrows.
“Sorry, boss. Just saying it how it is.”
Fuery showed his support by nodding along with Havoc’s words. His entire team loved mocking him, which seemed to be the price he paid for their loyalty.
Traitors, all of them.
Resigning himself to his fate, Roy opened the package only to find a leatherbound book once he peeled the brown paper away.
‘Alchemical Theorems and the Arrogance of the Self by E. Elric’ the book declared, untouched gold lettering betraying the recency of the print. Carefully, as if not to dirty the new piece of knowledge, Roy picked it up, only for a sheet of paper to fall out and gently glide down to the floor.
Roy could recognize the writing on it at first glance even from a few feet away; Edward’s chicken-scratch had haunted him throughout the alchemist’s thankfully rather short military career. Even now, with his dominant arm back where it belonged, Ed hadn’t quite managed to develop the fine motor skills necessary for good penmanship. Only four words were written on the piece of paper: ‘Open the third page’.
And Roy did.
‘I dedicate the second volume of my work to my amazing wife Winry, who saved my life so often, I can never thank her enough.
My brother Alphonse, who watched over me when I could not and who helped me carry the weight of the world.
And my children, who brighten my day even in the darkest night. Melli, James, Aster, Roy – this is for you.’
Roy was weirdly touched even if he couldn’t help but shake his head in fond exasperation. Edward Elric was a strange man, and Roy was only beginning to understand the true scope of that now.
“And? What did he do, boss?”
“Something surprisingly sweet – and stupid.”
“Ah, so nothing new then.”
Havoc’s assessment was both more right – and wrong – than either of them could really suspect.
Ed was visiting Izumi with Melli and James in tow, Winry desperate for a few days just to herself (and the baby), when his mentor asked him about his kids over coffee.
Izumi was the closest thing Ed had had to a mother after his mom died, and even now, Winry and he made sure to honour her as an aunt while raising their children. They were both orphans after all, so it was only natural for their family to be entirely self-made. Ed was rather proud of the large group of people they had managed to pull into their orbit.
“As you can see these two are both… okay .”
He playfully hesitated before finishing the sentence, considering Melli was currently trying to strangle her little brother using toilet paper. She wasn’t very successful, which was why Ed hadn’t yet seen a reason to intercept. It helped that James had taken to eating the toilet paper as an effective counter effort to his sister’s endless torments.
“Melli certainly takes after you.” Izumi was smiling, her expression wistful but never sad.
“I resent that! I was never that much of a…” Ed trailed off, the lie too bold to pull off in front of his old master.
“I remember the stories Alphonse told me. And Pinako. And Winry. You were a little terror, Ed.”
“Hng.”
“But if I remember correctly you have more than two now, so come on… show me the pictures, I know you want to.”
And Ed did.
The ghost of a long dead friend passed over him when he pulled out his wallet to show Izumi the endless mountain of pictures he always carried with him. Aster’s pudgy baby face with its serious frown was the subject of most of them, Ed trying his best to immortalize her image for the world. But not even the unbelievable cuteness of his youngest daughter could distract from the fact that a couple of pictures depicting Roy Mustang were also a part of the display.
“What is he doing here?”
Izumi didn’t sound particularly impressed, and Ed had the strong suspicion that it was not just because all the pictures Ed had chosen showed Roy with his horrible mustache two years after the Promised Day (Riza had taken a razor to it two weeks later and it hadn’t returned since). No, it was probably due to Izumi’s dislike for the man in general.
Ed couldn’t even really fault her for that – Roy was a hard man to like, especially if you’d never been a part of his team.
“I adopted him? Kind of?”
“What.”
“I adopted him. As a joke. Somewhat. There were some other reasons but… yeah, Winry’s in on it. So are Riza and Havoc. Al signs all his letters to Mustang with ‘Your Uncle Al’. He shows up for family dinner every other week. He was one of the first people to hold Aster after Winry got home from the hospital. Last week he called to ask me for advice on a date he was going on. It’s… it’s a whole thing .”
For a long moment, Izumi was silent. And then, slowly, a smile brightened her serious expression, the lines around her eyes deepening in tandem with her amusement.
“You’re more trouble than you’re worth sometimes, Ed, but for now… seems as if Roy Mustang just gained another Aunt and Uncle.”
“I’ll tell him.”
And Ed did.
Roy was decidedly not pouting.
“I promised Catalina that I’d celebrate Yule with her four months ago. I can’t just cancel on her now, just because your date flunked out, Mustang.”
Riza looked at him with the face of a woman who wanted nothing more than to board her train to East City just to have one week of vacation far away from Roy and his myriad of dramas. He couldn’t even blame her for that.
“I know, Hawkeye. And I would never ask anything like that from you. I just thought… isn’t it a bit sad that we won’t be celebrating together?”
Roy wasn’t whining either. No. Really.
“Maybe it’ll do us some good…” Riza’s hair was spilling down her back, the whiskey glass in her hand half empty, her body relaxed, her mood sombre. Tomorrow they would separate for the duration of their vacation, but tonight they shared a drink in what could only be called tradition.
“You don’t mean that.”
“No, I don’t.”
Not much else would have happened that evening, if Roy’s phone hadn’t chosen that moment to ring.
“Mustang speaking.”
“It’s me.”
Winry. For someone with a business of her own, Winry was somewhat bad at saying her own name once she picked up a phone.
“Why are you calling?”
“Oh, I just had a question. How are you?”
“Tired.” Roy wasn’t really in the mood for happy chatter, his and Riza’s drinking almost sacred. Still, he tried to be at least cordial in his shortness.
“Hi Tired, I’m Winry.”
Roy couldn’t help the groan that escaped him, not even when Winry dissolved into happy laughter.
“Sorry, I don’t want to bother you, so I’ll keep it quick: when will you arrive for Yule and how long will you stay? Both Al and Mei, and Izumi and her husband are coming and I have to make sure we’ll have enough beds.”
“Um…”
“Is Riza there with you?”
“Yes?”
“Then be a darling and give her the phone, yes?”
Almost on autopilot Roy pushed the receiver into Riza’s hands. He wasn’t quite sure what was happening right now, but he felt powerless to do anything but watch. Alcohol was slowing his thoughts down, and confusion clung to his every move.
“Riza here. How can I help you, Winry?”
Roy could only listen in, hearing half of a conversation aimed at him. Riza was humming and nodding, her brown eyes warm now when they’d been almost empty earlier tonight. Maybe that vacation would do them some good, maybe she was right and they both needed this.
“Ah, I see. No, the General will leave Central tomorrow at 3pm. He’ll be at your place by six. Is that okay? Yeah?”
Riza dutifully ignored his exasperated face, hell, she even ignored his attempt to grab the phone out of her hands.
“He’ll stay the entire week, that’s right. And… ah, yes, he does have presents for the kids. I’ve seen them and they are rather sweet – he put a lot of effort into them.”
That was true – after having dinner at the Elric-Rockbell residence so many times over the past few months, Roy knew he had to repay their generosity somehow. A couple of gifts for his… well, for Winry’s kids was nothing, really.
“I am sure he’ll be happy to receive that – no, and tell Melli that his favourite colour is hazel.”
He raised his eyebrows, and the smile Riza shot his way was nothing short of breath-taking. She was happy about something – no, she was happy for someone. Him . Whatever she had just heard had eased some of the eternal weight pressing down on her.
“Yes, I will. And thank you. Happy Holidays for you too… I will.”
Riza pushed the phone back in his hand, the softness in her face staying even though it was no longer Winry she was talking to.
“Winry?” Roy said, all too aware that once again a decision had been made without his actual input.
“We’re happy to have you here, you know that, right?”
Did he?
Maybe.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Well, we can’t wait for you to get here. Melli’s been gnawing my ear off with her relentless ‘ Brother Roy Brother Roy Brother Roy ’ demands. You might just be her favourite.”
“Tell her I’ll be there soon.”
“I will. And now I won’t bother you anymore – have a nice evening, Roy. And don’t drink too much.”
“Sure, mom .”
It was said jokingly, and yet the horror at his slip-up was strong enough to make him cut the call before Winry could react. Dammit. Riza was looking at him, laughter bubbling behind her stony exterior. Fucking hell. He would never live this down.
“Can you at least pour me another glass of whiskey before you start making fun of me?”
“Who knew you were such a momma’s boy?”
“I'll take that as a no.”
The rest of the night was filled with a lot more joy.
“Major General Roy Mustang, what can I do for you?”
“Sergeant John Miller, calling from the Investigations Department.”
“Sergeant Miller, what do you want?”
“There has recently been a change to your personal file, Sir, and I am calling to confirm the legality of that change.”
“Proceed.”
“On March 15 th the section regarding your relations has been changed from ‘parents: unknown; status: orphaned; guardian: Chris Mustang’ to ‘parents: unknown; status: adopted; guardian: Chris Mustang/Edward Elric, Winry Rockbell’. Can you confirm?”
“How the hell…”
“As far as the paperwork in front of me indicates, a legal loophole was used to do this. Since you are officially listed as orphaned, Sir, a claim for adoption can theoretically be made by everyone. But since you are over the age of maturity, your consent is required to make this adoption legally binding.”
“I am forty-one.”
“I know, Sir.”
“What-?”
“Shall I reverse the changes to your personal file, Sir?”
Roy remembered the past few months, Winry’s smile and Edward’s laughter, Melli’s insistence to call him Brother Roy, and James’ slow acceptance of Roy as a member of his family. He recalled the delicious Yule celebration with Paninya and Garfiel, Izumi and Sig, Alphonse and Mei, and how he’d been bullied into joining the family picture. He imagined Winry’s sad frown as she was barred from his next promotion since there wasn’t any actual relation between the two of them, and suddenly the answer wasn’t all that hard to find.
“No. I consent to this change in my personal file.”
“Oh.”
“Thank you for the call, Sergeant Miller.”
It was the summer of 1928 and they had just celebrated Roy’s forty-third birthday with the entire family and his team, the sun long gone by the time Ed joined him on the veranda, an almost empty bottle of beer in his hands.
“How you holding up?”
“Good.”
If anything, Roy had never been better. He couldn’t recall ever being this happy in his life, not even the persistent voice in the back of his mind reminding him that he didn’t deserve any of this was strong enough to ruin this day.
Everyone he cared about was here, Gracia busy talking shop with Izumi, while the Armstrong siblings fought about which Elric child liked them best. Alphonse and Havoc were having an intense debate about sheep herding, while Riza, Breda, Winry, and Miles tried to invent a new drinking game that was silent enough as not to wake the children asleep upstairs. Roy's sisters had basically kidnapped Mei so she could tell them everything about the intrigues at the Xingese Court, and Madame Christmas had retired an hour ago with her favourite book and a glass of rum. Fuery and Falman were playing cards with Elicia, the teenager slowly bleeding them dry.
It was perfect.
Roy wasn’t used to this.
“This is a pretty weird mash-up of people, gotta admit. I would never have guessed that Gracia and Izumi would get along this well.”
Ed laughed at Roy’s admission, his golden hair bright even this late at night. They were leaning against the wooden railing, Rush Valley still thrumming with energy even after everyone else had already gone to bed. It smelled like dust and motor oil, cicadas an ever-present backdrop in the soundtrack of Ed’s life – at this point, Roy’s life as well.
“You should be glad it’s only Izumi and Gracia – though I’m not really surprised. Izumi has a soft spot for housewives. No, if anything, you should be glad Alphonse wasn’t the one who had the genius idea to adopt you.”
“Why?”
Roy turned to look at Ed, his own drink long forgotten.
“Oh, because then you’d have to have family dinners with Scar sitting on the other side of the table and I can’t even imagine how awkward that would have been.”
On a bad day, this would have crushed him – but today wasn’t a bad day, so he only laughed.
“So I assume Mei and Scar are still pretty tight?”
“In Xing, the family of the bride has to barter the bride price with the family of the groom – when Alphonse finally asked Ling if he could marry her, I had to sit down with Scar and Dowager Chan to make the wedding possible. Most awkward three weeks of my life.”
Ed visibly shivered at the memory, even as a smile danced over his lips. The wedding wouldn’t be for another six months; the Imperial Court was sparing no expense for the crown princess of Xing and her foreign fiancée. Ed had returned from his travels to Xing as the representative of the Elric family only a few weeks ago, and Roy knew once the invitations were sent, he would receive one as a nephew of the groom.
Neither Elric brother could ever do anything the normal or easy way round.
“Why did you do it?”
“Why did I do what?”
“Why did you decide to… adopt me. That’s a pretty harebrained plan even for you.”
The silence grew heavier as Ed struggled to find his words.
“Mustang…”
“Don’t lie to me. I’d say we know each other good enough by now to tell the truth.”
He was forty-three, and his adopted father, whom he had known since the man was eleven years old, would soon turn twenty-nine, fourteen years separating them. He’d been Ed’s commanding officer, his leash, punishment, and safety net, and for almost three years now, Ed had been his family.
Still, honesty and vulnerability didn’t come easy for either of them.
“I’ll tell you, but you gotta promise not to get mad, yeah?”
“That’s never a good way to start a story.”
“Come on, Mustang.”
Their eyes met, and Roy couldn’t help but swallow at the pure weight of emotion hidden behind Ed’s golden gaze. If it weren’t completely mental, Roy would almost say Ed looked at him with parental affection.
“Okay… I promise. Now spill.”
“Sure… to be completely honest, it was a lot of things. I don’t know if you remember, but in ’23, when I had the kids with me and we met up at Fuery’s favourite coffee house?” Ed had pulled himself up, until he could twist around and sit comfortably on the railing. Roy’s hips complained just watching the younger man do his acrobatics.
“Vaguely, yes.”
“Everyone was having a good time. Fuery was talking about his new radio, Havoc was swooning over Rebecca, Breda bonded with James and Melli, Riza shared some funny anecdotes about… something or another. And you? You were so fucking miserable. All you could talk about was work, and the only honest reaction I got out of you that day was when Melli called you Brother for the first time and you startled so badly you almost spilled your coffee down your shirt.”
“Oh…”
His hands were clinging to the bottle between his fingers like a lifeline, the glass no longer cool but warm from his desperate grip. Edward wasn’t looking at him, but his body language was still open – honest.
“I didn’t think much of it at the time.” Ed continued. “But then I met Riza a few months later, and she told me about… well, she told me about the two of- I mean-“
A blush had creeped onto Ed’s face, his fumbling would be hilarious in any other setting but this. Roy raised an eyebrow, disbelief easing some of the discomfort from his chest.
“You’re twenty-eight, Edward. I’d think you were old enough to-“
“She told me that the two of you were in love. There. I said it. Happy?”
“Not really, but please continue.”
“ Truth , you’re insufferable. But no… she told me about this thing between you. About how- well, about how you’ll never marry because your duty to this country and its future is more important than your own happiness. She told me that you both see other people, occasionally, but that it’s never the same. And how she thinks she found a way to live with it, but sometimes she wondered if you could. Especially since you both decided to never have kids because-“
“Because how are we supposed to explain to them what we did?”
Roy finished Ed’s sentence without having to think about it. No surprise there – it was a sentiment Riza and he had internalized long ago. And he stood by it still. There was no world in which he would happily have children of his own, only to then be forced to confront them with the realities of Ishval.
“Yeah… and I remember sitting there, thinking: but that’s so fucking lonely. Not the decision to not marry or procreate, per say – I live in Rush Valley, and Winry and I are basically the most boring couple in this entire town simply because we decided to marry before having kids. But the… it sounded so lonely when Riza told me about it. And I thought…”
“You thought: I have two children and a wife.”
“Not quite… You read Al’s book, right?”
“The Theory Of Giving Back?”
A soft breeze made it easier to breathe, Rush Valley almost otherworldly beautiful this late at night – much of the mundane harshness was gone, now that the burning summer sun could no longer illuminate all the ugly details. Instead, there was the distant rushing of the river, and the soft chatter of their guests back in the house proper.
“Yep. It’s something we worked on together, though he is better at it than me. But it’s essentially simply the idea of helping create more positivity after receiving support first. So, my thought wasn’t simply, oh, I have two kids and a wife. It was: I have a family, and he has barred himself from having one – but back in the day this man helped me survive, so I can give back, and I can give back more, by helping him now. By giving him my family as well.”
“That’s extremely sweet, Edward.”
Roy was not getting choked up. He wasn’t. No. Maybe he was having an allergic reaction? Yeah, that had to be it.
“Eh, part of the appeal was the knowledge that you would absolutely hate it.”
“Of course it was.”
If their shared laughter was a bit more watery than usual, neither of them mentioned it.
“But you didn’t approach me for almost a year following that?”
“Yeah, I had to meet your mom first.”
“The unfathomable Madame Christmas.”
“The very same.”
Roy nodded – he might have grown up without parents, his father dying when he was two, his mother not even surviving long enough past his birth to call herself such, but he had never been truly alone. Chris Mustang had taken him in when her brother died, and she had raised him as good as a brothel owner in the bad parts of town could.
Which was to say that she had done a phenomenal job.
He owed her a lot.
“She approached me first, if I’m being honest. And we talked a lot at first. About you. About me. About Winry and the kids. I told her about Al’s theory, about how lonely I thought you were… and then she said I should just adopt you. Should become the dad you never had. It was mostly said in jest, but I think we both realized a certain potential within that idea.”
“And two months later you broke into Central Command to declare me your son.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
There was nothing else that had to be said, at least Roy couldn’t think of anything he wanted to say. Maybe Thank You , but he wasn’t really the type of man who said such words quite as openly. It didn’t help that Ed wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed hearing them either.
Ed’s beer was gone, Roy’s drink a long-forgotten memory. The night was long, the party had only just begun.
“Do you regret it?” Ed asked before Roy could turn around to re-join the festivities.
“What?”
“Saying yes, when we changed your legal records behind your back.”
“I mean… I would have appreciated being asked, but… Riza says being legally tied to the People’s Alchemist has only helped my public approval ratings, so I can’t say I’ve regretted it yet.”
Roy smiled, every unspoken word loud enough to hear. Ed’s answer was a grin, the message received loud and clear.
“Good. Now come and get your old man another beer.”
“You’re still fourteen years younger than me, Ed.”
“Don’t talk back! When I was your age, let me tell you, parents simply threw their children out of the window if they dared to-“
Roy didn’t hear the rest – he was laughing too hard, the alcohol softening some of the harsh edges, the current company sanding down the rest.
He had never before been quite this happy – if nothing else, he would always have this.