FMA Fanfic: The Naming III
The Naming III. [all parts]
by arcanewinter. R 3139 Maes x Roy. Fullmetal Alchemist. Ep25 spoiler, AU, Hughesathon cont’n.
Hughes returns to his family.
The night outside was slowly releasing its tyranny in begrudging silence. The car had come to rest in front of what remained of the Hughes’ residence, but the two men in the back seat had not moved, one waiting for the other.
He was afraid even to look at the house, unwilling to be reminded of just how much had been taken from him when they ended that life. Nervously he clasped his hands, studying them in order to avoid the mirrors in the car.
“She’s probably asleep,” he said, tossing a wan smile in his friend’s direction.
But when Roy didn’t answer, he knew he wasn’t fooling anyone.
Again his eyes returned to his hands, hands which had done her work, and yet resembled so perfectly the hands that used to pat his daughter’s head, hands that once slipped a ring onto his wife’s finger.
“What if she doesn’t accept me?” he asked, his voice low as though to ask too loudly would only strengthen the possibility.
Roy was silent a moment longer, arms folded, gaze directed out the window and away from the street.
“If she were any other woman,” he responded softly, “I’d tell you she wasn’t strong enough to make that decision.” He began to turn his head, but stopped in profile. “She saw your body. We can’t avoid telling her the truth.”
Hughes grimaced faintly, a mixture of physical and emotional turmoil. Maybe he shouldn’t do this. Maybe it was too selfish of him, to force her through that choice, to bring back again the event that separated them. If she didn’t take him back, she may never put it behind her. His death, though agonisingly unfair, was at least a clean goodbye, a tragedy time could lessen. But walking into that house again might present for her a wound that would never close.
He was startled by the sound of Roy’s door as he opened it. “I’m going to prepare her,” he stated, and carefully eased himself out, lifting his hand to stop the patient lieutenant from helping him. “You can’t spend the rest of your life wondering.”
Hughes smiled with bittersweet appreciation as the door clicked shut again. Roy’s insistence on taking the blame was a quality for which Hughes always chastised his closest friend. But in this case, he was more grateful than he could say. His eyes watched the man ascend the walk still lined with her favourite flowers. As he took the few steps, Roy’s hand supported his weight on the iron railing he had painted just seconds before Elysia, unforeseen, had put her hands on it. And though Hughes could see the trepidation in him, Roy nevertheless lifted his hand to knock, the wooden sound loud enough to reach the car as well.
“What happened to him, lieutenant?” he asked softly, never taking his eyes off the door.
Hawkeye’s attention was in the same place. “He was shot,” she answered, “by another soldier.” Although straightforward, her tone lacked its usual strength.
“Who was it?” He just barely kept the vindictiveness, both inherent and unnatural, out of his voice.
The door finally opened. He watched Roy carefully, knowing by his familiar actions that he was apologizing for the hour and asking to come in. Hughes’ stomach clenched and lost all warmth when he saw her look towards the street, towards the car, where he sat frozen with his breath held and his pupils narrowing to slits with fear. But it seemed to be too dark to see inside the car, and she soon stepped aside to let Roy in. The door shut again, removing her from view.
She hadn’t seen him. She was still safe from the truth, for now.
As he sat back and willed his heart back to rhythm, he remembered his question. “Lieutenant?”
“It’s hard to say, sir,” she replied, her voice wavering like he’d never heard it.
He watched her for a moment before deciding he didn’t want to know more. “I can’t wait here,” he announced quietly, and pulled the handle of his door, ignoring the lieutenant’s warning, if there even was one. He rounded the car, head suddenly pounding away his equilibrium, but he managed to follow the walk. He drew close to the side of the steps and crouched below the edge of the window, shifting until he could see between the curtains.
Gracia’s back was to him. She was seated, probably because Roy told her to sit, and he sat across from her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands folded. From the calm, intellectual expression on his face, Hughes could only guess he was introducing to her that darker part of alchemy, the ironic failing that awaited any alchemist who gave in to that greatest of all temptations.
He saw Roy glance at him, but only in passing so that Gracia’s attention would not be drawn behind her. But she leaned forward, fingers reaching out to the bandaging that still covered almost a full half of his head. He waved her off, his expression becoming more serious, more plaintive.
Hughes grew anxious as Gracia’s posture became more tense, her movements more contained, less natural. The expression on Roy’s face was again steeled, and whatever she said to him then dismissed him.
He seemed almost hurt as he got up, keeping his balance only with care. He moved out of Hughes’ view as he approached the door, but Hughes’ eyes were on Gracia, who had remained in her chair, her head bowed to the side, away from Roy.
The door opened. Hughes moved back from the window, meeting Roy at the bottom of the few steps.
“What happened? What did she say?”
Roy offered him only a half-smile at first that remained isolated at his mouth. “She thinks I’ve finally lost it. She thinks I mean to bring you back.”
“But you told her, didn’t you? That it wasn’t you?” Although he hadn’t meant to, Hughes had reached out to clasp Roy’s shoulder, not unkindly, though filled with desperation.
Shaking his head, Roy looked away. “She told me to go, and never to bring it up again.”
Hughes looked between the closed door and his friend, his present portal. He was so close to her. He was afraid, but he had hope. “Can’t you go back? Just explain it to her. I can’t just walk in like this!”
Roy rested his weight against the railing as though he’d just used up his last reserves. “We should leave. She’s too upset right now by the idea alone.”
Hughes glanced to the door again, knowing she was in that room, just through a few inches of wood, that she’d been in there for months without him, that just upstairs his daughter was sleeping a few months older than last he’d seen her. But he knew he couldn’t face them unless they expected him. Roy was right. They’d have to try another way.
He nodded his head in acquiescence just as a voice, already unsteady, already losing its innocence, came muffled through the door.
“Roy, who are you talking to?”
And quickly, as though she had to force it, now or never, the door opened inward, the air rushing with it and past him. The light fell on him in return, glaring against his side.
His breath died in his chest, heart thudding to a precipice as his gaze clung to Roy as though he might deliver him.
But Roy could not hide him now. Both dreading her and missing her, he turned his head and cautiously passed his sight from him to her, the feeling trickling away from his face as he caught the shock in her eyes, her hand lifted to her mouth as though she were afraid of waking her daughter.
Roy caught her first, his other hand slamming into the door’s handle and gripping it to remain upright.
“Inside,” he ordered hoarsely.
* * * * *
They had set her on the sofa, Hughes momentarily forgetting his weakness. Roy had taken a seat near her, but in the few minutes that had passed, Hughes had come to stand at the mantle, resisting the urge to turn down the image of the green-eyed man gazing so optimistically into the room.
“We should go,” Roy said quietly.
Hughes nodded slowly. Gracia would be all right. It would turn out better if they could get her back in bed, where she might wake from the dream of their visit, but they couldn’t carry her, and couldn’t risk her waking on the way. They would have to depend on the mind’s ability to make excuses.
Another time. Another way.
And in the meantime, the suggestion would be there, the hint that might make it easier when the time came.
“Momma?”
But time would not wait. Two large drowsy eyes peered from the top of the steps, and it was too late to spare them the sight of him.
“Daddy!” she cried, and turning, she descended the steps with careful innocence. Hughes could not help but come forward to safeguard her as she came down, one step at a time, feet first and backwards, his arms too ready to catch her as she gave up on the last few. She embraced his neck and did not let go.
“Momma said Daddy gone forever.”
Hughes clung to her with all the strength and gentleness of a father overcome. He only barely registered Roy’s presence beyond them, the expression on his face one of patience for the inevitable.
“Momma didn’t know, baby.” He pressed his face close to her, kissing the edge of her small ear and drawing in the smell of her, his only child. Surely no one could take this from him again.
Sinking into the near chair, he let his daughter draw back to beam at him. She was almost as he remembered her. She’d aged, but he could still fill in the space of time, could still imagine the months in between. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was to have been gone, that he had missed her more than seemed possible for anyone to endure, that he wanted to hear everything he had missed.
But the sight of her face continuously stilled the words on his tongue. She merely drew close again, her small arms doing their best to surround his middle.
“Daddy?”
His large hand settled at the back of her head, stroking her hair as she turned her wide gaze on him again. “Hm?”
“What happened to Daddy’s eyes?”
He smiled for her sake, but he could not help but look away, to look down, to hide their telling hue. For a brief but powerful moment he had felt as though nothing had changed, as though this homecoming were nothing more than the welcome conclusion to a lengthy mission.
But he had lived another life in between, a life to replace the one taken. Ascending from the depths of what they’d done to him would not be easy. Of course she would notice, even if she didn’t know what it meant.
“You don’t like them, pumpkin?” Still maintaining his smile, though its corners were heavy, he brought his darkened gaze to her again.
She peered up at him intelligently, large eyes making the tiny shift from left to right, but she never lost her bright expression of happiness. It was this that he kept close to him though she never answered–it was this expression that he held onto as Gracia, awakening, ordered her to come away from him as though he were worse than a stranger.
He released his daughter as she was taken. He could feel Gracia’s hands shaking in the accidental contact, and though he stood up, he found it almost impossible to look at her, his face burning with a shame he’d never had a reason to endure before.
He could all but feel her glare of confusion weighing solely on him, though Roy was attempting to tell her something amid Elysia’s whimpering to return to him.
“Gracia,” he whispered, finding that his voice could not combat the heaviness of her judgement. He could not find the volume, nor the breath to say more, but she too was whispering, her hand draped unsteadily over her eyes, her frame small as she held her daughter close.
“It’s not you,” she was saying, repeating the words almost as a barrier between them, as though she could fend off the doppelganger in her nightmare.
Not him. Not the man in their wedding picture. Not the man she gave herself to. Not the man who loved her, who became a parent with her, who made her laugh, who made her happy.
Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was just looking for a life, for a name. He knew that man’s body was in the ground, that it was beyond resurrection or repair, and had been since it had fallen. What right did he have to continue in that man’s footsteps, to reap the riches he had sewn? The only connection he really had were the fractured glasses through which he watched that man’s wife shrink from him.
Roy finally reached out to her, taking her shoulders and turning her to face him, supporting himself as much as her.
“Why can’t it be?” he asked her, his voice almost too low to hear where Hughes had sunk back into the chair. Roy’s head was bowed as though he were begging for reassurance rather than reason, hands gripping her upper arms for steadiness.
“If he has all of Maes’ memories, who else is he?”
The bar hadn’t changed much from the one they used to sit in, talking little but saying more. It was another city outside its doors and another decade on its whiskey, but the drinks in their hands and their posture towards each other were the same.
One wore a dark patch across the left side of his face, its fabric in clean contrast to the silvering hair at each temple. Fine lines of age had marked him, making all the more permanent his fatigue, his conscience. At his side sat a near ghost of his past, unchanged as a photograph, clearer than a memory.
The first withdrew a small bag from his pocket and set it on the bar between them, a much-repeated act, a token of a guilty devotion.
The other paused before setting his hand over it, his fingers tightening around it until its contents shifted audibly and his eyes sharpened. But his hand relaxed again, and he moved it a few inches closer to his friend.
“No more of this, Roy.”
“I told you before it makes no difference. The military finds it wherever they go.”
“I’m trying to quit.” He smiled the way he always did when his humour failed. He didn’t lose the expression as his eyes settled on his friend. “It’s going to take a long time to degrade as it is. Don’t look at me like that.”
“You told me she didn’t question you.”
Hughes smiled again, more genuine, as he looked down. “She doesn’t have to. She’s such a smart girl, Roy.”
“Then take them.”
Hughes shook his head slowly, his fingertips almost nervous where they rubbed the outside of his drink. “Gracia won’t be with me forever. Neither will you.”
“What about your daughter?”
His smile was automatic, though it soon faded, along with his voice. “I only want the life I was meant to have. No more than that.”
Silence pooled between them, though behind them the rest of the bar murmured and guffawed in waves of sound that cushioned their exchange. Hughes looked up at the dull clink of Roy’s glass against the lacquered wood of the bar, but Roy did not return the glance until after he’d spoken.
“Your family won’t stop with Elysia, Maes.”
“But I’ll never be a grandfather.” He shook his head gently. “Doesn’t matter how many children she might have.” He glanced at Roy just long enough to see the somber understanding in his face before the other looked away.
It hadn’t been easy seeing him age. It wasn’t that he looked very different. If anything, he was more handsome than he was before, but that change had been gradual so that, as was only normal, he barely noticed that time had passed at all. But when Roy took just a little longer to get up from his seat, when he could not remember as many details from their academy days, when he sometimes looked at his old friend–the barest smile on his lips–as though grateful, he could see the stamp of his years.
It was no different with Gracia, though she worried more about still being beautiful to him, and she was.
“Pride grew older,” Roy said quietly, his voice barely floating across the even drone of the bar. “Is it not possible for you?”
Pride. Pride had had a family who never knew, who never suspected. Did he ever love them? Did he come to enjoy their company? Or did he build his life merely for the sacred image, for the leader it could make him in the eyes of the country? Perhaps it didn’t matter. Either way, Pride had taken up the role he’d been made for.
“It wasn’t my purpose to age.” He smiled lightly, declining another drink as the bartender passed. “I was supposed to be only as you remembered me.”
He could feel the weight of Roy’s attention for a long moment, though by the time he raised his eyes to bear it, Roy had found his pocket watch of some thirty years, still ticking away his debts. He closed it and returned it to his pocket, then turned to stand. His hand remained on Hughes’ shoulder even after he was perfectly stable, his grip increasing briefly before he finally let go.
“I’ve got to get back.”
Hughes nodded. It wasn’t a long train ride to Central, but it was an inconvenient commute as often as it was made. Hughes couldn’t risk being recognised by anyone who once knew him, and that meant retreating from the military posts and making a life in a backwater town whose trains were infrequent.
He was two steps away when Hughes noticed the small bag still sitting on the bar.
“Roy.”
The footsteps paused.
“Take them,” he repeated, turning again for the door. “I don’t want to see you like that.”
He listened as the measured footsteps sounded the boards in a well-worn path, hinges faintly creaking before a muffled clatter marked his exit.
Waiting as long as he could, his hand finally closed around the small but heavy bag. This . . . this was the last. He needed no more than this. He would take no more than this.
Slipping the bag into his pocket, he stood up to go.
