Cost of a Secret

A/N: Erika, I have to say I hadn't quite considered that as an ending. You have a very, very cynical mind. As for how it actually will end, no promises. Baroque Angel, I'm just glad to see you review now. Roy is nothing if he isn't a stubborn bastard. I think we all know that. And yeah, Karen does need tortured for all of this, doesn't she? Miko, thanks. I usually have a general idea of what I want, but it's a matter of getting things from point a to point b.

Thanks to everyone for reading. Reviews are love.

Chapter 20

Rare Animals

The train rolled into the station, and Roy was back in control. He was giving orders to the local units and telling them precisely how to go about their attack. Ed had to admit it was nice seeing the old Roy back. The confidence the older man exuded when he was behaving like himself was something that really couldn’t be imitated by anyone else in the military. Some of it was that cocky bastard-like attitude that had made Ed hate him so much as a teenager, but most of it was the genuine knowledge that he was aware of exactly what he was doing and that he had the authority so no one should ever question any of his decisions.

It irritated the hell out of most of the local troops, wanting to know who the hell Mustang thought he was. Of course, there were those that remembered he had once been running the show out at Eastern Command. He got genuine respect from those who remembered that. Of course, those that remembered him then seemed quite surprised to find Ed occupying the spot that Riza Hawkeye once had, as the person who seemed to be helping to hold him up and support him. Riza was still there, but it was obvious which of the two Roy was leaning on.

Ed ran into a few of the staff he’d once known, winning them over with a sort of charm and innocence—one that didn’t really exist in him any more if it ever had—that had once worked when he was a kid. The higher ups had thought he was a brat, but the general support staff thought he was absolutely adorable as a kid.

“Has there been anything unusual?” Ed asked while Roy was trying to set up the best possible offense against Karen.

“We’ve noticed a few more foreigners in the area over the last few weeks,” a lieutenant told him.

“Foreigners? Any idea from where?”

“They had harsh accents, some of them. I think Drachma or near the border,” the young man said. “Not usually what we get in here. We’re used to Xingians, or half-Xingians like the major general, but Drachman visitors are almost unheard of.”

It was strange for Ed to hear Roy referred to as a half-Xingian, despite the fact that it was the truth. In Central, Ed knew that Roy’s heritage was unique, but no one really commented on it, but here it was far more common and the soldier seemed to think nothing of making a statement of it.

“Has anyone tried to talk to them?”

“Yes, and they tell us they are here on a tour of the country, but according to the hotels, they keep renting out rooms on just a short basis, a few days, never more than a week, and then renewing it when the time expires.”

“Like they’re waiting on something,” Ed thought aloud. Apparently, the lieutenant had the same idea, as he nodded at the blond’s words. “We need to get in contact with the northern border. They might have heard some rumblings, or have a way of getting intelligence.”

“I’ve contacted them already, sir,” the lieutenant said. “I was suspicious, myself, and mentioned it to one of their communications people two days ago when we were discussing the regular trade of goods between the bases. They hadn’t heard anything, but they said they had people who might be able to find out.”

“Good instincts, Lieutenant,” Ed said. The man, who was probably his age, beamed at the praise. Ed was not used to causing that kind of reaction in another, but managed a smile as he gave the other man a light tap on the arm. “Can you get me in touch with this communications officer you spoke to? We need to see if their information has changed in the last 48 hours.”

The other man nodded and showed Ed to the radio room.

********

Roy was doing his best to organize a raid on Karen’s house. If he thought he would be just facing her alone, he would have charged in with his team, Ed and the other alchemists, but he knew from Liam’s own accounts that there were chimeras in the basement, held captive by the sadistic woman Roy still couldn’t believe was the same woman he’d slept with eight years before.

Of course, things changed, as they were wont to do. Never would he have believed that the same brat who caused him so many headaches while Roy’s subordinate would be one of the people he relied upon most, let alone that he would love the blond.

He watched Ed talking easily with the lieutenant, learning from his previous misunderstanding about Ed and Havoc to know that the interaction between Ed and the brown-haired man was just one of simple camaraderie mixed with some respect. On both ends, it seemed. Roy would have to ask what the lieutenant had done to make Ed give him that look. If it brought them all one step closer to getting Liam, then it was something Roy would want to commend.

The two disappeared as they turned a corner, but not before Ed met Roy’s eyes and gave him a small, reassuring smile. Things weren’t really right between them just yet, but Roy had some hope that maybe they could be in the very near future.

He turned to his team and proceeded to organize their raid, who would attack and from where, how to clear out the area so there would be the least number of damages possible, but without alerting any attention to Karen. That would be the most difficult task. It was quite possible that she already knew about the arrival of Roy’s team, as she had once been in the military, and there could certainly have been those at the headquarters who would have more than willingly told her that he’d arrived with a small force.

However, he felt relatively confident this wouldn’t happen. He had spoken to a few of the officers, asking his team to do the same with the other soldiers. It seemed that Karen had distanced herself from many of those in the military after she’d lost her license as a state alchemist. Her ranting and raving about the injustices of it, of how she was only trying to create a better Amestris had fallen on deaf ears and others began to view her as the lunatic Roy now knew she was.

But there was always a chance. Despite the fact that Karen had never been a very sociable person, she was intelligent as hell, and very good at manipulating others to suit her needs. She had obviously convinced her neighbors and some of the townspeople that Roy was a negligent father, a man who didn’t have any desire to do more with his son than visit with him a few times a year, provide happy vacations while Karen was left to deal with the real world.

He would admit to anyone who asked that it wasn’t the way he wanted it, that he wanted to be there for the discipline, to have to be the one to tell Liam no when he wanted to do something stupid or to be the person who had to deal with the daily cuts and scrapes that a seven-year-old boy got into.

He wasn’t, though, and he had been there to provide only happy distraction. There was no falsehood in that aspect of Karen’s claims, only that that was the situation that he truly wanted.

Though he had tried often enough not to, his thoughts went to Liam, of how confused his son would be the first time Roy had to sternly say “No,” and of times when his son, who he loved more than he thought he ever could, would probably tell him that he hated him. It wasn’t the pleasant future that awaited him that he was yearning for, but the reality, and it hurt. It hurt because he had a chance to be a real father, as his own had been, doing things for his son’s best interest, and getting to be there for everything from the joyous to the painful to the simply mundane. He wanted that, and Karen was going to deny him of it if he wasn’t careful.

“Chief,” a voice said, as a hand patted his shoulder. “You need a moment to yourself?”

Roy realized only when he tried to focus on Havoc’s face and found his vision blurred that he had been crying. He hadn’t throughout the long train ride, trying to remain strong for the team, for Liam, but now it felt as though he couldn’t stop.

“Go into your old office. The Colonel said that if you needed it, you were welcome to it,” the other man said.

“Roy…” It was Riza now talking to him, another blond blur through his watery eye. “Go in there.” She took his hand in hers and gave it a gentle rub. “I’ll go with you.” She must have caught Roy looking for a third blond blur, the person he had found comfort in on the train, because she added, “Ed’s working with some of the lieutenants and talking to Northern Command. He thinks he might have a lead.”

“No reason to stop him for this then,” Roy said, wiping the back of his hand over his eye. It cleared things momentarily, but the tears still came. He followed as Riza tugged lightly at his hand, but surely in a discreet way. She managed to keep all appearances of his strong persona for the rest of the world, even when they both knew it was crumbling.

He walked through the room on instinct. There were a few changes from when this office had been his, a few more photos of family members—Roy had had none he could claim without endangering them—and some much improved seating. He joined Riza on the sofa, which felt much more inviting than any piece of furniture he’d had in the room when it had been his.

She wrapped her arms around him and let him cry. She never asked once which part of the whole situation he was crying about, and Roy was grateful because he was certain he couldn’t have told her. There was so much already lost, so much now at stake, and Roy couldn’t begin to properly express them all in a single sentence.

********

When Ed saw Roy again, he was exiting the office that he’d once occupied years ago. Ed recalled numerous fantasies about Roy and himself in that office—surprisingly, or maybe not surprising at all, most of them involved Roy in the position of power—but none involved the man with red, swollen eyes, his skin blotchy from apparent crying. He was glad Roy had managed to do it now rather than later, or not at all.

Ed walked over to the older man, taking the black piece of fabric from him, noting that the eyepatch was damp. Despite the loss of vision in that eye, the tear ducts still worked just fine. “No need for that now,” Ed said as he stuck the patch into his pocket. “Come on. We think we may have an idea why Karen has gotten so obsessed with doing this.”

“You have a lead?” Roy asked, his voice still sounding a little raw. Ed put a hand on Roy’s arm, which earned him a somewhat doubtful expression that faded quickly. Sometimes, the older man reminded Ed of an abused dog, frightened that with each act of kindness, he might find himself in a position to lose everything all over again, waiting for kind words to turn to yelling or gentle touches to manhandling—and it hurt to see it there, because Ed wasn’t that kind of person, not with Roy. Ed knew, though, that his idiot lover was waiting to be hurt because he felt he deserved it and not because he thought that Ed wanted to do it.

“Drachman visitors,” Ed responded to the man’s question. “Far more than you would expect for tourist season, not that this place even has a tourist season.”

His hand pulled lightly on Roy’s sleeve as he led him into one of the other rooms, where the lieutenant could brief him on what they felt they had found out. Roy pulled loose from Ed’s grip only to fill the hand that had pulled his coat with his own glove-clad hand. “I’m not very concerned with appearances at the moment,” he said by way of explanation. Ed gave the hand a light squeeze as they walked together, understanding the man’s need for human contact.

When they walked into the room, the lieutenant looked at the clasped hands for only a moment, but said nothing on it and did not act as though it bothered him in the slightest. Ed found his respect for the man growing quickly.

“So, based upon what I can see, it’s been an almost textbook repeat of history,” the lieutenant said. “Police reports noted a decrease in the homeless population, and there had been notes from various agencies about a decrease in stray animals, and the arrivals of rare animals coming into the train station.”

“Rare animals?”

“Northern black bears, a snow leopard, and a high pedigree Amestrian Shepherd,” the man said. “Among others, but those were the most notable.”

“That dog is native to Amestria,” Roy commented.

“It is, but this one had a pedigree a mile long and received an exceptional amount of training. It would cost someone a fortune.”

“So, animals native to the north and a well-trained dog?” Roy asked.

“Along with strays, livestock, wild animals native to the area…” The lieutenant looked down at what they’d found and then back up at Roy and Ed. “Why wasn’t anyone in the military made aware of this?” Ed could hear the almost accusatory tone in the man’s voice, and he couldn’t blame him. “We are taught about every type of mortar, every new bomb, each new style of state alchemy. Why not this? Why didn’t anyone tell us that we could one day face a man who had the ability to rip through us with the strength of a tiger? Or told us so we could see all the obvious warning signs?”

“The state had the prerogative to keep it a secret so no one else would do it again,” Roy said.

“That worked very effectively,” the lieutenant said, then amended with a “Sir.”

“Indeed it did,” Roy said. “I didn’t say that I agreed with the way the military handled things, but I do understand the reasoning for their decision. The former fuhrer kept it a secret because these were his secret weapons. After that, the military hoped by keeping them a secret, no one would try to make them again.”

“Idiots,” the lieutenant muttered.

“Fullmetal, is he by some chance a relative of yours? He has a very similar disposition.”

“Not that I’m aware of, but I agree with him completely,” Ed said. “Secrets never work, regardless of the intent or what’s being hidden.”

Ed knew that it was a bit of a dig at the older man standing at his side, the man whose hand was now rubbing at his back through his uniform coat. He loved him. He wanted to be with him and for Roy to forgive himself. But that didn’t mean Ed wasn’t still a bit mad, and those kinds of things weren't going to slip out from time to time.

But if anyone knew the dangers of secrets, Ed did. He flexed his automail hand, and Roy's hand gave him a reassuring squeeze at his shoulders. Roy had not caught the comment, seeming to have assumed Ed was talking about a secret far older that had cost him and Al dearly. That might have been for the best right now.