Chapter Text
Edward Elric is about eleven when he stands up, makes an extended effort to knock as many books off the old bastard’s shelves as he can, and says, “Fuck the military. Al, you interested in music at all?”
Alphonse Elric looks up at Ed with a gentle smile. What in the fresh hell, he doesn’t say. Instead, he offers a patient, “I guess?”
“Awesome,” says Ed. They’ve only got one suitcase and it’s oversized as hell, could probably hide a body or some withered animal corpse, but it’ll do. “I’ll go through the bastard’s old things, do some spring cleaning, dump all the shit at a market, and then we can pick up some fancy instruments and dominate the Central Symphony Orchestra.”
“First,” says Al, “could you tell me why?”
“Because we’re about to make a whole bunch of terrible decisions relating to alchemy, human transmutation, loss of limbs, et cetera,” says Ed. “And I say fuck that, and also fuck the military. But music? I think we can handle it.”
Al glances down at their notes meaningfully. His gaze takes a leisurely stroll over THE PLAN, circled thrice and underlined with the thickest pen they could find, complete with a helpful arrow dragging down to a very inconspicuous SHOPPING LIST!!!! followed by some choice ingredients and even choicier measurements.
“I did hear that the violin is a particularly nice instrument,” he says eventually.
Ed puts on his most manic grin. He goes to crack his knuckles with limited results. “Awesome,” he says. “Now let’s ditch before we get drafted.”
If Mustang doesn’t seem absolutely fucking devastated to have just passed the storm by, it’s because he doesn’t know what he missed.
The train ride to Central does nothing but lop off precious inches of Ed’s fuse and give him an awful crick in the neck. So obviously he takes his anger out on the goddamn fucking idiots who have the audacity to point the barrel of a shotgun at him and yap on about showing some respect, as if anyone who smells like a week’s worth of hangovers and morally bankrupt bullshit has any right to tell Edward fucking Elric where respect should go.
Al’s sighing before Ed can even start on his tangent.
“You want my respect?” Ed says with impressive restraint. He pulls himself up from the seat, grabs the barrel, and channels every last drop of spite into a steam explosion begging to happen. “You take a hit from me and keep your jaw unbroken, you earn my respect. Capiche?”
“You might want to watch your tongue,” Al tells the wannabe bandit.
The bandit says something like, “What the hell?”
Then Ed decks him.
Three audible cracks follow in close succession: first, from the asshole’s teeth cracking together and narrowly missing an opportunity to guillotine his tongue off, a second overlapping sound of his jaw breaking, and a final third from the abrupt introduction of skull to metal railing.
The bandit’s unconscious even before his brain starts bleeding. Ed ties him up anyway, because he’s in a bad mood and it’s a bad fucking day.
It takes twenty minutes, which is twenty minutes longer than Ed cares to spare, which does wonders for his mood. Like fancy little cartwheels of unadulterated anger and prepubescent emotional constipation, but with none of the charm and all of the crappy showboating. Look, Mom, I can be a bandit! Hey honey, mom’s fucking dead, so go sit in the corner and stop being a detriment to society and everyone’s safety, yeah?
No alchemic applause here, but the Elrics didn’t nab semi-miraculous, energy-conducting, array-fixing claps by sitting there and getting head pats. Not that they’re willing to start a country-wide disaster to get it back, obviously.
Chalk is used. When the box gets flung over the rails, Ed’s somewhere between ballistic and elated, because it’s his favourite time of day: knife o’clock.
Apparently two kids with knives is more terrifying than the threat of prosecution by Central Command, which is a damn near perfectly compliment. And holy hell can those bandits scream.
“Hey, asshole,” Ed says to Head Honcho Ugly, who rambles and gnashes his teeth and generally tries to act like a threat.
“If you could please put down—” Al thinks for a moment, then restarts with a more accurate suggestion— “If you could please surrender yourself peacefully and detach your automail, that would be just fine.”
“I’ll kill you,” Head Honcho Ugly roars. He then chooses to put the full length of his automail clampy arm through the side of the carriage, and Ed breaks into a splitting grin.
By the time Ed and Al are done with him (tied up in metal chord with an old Cretan sailor’s knot, gets tighter the more you pull because that’s the sort of paradoxical bullshit you need to ward off whatever the hell haunts the ocean), the asshole’s bruised nine ways to hell and blissfully unaware of his impending trial by fire.
“There’ll be tons of time for making a scene later on,” Al reasons, dragging Ed down to the last carriage. “We want to do things our way, don’t we, brother?”
And Ed has to say, “Well, yeah, you’re right,” because Al’s always right.
So while a fireworks show booms away eight carriages down, Ed and Al wrangle their stupidly oversized suitcase out of the luggage compartment and trail into Central like lost dogs. All they’re missing is an atmospheric drizzle and platinum skies and all that poetic shit.
Turns out that violins are expensive enough to warrant the loss of a nonvital organ, which sucks ass. Then again, Ed’s borderline gleeful as he heaps more and more of the bastard’s old garbage onto the pile.
What? All the stuff he left when he ditched is either growing some kind of alien mold or shaping up to be hell for someone with asthma. It’s a biological hazard and it’s got to go.
The suitcase is half empty when the manager calls in the owner. The owner glances over a piece of ceramic that smells like a tasty blend of old and nasty, pales, and makes a hushed call. Three hours later and there’s a museum curator handling the junk with gloves and wide eyes, which raises a lot of questions Ed doesn’t care to be answered.
Cash gets passed over in an envelope. Ed shoves it in his pants. Al sighs.
They wander two streets down to some store that’s been namedropped by every violinist who could tolerate being interrogated by two kids, since none of those idiots are ready for a dedicated relationship, let alone child-rearing.
Ed stops himself from kicking the door on account of the fact that a very expensive transaction is about to go down, and he’s not that much of an idiot. Al smiles like Ed deserves a sticker for demonstrating restraint, which is insulting in a stupidly heartwarming way.
The owner looks up from her chair, raises a single eyebrow (what, are they not good enough for both?), and dog-ears the corner of the page.
“Parents?” is her first question.
“Dead,” Ed says flatly. “We’re gonna make it big in the orchestra doing solos and shit.”
“Brother,” says Al, in a distinct accent of Exasperated Handler.
Apparently that’s just part of the normal crazies, because the owner stares on with disinterest. She radiates an aura of Waste My Time and Die Screaming, and she owns it so fucking hard that Ed makes a silent vow to up the ante. Crank the switch until it snaps and twist it around seven-twenty. Central’s got some real freaks, so Ed’s got to be even freakier without a glaring silver watch.
“Sure,” says the owner, in the same tone she’d say I will be there when you die. “Let’s figure this out.”
The Elrics don’t do giving up and all that shit.
They do if you knock me down I’ll get up and cave your face in, asshole, who the hell do you think you are?
Al’s version is probably something closer to, please take cover so you don’t get hurt.
Whatever. The point is that the Elrics go in and come out guns blazing. Ricochet’s just a sport of dodging.
“There’s no way you should be so good,” renowned and remarkably young violin teacher Anabelle says shakily, pointing a finger at the both of them like they’ve just murdered her entire family, but it’s her dog she’s particularly upset about. “You’ve been playing for—for two weeks!”
“Two and a half and counting,” Ed says flatly.
“We’ve been practicing hard,” explains Al.
Anabelle seems to like her hands a lot, because she’s got her pale face stuck up in them like they’ll tell her why her shitty boyfriend left her for the concertmaster of the East City Symphony Orchestra. Hell if Ed knows, and hell if he cares.
“Listen,” Ed says irritably, “we’re prodigies. Fuckin’ get used to it.”
In the space between Ed’s helpful statement and Annabelle’s next miserable sigh, Al shoves his elbow in between Ed’s ribs. “What he means to say,” Al says, raising his voice over Ed’s creative and tasteful expletives, “is that we’re really eager to try for the Central Symphony Orchestra.”
Anabelle gives them one of her God, Take Me Now kind of looks: one part wretched and two parts morbidly peaceful. “The Central Symphony Orchestra?” she says faintly.
“The one and only,” confirms Al.
If Anabelle sighs any deeper, Ed’s convinced she’ll go sputtering off into the atmosphere like a deeply depressed balloon.
Their lovely teacher sits in contemplation and probably ages fifteen years in the process. She progresses rapidly through all five stages of grief—which, honestly, power to her, fighting emotional trauma with sheer force of anger—then twists her perfectly lined lips into a scowl.
“Fine,” she says, hurling her snotty napkins in the bin. “The Central Symphony Orchestra? Fine." Her gaze does the world’s most violent u-turn, spinning on two wheels and squealing on burnt rubber and all. “Both of you are gonna solo the fuck out of everything, and then that bastard’s gonna go, ‘oh, Annie, you silly girl, I always loved you’ and try to break my fucking spine on the bathtub again, and then I’ll grab him by the coattails when he tries to run and transmute his shitty, expensive suit into a straightjacket and pour spiders directly down his throat.”
All of that flies over Ed’s head except for one word. “You’re an alchemist?” he demands.
Anabelle’s nose twitches, and not to sniff. “What about it?” she says warrily.
“What, so you weren’t smart enough to get drafted?”
“Fuck the military,” Anabelle says bitterly.
“I take back every terrible thing I thought about you,” Ed decides right there and then. He shakes the lady’s hand with both his flesh hands—that’s one thing done right—and pats her shoulder. “We’re gonna do awesome things together.”
Al sighs, but goes to shake Anabelle’s hand as well. “Thank you for your guidance,” he says, all proper.
Anabelle looks down on them like she’s just picked up a pair of feral cats off the street and is already thinking of what sweet lies to tell them to trick them into getting their shots. There’s a glint in her eye that’s curious one way and absolutely fucking terrifying another.
Ed and Al share a brief look. A few concealed knives, some body armour, a holster: take the violin out of Anabelle’s hands, and she makes a terrifying soldier.
“What the hell,” says Anabelle. “This goddamn country needs some turning over anyway.”
“With music or with a coup?” asks Al.
“I’m not picky,” Anabelle says dismissively. Then she leans in with all six feet and two inches of her very lean build like some kind of gothic tree, and, like a woman possessed, whispers, “We’re going to crush so many hopes and dreams with your innate talent.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ed says, bored. “Less testosterone and threats of court-marshalling this time, thank fuck.”
Al heaves a sigh, and if that doesn’t sum this all up, then nothing does.
The Elrics weren’t necessarily built for vigilantism, but they were built for general chaos, and vigilantism does a bang-up job sliding in gear.
“I had one request,” Anabelle says, visibly trying not to lose it. “Just one. Only one. Have you forgotten? You must’ve forgotten. How about you guess, then? Take a wild guess. Any guess at all. Take a wiiiild guess.”
Then she smiles, takes a deep breath through her mouth, looks up to the sky like she’s appealing to the fucking gods, and tries to settle herself with an unhinged laugh.
Ed isn’t scared of anything. He will admit, however, that he’s got a deeply ingrained fear of blond women wielding imaginary wrenches.
And what’s wrong with that? Wrench swings down, head goes crack, brain goes smush. One one two three five eight thirteen twenty-one thirty-five et-fucking-cetera, holy hell are they scary.
“Stay out of trouble,” Al recites quietly. “It was to stay out of trouble.”
“Oh no no no no,” says Anabelle, fully manic. “Close! But not quite.”
Al shuffles his feet. “It was, ‘please stay out of trouble, I’m begging you, for the love of all that is good in this world, keep your pointy knives and devil circles to yourselves, we’re new in town, please please please don’t get arrested,’” he says.
“That’s right,” says Anabelle. “And what did you do?”
“Get in trouble, use our knives, and draw arrays all the way down the alley.”
“And do you feel even slightly repentant about it?”
Al glances over the unconscious serial killer dangling by a massive rabbit trap. “No,” he decides.
Anabelle kneads the hell out of her temples. “Fine,” she grumbles. “Catching a serial killer, that’s good. Not getting hurt, also good. Vigilantism, eh, slippery slope there but it’s getting late and my head hurts and I need Advil. So,” she says, and doesn’t say anything else.
Ed’s eight percent sure Anabelle’s jaw would unhinge and bite his arm off if he pissed her off any more, so he just leaves it at, “So pie or nah?”
“Please.”
The name Fullmetal doesn’t mean jack, but the Elric Brothers start dotting hushed conversations, then page nine newspaper articles, then reports passed discreetly under coffee shop tables, and through all that backasswards meandering, finds itself being the first line of conversation from a certain Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes to one Colonel Roy Mustang.
Two years go by, Ed’s, what, thirteen? Anyway, they’re introduced to the small crowd of confused faces that make up the Central Youth String Ensemble, spend maybe a month outperforming everyone, then get shipped over to the East City and its Chamber Orchestra. Whatever the hell happens there, it’s enough to have the conductor politely introducing Ed and Al to more prestigious opportunities in Central, where they’ll be sufficiently distant for the others to start talking shit and having emotional breakdowns or whatever.
Hilariously enough, Fuery stumbles into them after one recital, all bashful and shy and pretending like his suit isn’t five kinds of fancy and six kinds of expensive.
“You were incredible,” Fuery tells Ed after recovering from a handshake, what the hell?
“Thanks,” Ed says, eyeing Fuery’s swaying form suspiciously. “You good?”
“I’ll be fine,” Fuery says, turns around, takes two steps, and passes out.
Anabelle speeds all the way to the hospital in a very blatant display of how little she gives a shit about death and god. The doctors take one look at Fuery and declare that his blood sugar is having a great fucking time bungee jumping, that bastard.
Ed suggests that they wait for Fuery to wake up. Al looks so proud he’s almost crying, which makes Anabelle cackle like a witch, so by the time Fuery’s rubbing the spots out of his eyes, Ed’s ready to rip someone’s head off.
“Fucking,” Ed begins, pointing an accusing finger at Fuery until part of brain tells him to calm down before he has a heart attack, “don’t do that again. Ever.”
“Stay in touch,” Al tells Fuery, pressing a slip of paper into his hands. “But if you could please keep us out of military conversations, we would appreciate that.”
Fuery nods vigorously. “I’ll try,” he says firmly, then waves a cheery goodbye as a ridiculously expensive car picks him up and drives away.
Huh. Revelations are free of charge, apparently.
“Crying’s best done in the privacy of your room,” Anabelle says sagely, walking past the practice rooms of uCentral with the eloquence of someone who’s never questioned the sounds coming out of those musty rooms and who isn’t about to start soon.
“Oh, yes, it’s probably better that way,” Al says, taking a few conspicuous steps away from the doors.
“Of course,” says Anabelle. “Wasting time in practice rooms is a crime punishable by death.”
Ed gleefully recounts one of several times he kicked open one of uCentral’s practice room doors to be met with a snarling, half-dead, emotionally wrecked music major shovelling crackers that were more salt than substance past lips that were auditioning to be the fucking desert floor. And Ed could’ve watched the kid down Advil like he was about to bodily tackle heart failure to the asthma attack inducing floor and start knocking its teeth out, but auditions don’t take hangovers or panic attacks as excuses, and Ed’s not that emotionally available.
They’re goddamn Elrics. They don’t hunt monsters, work alchemic miracles, or go around being thou for the people. They practice in practice rooms. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but has fourteen coded research journals disguised as travelogues, it’s probably an Elric.
After getting shipped back to Central, Anabelle goes around and wedges Ed and Al into every vaguely professional gig like the opportunistic witch she is. It takes all of six months for every pro in the music industry to cross to the other side of the street and avoid all eye contact with them should they be so unfortunate to wander into the no-man’s land that makes up the distance between Ed and anyone who feels inclined to piss him off that particular day.
Al smiles at everyone anyway because he’s got the heart of an angel and the face of a puppy. It works best when Ed isn’t around to snarl over his shoulder, rabies being contagious and all.
And, like, Anabelle hasn’t got anything better to do, so she buys first aid supplies in bulk, shoves them in her old purses, hurls them at Ed and Al when they try to sneak out and take down some disgusting criminal at two in the morning, and tells them, “Do. Not. Injure. Your fingers. Understand?”
Ed doesn’t say anything about how Anabelle looks crazed enough to break their fingers herself if she feels like it because he values his own life.
“You look like shit,” Ed says instead.
“He doesn’t mean that,” Al hurries to say.
“Yes I did. Get some more sleep, lady, or you’re gonna trip straight into an oncoming car.”
“Yes, yes,” Anabelle says lightly. “Nothing concealer and caffeine can’t fix. Curfew’s at five, any later and I’m siccing the military on you.”
It’s terrifying because she means it.
Things go on like that for a while, maybe six months or something, and it’s just another day of practicing for twenty-five of the available twenty-four hours per day, polishing up arrays on the side of water purification tanks they volunteered to upgrade for the Ishvalan settlement on the edge of town, prepping dinner before Anabelle gets back, yada, yada, the fruits of labour sell for five cenz apiece, whatever.
“Quick heads up,” Anabelle says one day as she locks the door to the apartment. She’s got that lilt to her voice that indicates it’s bad, but not panic-room levels of shit-hit-the-fan. “There’s a military guy going around and asking about, quote, ‘the Elric violinists’, unquote.”
Ed punches his definitely over-kneaded dough. “Black hair, bitch face, air of a rich heiress?” he asks.
“And not my type,” finishes Anabelle.
Al looks over from where he’s skinning some apples. “The Colonel,” he says simply.
“The fucking Colonel,” Ed repeats with all the disdain he can physically manage, which isn’t enough. “Fuckin’ knew he’d be out and about tripping and pretending to drop all his cards and geting his ass worshiped. The military’s a genocidal hooker and Mustang’s the idiot who fell in love with her.”
“I don’t know if that’s right,” says Al. “I’d say the military’s a vat of nitromethane and Colonel Mustang’s trying to balance it on his head, on one foot, on top of a unicycle, on top of a moving, burning car.”
“With Hawkeye watching.”
“And... huh. Do you think—”
“Hughes? Yeah. Yeah, probably. Works out like that.”
There’s an awkward silence that kind of makes Ed want to blow something up or throw something on the ground to break it. Anabelle pretends like she doesn’t hear anything since she knows how to stay in her lane.
“Bastard’s gonna get doused,” Ed grumbles, then punches the dough again.
“You can stop that now,” says Al.
“All attractive men are particularly flammable,” Annabelle adds, which... what the fuck, okay.
One dinner and half an apple pie later, there’s a knock at the door, a solid rap-rap-rap that gets all three of them staring sharply at each other and hurrying to move the cutlery around quietly.
By the time Anabelle opens the door, Ed and Al are sitting on freshly transmuted swings dangling from the side of the building.
The Elrics don’t run from their problems. They used to slap a hand over their eyes, yell coming through! and deal with the collateral damage whenever, and that was... like, it worked, same way capitalism “works”, but hindsight’s a bitch like that, yeah?
“Ms. Anabelle Sherman?”
Ed fucking cringes, a full-body reflex, and he’s scowling and growling low and sharpening his wits on a grindstone of pompous assery to brace himself from whatever the hell’s gonna happen.
Al’s head leans forward doing the thing he does when he doesn’t want to shake his head disapprovingly. Ed scowls harder, but stops grinding his teeth.
“Yes, that’s me,” says Anabelle, exceptionally calmly. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I’m Colonel Roy Mustang of Central Command, and this—” a brief pause to make space for a gesture— “is Lieutenant Hawkeye. May we come in?”
“By all means,” says Anabelle, and the door closes without a single creak.
Ed and Al share one alarmed look before they, very quietly, extend the swings lower by another five meters. It’s fucking Hawkeye. Sue them.
“So,” begins Anabelle, “was there something you wanted? It’s not every day I get a visit from a colonel of our lovely country’s military. Nothing nefarious, I hope?”
“Nothing of the sort,” says Mustang, lying through his perfect pearly whites. That’s an oversight on nature’s part if Ed’s ever seen one, given how much coffee Mustang guzzles. Ed knows he burns through the office’s stash like he gets a high off watching his minions drag themselves off to make another pot. God knows why Havoc hasn’t picked up the damn thing and smashed it over the sorry bastard’s head.
“I see,” says Anabelle. “Questions, then?”
“Yes, Ms. Sherman. We’ll do our best not to take up too much of your time.”
The if you cooperate goes unspoken. Fortunately, Anabelle’s got the situational awareness of a capitalist god, and hell if she’s going to get all whimpering and whining over some well-dressed toothpick.
Anabelle snorts, one of her dainty sharp exhales where she flips her hair over her shoulder and looks up at the corner of the room. “Just Anabelle, if you would,” she says haughtily, pro musician act firing on all cylinders. Wr-wr-wrrrr goes the engine, and off she goes doing wheelies. “Ms. Sherman was my mother, bless her pretty, wretched soul.”
“Then, Anabelle,” says Mustang, “I’d like to inquire about a pair of violinists that have been spotted in the area—gold hair, gold eyes, highly talented.”
“The Elric brothers,” Anabelle says easily.
“You speak as if you’re familiar with them.”
“I used to be second chair at the Central Symphony Orchestra. I may be dim-witted, sir, but I assure you, my ears are very sharp.”
Sharp enough to snap, intonation! and your vibrato is uneven! at fuck-all in the morning. God doesn’t sleep so neither should you was her justification, as if they’re demon spawns sent to kill god or something. It’s freaky as all fuck because she’s so goddamn accurate.
“But,” says Anabelle, in a concerningly mischievous tone, “I hear they’re absolutely wonderful alchemists.”
Ed lets loose the stream of very vicious, very pointed, and very quiet expletives he’s been holding down for a while, whereas Al just gives a heavy sigh.
“Is that so?” Mustang says, feigning ignorance like he has a monopoly on the damn act. “You know them that well?”
“I know them some,” Anabelle says casually.
“And may I ask why you’re privy to such information?”
“They’re teenagers, Colonel,” Anabelle drawls. “Are they supposed to have any secrets other than who they’re in love with and where they’re really getting their volunteer hours?”
“I was thinking something more along the lines of vigilante activity,” says Mustang.
“Motherfucker,” hisses Ed.
“Brother,” Al hisses in response, then makes the universal neck-slit gesture for shut up shut up shut up.
It goes quiet upstairs. “Did you hear something?” Mustang asks innocently, in the same way he’d say, I eat rats for breakfast because I’m a sadist.
“Oh, the trough?” says Anabelle. “It always squeaks when it storms hard. Could you upstanding military folk do something about that? I’m not sure the civil engineers have that much time, since I assume they’re off in Ishval fixing up the society the military, you know—” a purposeful pause that’s the embodiment of shanking someone with a meat cleaver— “annihilated and razed their civilization to the ground. But,” Anabelle adds with a little laugh, “what do I know?”
“While not entirely accurate given the current state of our government, you paint a very likely scenario for the future,” Mustang answers smoothly, without a beat of hesitation, because fuck him.
Anabelle stays quiet for a little longer, probably scoping out the way Hawkeye’s trained on her like there’s gonna be a shootout any second, and sure, whatever, it’s not professional to empty your clip into a lady with a god complex, but that single set of cutlery on the table is damn fine silver and could be swapped out for a scalpel without anyone on either end complaining.
“Well,” Anabelle says simply, “I’m afraid I don’t know any more about the Elrics than what I’ve told you.”
“You’ve told us plenty,” Mustang tells her, which is just awesome, he’s definitely not gonna hightail it to Intel and grimace through an hour and a half long spiel of oh my baby, oh my sweet Elicia before siccing the hounds on Ed and Al and sniffing them out to their eyelashes.
Being a good hostess and whatever, Anabelle shows them out and says, “Thank you for your service to our noble country, brave soldiers!” before shutting the door with purpose and poking her head out the window.
“So we’ve got a problem,” she summarizes as Ed and Al haul ass to flip over the windowsill and deconstruct the swings just as Mustang and Hawkeye stroll out the front door of the complex.
“Problem,” Ed repeats sourly. “Mustang doesn’t make problems. He is the problem.”
“He probably doesn’t have any bad intentions,” says Al. “He never got to ask us about Dad, and we all know what’s up the Colonel’s sleeve.”
“No we don’t,” says Ed. “That’s the point.”
“Cards, I meant. He’s got cards up his sleeve. Please just go with the metaphor, Brother.”
“Bastard’s got a card gun and his aim isn’t as shit as I want it to be. I say we knock out power to Central HQ for a week, maybe blow out a sinkhole right under their fancy, shiny, greasy shoes, maybe catch some of the fuckin’ skeletons giving the orders,” suggests Ed.
“If they’re really as old and incompetent as they sound, a bad fall could kill them,” Anabelle contemplates aloud. She touches hand to chin. “Not bad,” she says, brows creeping up her perfectly contoured face.
Maybe all Amestris needs for a brighter, less war-crazed future is a bucket of water and a careless janitor. Ed pockets that idea for another time.
“Either way, it really is best if we avoid the Colonel,” Al tells Anabelle. “He gets... ideas,” and there’s the furtive glance over to Ed, “which we’d rather not be a part of.”
“Because none of us are missing limbs or a suit of armor,” Ed tags on bluntly.
That gets Anabelle’s attention for a brief moment. “That was curious use parallel structure,” she notes.
“I was, like, sixteen when they tried to get me to commit war crimes, so.”
“Huh. That’s messed up.”
“Colonel Mustang isn’t a bad man,” Al assures her, “but our association itself kind of spawns disaster.”
“More like fuckin’ calamity,” Ed says. He makes grandiose gestures outlining mushroom clouds to illustrate the drama, the threat of the death, the general fuck-uped-ness of their Promised Day shenanigans. “Last time, and I shit you not, we brought about the actual fucking Apocolypse.”
“Biblical?” Anabelle asks incredulously.
“Yeah, God hates us,” Ed snarks. There’s a horrible moment where Anabelle’s eyes go wide, so he says, “No, not the biblical one, the hell?”
“Store-bought,” Anabelle mumbles under her breath. “Should’ve known.”
“Let’s just all go on with our individual lives,” Al says, looking between Annabelle and Ed like he’s juggling a lit fuse.
“Got it,” says Anabelle. Her notebook’s out in a second, the tacky one with a billion sticky notes and leather strap without a button. “Elrics and Colonel Insincere will literally ignite if put in the same room and set the entire country on fire.”
“It’s sad because it’s true,” Al mutters sadly.
“And that Hawkeye woman was quite attractive,” notes Anabelle. She even smiles a little.
“No,” Ed says, after his higher cognitive functions start chugging away again.
“Yes, I know, fraternization regulations are bullshit and the like,” Anabelle says dismissively. Ed kind of wants to bash his own head in with a rock. “Whatever. So should we terrorize East City again, make some people cry, or should we let Colonel Mustang find his merry way back?”
“Auditions are in two weeks,” Al says, mildly scandalized.
“Stalling for time it is,” Anabelle decides, already moving to make a few calls. Whatever number she dials, it’s one burned into her memory by the way she doesn’t care to look and holds the receiver as far away from her as humanly possible. “I don’t know how good those kids in Intel are, but orchestra kids got a bond stronger than love, tougher than hate.”
“Not sure what a bunch of underpaid music majors are gonna do against, you know, the military,” Ed says miserably.
Anabelle turns with the face of someone who met the Devil and wasn’t impressed. “You’d be surprised,” she says slowly, “just how many back-alley rats would kill to get on the good side of their favourite bard.”
Slap, slap, slap, Al connects the dots. “Oh, because of their libido,” he says elegantly.
“More or less.”
“Hughes is like a bloodhound on crack,” Ed warns Anabelle. “He’s got rats too, probably bigger, and they can do shit like run marathons on rooftops and shoot people.”
“Neat,” Anabelle says, thoroughly unimpressed. “Ours own bars and brothels and can charm their way into and out of your pants and you’ll be thanking them for stealing your wallet along the way.”
“Mustang’s got bars and brothels covered too. Paranoid doesn’t even begin to describe that asshole, and then Hughes comes in and handcranks it to a whole other fuckin’ level.”
“How much do you want to bet that the Venn diagram of Colonel Insincere’s people and arts kids is a circle?”
Ed opens his mouth. Shuts it. Runs through numbers that start with military state and lack of funding for the arts and ends with rent’s fucking expensive. Swears loudly, then punches the couch.
“Watch the furniture,” snaps Anabelle.
“What the hell is it this time,” goes the other side of the line.
The voice isn’t familiar, but the underlying It’s Six O'Clock and It’s Still Too Early For This has Ed on edge immediately. The lady talks like a bullet and something tells him that it’s probably better that this conversation is happening over the phone than in person.
“Got some golden boys here with me,” Anabelle says without blinking.
“The smartasses?”
“I think ‘prodigy’ is the term cultured people use nowadays, Linnie.”
“I manage a cultured whorehouse, Annie, don’t give me shit. Casualties?”
“Wh—nobody’s fucking dead,” Ed says, offended.
“None,” Anabelle tells the aforementioned Linnie. “We’ve got a puppy on a long leash yapping at our heels, though.”
“Name?”
“One P-15, notoriety included.”
“Madame’s kid? How’d you get your hands on a catch like that?”
“Apparently everyone in this little club orbits around the same black hole.”
Linnie snorts. “And what do you want me to do? I’m not playing cards with Madame. She’s got a goddamn card gun and the rest of us are lucky if we even get the sleeve.”
Ed makes a very loud show of throwing his arms in the air and kicking the couch, which squeals halfway across the room before coming to a stop.
Al blinks tiredly from where he’s still seated on a damn cushion. “Brother,” he says flatly.
“The fucking furniture,” Anabelle sings, sweet as petrol. To Linnie, she quickly amends, “No, no, we count bars, not cards. All I’m asking for is a nice, young fellow to show two impressionable young children around Central Command.”
A sigh would’ve probably filled the transitory silence if not for the muffled sounds of promiscuity and other kinky shit crooning through the line.
“Must be a cheap-ass place if your walls are so thin,” Ed says, voice recklessly and purposefully loud.
“You don’t have to beg if you want me to dig out your pretty eyes with my fingers and sell them to some creep in Aerugo,” says Linnie, every word popping off her tongue like a semi-auto that’s way too fucking happy to piss ricochet through every wall.
Ed has a sneaking suspicion that this woman might be blonde. He swallows hard, and Al gives him the Oh, Silly Brother smile, which just makes his fucking day.
Anabelle throws on a wicked grin. “There are children here,” she says cheerfully.
“Then tell them there’s no way their parents haven’t been flipped upside down and all around getting into the mood.”
The very thought of any of that makes Ed wants to douse himself in the drinks Anabelle alchemizes into the floorboards for a particularly bad day and walk directly into a fucking fire. “Die,” Ed says half-heartedly, then gives his all in sinking directly into the couch.
“Can you do it or not?”
“And, pray tell, what do you intend to do on said tour?”
“Study,” Anabelle answers cooly. “I hear Central was originally built on top of an extensive cavern system. The boys, bless their innocent hearts, want to look around the grounds, examine the paving, estimate the probability of a sinkhole opening up and dropping a few old bluebirds into a nest of sewer water and cement, and the like.”
“Hah! Playing with chalk and markers again, Annie? I thought you’d given that up years ago.”
“Bad influence goes both ways,” Anabelle says, and refuses to elaborate.
By the time the back-and-forth exhausts itself, Ed’s temper has mostly run its course, and that marathon sucks ass. Instead of transmuting every fucking floorboard in Mustang’s house into nitrogen triiodide and staining everything he loves a violent, regal, tasteless purple, all Ed wants is to decompose the entire flat down to its base elements of Overpriced Rent and Shitty Insulation, except that would kill a whole bunch of people and his moral compass isn’t that fucked. It’s just been whacked on a rock a few too many times, maybe blown up and impaled a bit. Whatever.
“Wonderful news!” Anabelle declares once the nightmare is over, and not a goddamn second too soon. “Linnie’s agreed to get one of her best girls sweep one Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc off his feet!”
The words Second Lieutenant and Jean Havoc rattle off the sides of Ed’s brain like a particularly antsy spider in a glass jar. “The fuck,” is all he manages once he’s recalibrated.
“Uh,” says Al, “not to discredit Ms. Linnie’s connections, but that’s one of the Colonel’s men, isn’t it?”
“It’s impossible to compromise anyone on his team,” Ed says heatidly. “Bitch had to put her nasty, dusty nails all the way through his whole spine to knock him out, and he fuckin’ came back. Literally guns-a-blazing, surprise-bitch style, put Mustang in debt so hard the bastard still gets queasy whenever someone smokes twenty feet around him.”
Apparently Havoc isn’t Anabelle’s type either, because she starts filing her nails as if they aren’t nubs already with single-minded intensity. “Good for him,” she says. Scritch scritch scritch. “Cross lung cancer off the list, that’s nice.”
“We’re all gonna die,” Ed says bitterly.
“It’ll be okay,” Al says soothingly. “As long as we practice like we’re about to die, I’m sure we’ll make it.”
It isn’t despair Ed feels, but it’s damn near close. “I meant Havoc, Al,” he says. “Not the audition. Fuckin’ Havoc.”
“Well, I’m sure that’ll go just fine as well,” Al says, notably less confident.
If Ed can’t turn Mustang’s house into a powder-spitting boobytrap, significantly lower the land value of every surrounding building, or get everyone else to sit the hell down on this double-decker making for the literal apocalypse, there’s only one thing Ed can feasibly do to stay sane.
He turns on his heel and marches to his room, stomping his feet down as hard as he can physically manage without putting himself through the floor and probably convincing their downstairs neighbours that he’s managed to transmute a whole horse into the apartment this time around.
“I’m gonna go practice,” snarls Ed, “and we meet back in two hours to figure out how to keep the underground zombies in.”
Anabelle’s brows creep up her forehead. “You’d think zombies would be the first item on the list,” she says evenly.
“Yeah, well, turns out ‘kill it with fire’ works eleven times out of ten.”
“Molotovs it is,” Anabelle decides, and exits the kitchen to dig out some of her assorted illegal goods.
“I’ll go practice too,” Al says. He beams as if to say, See? Life isn’t so awful when you drop the repeat offender act.
Ed screams into a pillow at a perfect A, tunes furiously to the echo, and breaks half the hairs on his bow shredding through the third movement of Sibelius, because if there’s one thing he knows he can’t fuck up, it’s a goddamn killer energico.