His father arranged to bring him home from the hospital, and he knew why Havoc was there as well, knew there'd be a gun underneath his jacket and a constant lookout behind his dopey exterior. After what Roy had done to the remaining members of the cell who'd attacked them he didn't think anyone else would feel like having a go for a good long time, but Roy always had been so paranoid . . . To be honest, he didn't feel up to fighting for himself right now anyway. His side hurt, itched, he was still drowsy with drugs and loneliness, because he couldn't sleep properly on his own, he needed Roy's weight on the mattress too. He just wanted to go home. He wanted Roy, his baby, his bed . . . Odd, though, relying on his father for anything. Ed snapped that he could walk but Hohenheim kept his hands a little raised anyway, to catch him if he fell. Ed tried to be patient, tried not to snarl that he wasn't so bloody useless that he'd fall over getting into a car, tried to think, You know that if it were Maes, you would be twice as bad. Did he really think his father cared for him a fraction as much as he cared for Maes? Ed glanced at him across the seat as the scenery flicked by but he was harder to read even than Roy. Maybe? Just a little? He'd come back, hadn't he? But he'd left in the first place. And for all Ed tried, that wound still stung. (And his mind whispered, If he hadn't left you would never have tried to bring your mother back, and if you hadn't tried that Al wouldn't have ended up in the armour and you wouldn't have lost two limbs and gained a womb, and you'd never even have met Roy, you would never, you would never - no Roy, no Maes, so maybe, maybe, it was all just equivalent exchange in the end . . . ?) Forgiveness is an odd thing, he thought as Hohenheim tried to help him out of the car; his stitches hissed at him but Ed swallowed the pain, growled at Hohenheim, ignored it. Families are odd things. If anyone else had walked out of his life like that Ed would barely have thought of them, since. He'd known plenty of people for longer and they'd touched him less than his ever-absent father. But - Hohenheim was his father. So . . . "I'll leave you alone for this, shall I?" Hohenheim said nervously. "You'll be alright now?" Ed looked up at him, shrugged - and smiled. "I have Roy." Hohenheim stared at him for a second, face as blandly blank as ever, then smiled and put his hands in his pockets as if he'd been thinking of doing something else with them, and left. Leaving Ed alone on his doorstep, Havoc giving him a lazy wave before getting back into the car. Ed raised a hand, looked back at his own door, and reached for the handle. Locked. He stared at it in surprise - he never locked it, a hangover from his childhood, some front doors in Riesembool didn't even have locks - and clapped his hands. He wasn't knocking at his own damn front door. The door creaked open, onto an empty hallway. No sign of the cot Ed had thrown down the stairs but the banister was broken, and there were still bullet holes in the walls. He could take care of that in a minute. Right now - where was Roy? Where was- "Hello?" A second's pause, and then - "In the kitchen. Good god, you scared the hell out of me, I didn't know who . . ." Ed took one nervous step and fought the urge to run to the kitchen, took a breath and walked to the door . . . to Roy, sitting next to oh Maes in his high chair, Roy looking so tired with something orange dripping from his hair and the spoon still in his hand, and Maes who banged at the high chair and called, "Dada!" Oh baby baby baby- "Are you alright? Should you be sitting down? I would have picked you up myself but-" "Shut up and sit down," Ed said, waving off Roy's fuss and trying to crush small inside the urge to cry. He took Maes from his high chair, winced and shifted him to his other side, and stained his gloves wiping some of the mush from Roy's hair. Maes held fistfuls of his shirt and said, "Dada, Dada-" "I don't think he likes carrot," Roy said, and Ed picked up the tea towel to make a proper attempt at cleaning Roy's hair, and thought, I could have told you that. Roy brightened, suddenly. "He likes scrambled egg though. I tried that yesterday." Ed thought, I could have told you that, too. but Roy looked so pleased about his discovery, so he just gave a soft sigh, kissed the top of Maes' head and then leaned down and kissed Roy even with the carroty goop in his hair, and said, "Scrambled egg. How about that." "And he won't drink orange juice. I tried him on apple juice . . ." I should've made a list, Ed thought, but Roy had taken the towel from him at this point and was mopping at his hair. "Your shirt's gonna be stained," Ed said, brushing at more orange streaks. "He has worryingly good aim for an infant." "Clever baby." Ed murmured, and smiled. "Such a clever baby." Roy stared up at him, eyes still shadowed, and he'd missed some carrot mush underneath one ear. "I honestly . . . these last few days." He rubbed at his eyes. "I don't know how you do it, Edward . . ." "I bet you did fine." Ed kissed Maes' head again because he was fine and so perfect his little baby - "He seems fine, I bet he barely even missed me." "Dadadada made a picture-" "He puts everything in his mouth, I couldn't look away for two seconds-" "It's just a phase, he'll get over it." Ed couldn't stop grinning. "Baby will not fixate in his oral phase, will he? No! Because that would impair his psychosocial development yes it would-" "Made a picture-" "I couldn't work out what to feed him for two days, he wouldn't stop crying, he wouldn't settle on a night, I didn't know he needed to drink so much-" Roy rubbed at his hair with the towel and looked a little shell-shocked. Roy looked, in fact, like Ed had a year ago when he had a newborn suddenly utterly dependent on him, with no real idea what he was doing and all the help in the world didn't make it anything less than overwhelming. "He made me want to cry." "Dada, I drawed-" "Drew, little love, you drew a picture. The past tense of draw is irregular, isn't it? Yes it is!" "I can't believe you're so calm." Roy said, watching Ed as if confused. "I thought you'd be - please don't fly into a rage at this - even worse than you were before, after . . ." "Dada, picture-" "Yeah, maybe I thought I would be too," Ed mused, dancing Maes a little on the spot against his chest as Maes pulled urgently at his shirt. "But . . . the worst thing happened, you know? The worst thing. I thought -" His son seemed like nothing but a fragile heartbeat in his arms for a second - "I thought they were going to kill him but he's still here. And he's fine. He's fine even though I wasn't there, he's fine, and maybe, maybe he doesn't need me quite so . . ." "Made a picture Dada-" Maes said, and hit Ed in the chest. Clearly there could be no conversation until this had been dealt with. Ed smiled hopelessly and looked down to his son, whose eyes held on his. "What picture did you make, baby?" "Look at the ice box, Edward." Roy said, and leaned back in his chair, ran a hand through his hair, smiled a little. In anticipation? Ed quirked an eyebrow to him, looked around. Ed taped every picture Maes drew to the ice box, and since he usually drew Dada - the other Dada - it was usually night-sky blue with yellow scribbled stars, a universe full of Roy. But now - the sun had come out in the corner of the kitchen. It was as golden as a field of buttercups. "He went through three yellow crayons," Roy said behind him, but Ed didn't look back. "Edward?" Ed's throat was doing very strange things. Maes pulled at a button on his shirt. "Edward?" Roy stood, touched his shoulder. "Are you alright?" His breath was stunted in his lungs, not coming out fully. "Maybe he doesn't need you like that, Ed," Roy said softly. "But you know that he loves you, don't you?" Ed finally managed to get a gasp of air down, and blinked hard a few times. His voice croaked. "He's such a clever baby." "You're not going to cry, Ed . . ." "Shut up." Ed pressed his face to Roy's chest, tucked Maes closer between them both, his voice coming out muffled. "He's such a clever baby . . ." * So much to do. The house was a wreck. Ed shoved Roy onto the sofa, dumped a blanket over him, kissed him between his eyes and ordered him to sleep. Maes he held on one hip (his stitches screamed at him but he couldn't let Maes wake Roy) as he worked on the downstairs. The kitchen was full of dishes, the hallway was full of bullets. He taught Maes the two times table as he washed up and talked him through the theory of potty training again, because they were going to have to start this pretty soon. Maes seemed to already have forgotten that he'd ever been gone. "Do you remember?" Ed said, looking into his son's unreadable eyes as he sat in his high chair like an emperor on his throne. "Do you remember those scary men?" Maes just stared back. Maybe yes, maybe no. Ed had no idea. He was his father's son . . . The sun sank. Ed moved to the nursery (so much to take care of) and his muscles ached by now, he felt weary in such a satisfied way as he cleared up the last stains of blood that hadn't come out of the carpet, fixed the walls to pristine yellow paint again. There was no cot in the nursery, and it seemed a huge empty space without it. Once this had been the guest bedroom, he'd slept in here while - While pregnant the first time. The thought always could strike out of nowhere, and stop the world in its tracks. He sat down on the carpet, slow and awkward with pain, and set Maes between his stretched out legs, holding his hands. "I never did tell yo...
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