The Mansion On Drachmian Border

Waking Up In Central

Hughes woke up two weeks after their arrival in Central.

Riza was the only one in the room with him at that moment and the man panicked so hard he had to be sedated right away. She didn't take that personally, how could she, instead she winced in sympathy when a male nurse had to hold him down in order for a doctor to give him a sedative. He was crying and begging for help and Riza didn't know how to.

The best course of action was obviously to let the doctor handle it but seeing the pure fear in his eyes made her heart clench. Maybe it was a good thing Roy wasn't there, after all, he probably would have tried to stop the doctor and wanted to talk to Hughes, what she thought would end badly.

Hughes was obviously still not in the right mind to talk things out.

Instead, she watched as his breath started to calm down and as he soon mindlessly stared at the ceiling.

She wasn't good at talking and probably Hughes didn't even need her to, so instead she slipped out of the room to call others and inform them of the news.

***

Two weeks went by and they still didn't make a breakthrough. Edward continued to assure them they still had a chance and getting Elicia back and it was only a matter of finding out how to do it without anyone losing any limbs but even he grew more on edge every day.

It didn't help that Dante was an absolute pain to be around. She would tell them their efforts were meaningless and that Elicia was already dead. Roy was also stuck being the only one who came close to her, mostly because she catcalled Edward every time she saw him. She wasn't like that with Alphonse, though.

At least she stopped saying Envy would be back for her, seemingly losing fate in her own claim.

Another thing that didn't help was that Van Hohenheim was late for the entire week which caused Maria and Finn to be worried and Edward claiming he's 'going to kill that bastard when he sees his face'. Alphonse just got strangely quiet.

But that didn't stop the Elric brothers from trying to solve the mystery on their own. He always knew Edward was a genius, that's why he recruited him in the first place but working with the Elrics proved to be more difficult than he first thought that it would be.

The thing was Edward and Al were used to working alone. They had their own habits and a way of communicating without words, which left Roy feeling left out. They tried to include him once they noticed but quickly fell into the same behavior if something interesting caught their attention.

Until...

„That's it!” Edward exclaimed getting up and nearly slamming his fist on the table „Those are the worst alchemy notes I've ever seen! Sents! She keeps researching sents!”

Al nodded grimly „Granted that some of them could cause you to lose your sense of smell for the rest of your life but to our cause, they are rather useless.”

„We can just give it a rest and send all of this to Russel and Felcher!” he pulled up his sleeves „That's it! Al, call Winry, I'll need another automail.”

However, before Edward could make it out of the room, Al lifted him up. It was easy aside from the extra weight from automail, considering Alphonse somehow managed to grow taller than Havoc.

„Brother, no.”

Roy wouldn't be himself if he didn't comment on that.

„It's so funny. You're so small, that you look like Al's kid!”

Ed's eyes narrowed and screamed murder „Who do you think you're calling a kid, you asshole! I'm thirty-one!”

„And yet you still need to show your ID every time you buy alcohol, baby face.”