The Empath Alchemist {Edward Elric X Reader}

36

Jean Havoc's childhood home was anything but what (Y/n) had expected it to look like. She didn't have a specific image of what it would have appeared to be prior to entering it, but she knew that what she stepped into was hardly what her mind would have conjured for the home of such a seemingly laid back man who couldn't maintain a steady relationship.

The dirty blonde gently shut the front door behind him as he wheeled into the space once the kids had fully entered. They looked around, just as Havoc had assumed they would. By the looks of their faces, they hadn't necessarily stayed sedimentary over the course of time they'd spent away from him. The three teenagers had jumped from home to home, alley to alley, inn to inn. In retrospect, the Second Lieutenant's home shouldn't have been any different considering the quick pace their lives had taken, yet it was incredibly different. Though Ed and (Y/n) had returned to the Elric's childhood home, as well the Mustang's childhood when they stayed in the Hughes residence for the night, those residences came with a strange sense of nostalgic familiarity. Briggs had been the only place the three teens had stayed in that they hadn't been entirely familiar with, but Jean Havoc's home was still different somehow. It was familiar, only due to the connection it had to a man the kids had been all too familiar with, but it was foreign nevertheless.

It was a refuge, a hideaway, a place that would have never been revealed unless the circumstances were as drastic as they were now. It felt terribly odd to be standing on the creaky wooden tiles of that fifty something year old home. It felt strange that any of them were even standing there, looking around, taking in the organized clutter of the domestic atmosphere. It shouldn't have felt so wrong, but it did. It was a sign of war, a sign that things had gone wrong and were only going to continue to go wrong from here on out. It was a sign that there was no other option for the people within the home at the moment, it was a sign that they had to survive with the utilities that they were given.

(Y/n) knew that Havoc didn't want the home that was once filled with memories of a carefree, innocent childhood to become something of a bomb shelter, a place to store weapons and a ticking time bomb of a former Colonel. His home was tainted with desperation and the irremovable splotches of militant obligation, and it felt wrong.

Despite the feeling of displacement that hovered over the Elrics and Mustang as they stopped to take in everything, the sun poured in through the cracks of the blinds overhead the kitchen sink as if the kids were meant to be there. The said sink was just on the left side of where they stood, past the staircase that led to the second floor a good many feet away from the front door. The wallpaper was dull, fading, the same pastel yellow as the exterior of the home. It would have been blinding had it not been for the dark oak that paved the area beneath their feet around the perimeter of the house.

(Y/n) turned her head to the right, her shoulder bumping against Ed's as he held her hand gently within his automail, and saw a hallway that led down to what she assumed to be an office or bedroom. A spandrel resided beneath the staircase on the left side of the right hallway, which either concealed a small storage closet or another staircase to a basement. Knowing Havoc, it was safe to assume that the latter was the more appropriate guess.

Had it not been for the men size nine boots that sat on the straw doormat beside (Y/n)'s feet or the rifles, bullet harnesses, grenades, and papers that lined the kitchen counter and cream tile floor, the teens would have deemed the place too dainty for someone like Havoc. It had been his parents' home, after all, and their beloved son had gone and turned it into a weaponry shack.

The blue eyed Lieutenant's wheelchair squeaked as he rolled around the kids to stop beside the staircase, halfway in the middle of the path to the kitchen. He had a look about him, one that (Y/n) had rarely seen. Uncertainty, hesitance, mistrust in his own decisions. He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped, lifting his hand to his mouth to run his index finger over his upper lip, the leather of his fingerless glove swiping his chin in a most uncomfortable way. He squinted his eyes, looking between (Y/n) and Edward after he'd kept his eyes to the ceiling.