Cardinal Sin (1) : Rebirth of the Fullmetal Alchemist

19 - One day before

One day prior to the phone calls received by both the brother and fiancee of Edward Elric informing them of the latter's death...

From the moment General Mustang opened his eyes that morning, he knew something was amiss. He came to work with a troubled frown on his face. No one questioned him on the matter until he sat down at his desk and Hawkeye noticed his expression.

"Sir? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing's wrong."

"Sir," Hawkeye repeated.

Of course, he wasn't going to get away from her that easily. The lieutenant was so damn perceptive.

Along with a long sigh, Mustang leaned back into his chair, and said, "Something just feels off today. Madame Christmas always used to tell me that means somebody died. Ridiculous, isn't it—"

A frantic banging on the office door cut Mustang off. Outside, there were yells... or maybe sobs.

Alarmed, Mustang called, "Come in! What's going on?!"

The door was wrenched open and a young man whose face was covered in tears, snot and grime stumbled inside, falling to his hands in knees, sobbing.

"What's going on?" the General questioned, cursing his blindness. "Are you crying? Hawkeye, who is it?"

It took a moment, but the lieutenant finally remembered the newcomer's face and related to her superior, "That's one of Edward's two friends—the ones that came here with him the other day."

"Boy, stop crying and tell me what's wrong," Mustang said sternly.

"It's Ed," he wailed. "Ed! He..."

The explanation was never finished.

Fullmetal's other companion came into the office in a similar distraught state, dragging behind him a large object cocooned in three coats and secured with rope.

Hawkeye, taking note of the shape of what was being dragged and the expressions of anguish on the faces of the two young men, understood the situation momentarily, though she was unwilling to believe in her own logic. For the first time in a long while, she lost her composure.

"Is... Is that Edward?" she said.

"Yes!" the first one screamed, throwing himself flat onto his stomach.

The lieutenant's eyes widened. Her feet moved by themselves, bringing her to the object wrapped in the three coats where she came to her knees. Following this, her hands went forwards and busied themselves by unknotting the rope that was wrapped around the supposed corpse of the former Fullmetal Alchemist. Throughout this, she blocked out the repeating calls from her commanding officer.

The top coat came free, slipping off the body and gathering on the floor just beyond the crushed head of Edward Elric.

"Who did this?"

The two kept crying without answering the question, so Hawkeye yelled over their sobs, "WHO DID THIS?!"

"He did it to himself! He put a knife in his heart and fell off a tower in that ruined city's castle! We found him like this..."

"No!" Hawkeye screamed, pushing herself away from the carcass. "Ed would never do this! He'd never. He has Alphonse and he was going to marry Winry! He'd never take his own life!"

Mustang slammed his palms on his desk and stood from his chair. He yelled, "Fullmetal did what?!"

The teary-eyed one who'd dragged in Ed's body raised his head. Instead of answering the General's question, he exclaimed, "And the philosopher's stone he had with him—it glowed red and disappeared right after we found his body!"