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Roy is used to measuring out the moments of a day and stacking them into hours. Roy would wager that he’d recognize the particular sharpness of the clock in the boardroom—which ticks with a leisurely vengefulness unrivaled by any other inanimate object he has yet encountered—anywhere on the planet. He hears the near-apologetic progress of his pocketwatch in his sleep. Lately, he’s started to let himself mark out time in heartbeats; some moments are too fragile altogether to be carried in the silent spaces of any other rhythm. It has to be that.
Tonight, though, he whittles down the impossible span of endless hours by the sound of his own boot heels hitting linoleum, to the pace of his own pacing.
He doesn’t know what time it is—seconds crawl, here; minutes slither; hours ooze. It can’t have been more than four hours, because Alphonse’s train would have arrived by now if it had been, so perhaps Roy has somehow slipped into a fold in the fabric of reality wherein he can pace indefinitely without ever going anywhere.
That sounds like a very dangerous metaphor for his entire life.
Instead of turning on his heel at the tenth step towards the tiny window, he stops still, clenches his hands a fraction tighter where they’re clasped behind his back, and breathes deeply.
He trusts the doctors. He does. He has to. Central City Hospital is very good, and very clean; the personnel are knowledgeable and attentive; they’d probably run Command better than the brass ever have. There are phones ringing and people walking and conversations everywhere, which have started to feel like a series of overlapping sledgehammers with ill intentions for his skull, but it’s—fine. It’s a positive sign. Surely they’re busy because they’re competent, because people prioritize coming here over other hospitals; at any rate, they don’t seem overwhelmed.
The worst is over. They said that—the doctor with the glasses said that. They said it while fiddling with the glasses in question, which reminded him of Hughes, and also made him wonder if they were equivocating. Is fidgeting a bad sign? This all must be perfunctory for them. They must have found a way to accept that they have done the best they can; they have lifted as many lives and healed as many hurts are they are able to, in any given moment; they have tried, and they have to let it be enough.
The worst is over. As if every day isn’t just different, undiscovered kinds of bad. As if the universe has ever bowed graciously to those words instead of laughing in the face of them.
Ed will wake up soon. Al will be here soon. The minutes will stop shivering past Roy’s skin like a thousand cold embraces offered up by passing ghosts. No more ghosts. Please, no more.
The worst should have been over for Ed when he was eight, and his family fell apart around him; should have been over after the transmutation; should have been over after the automail; should have been over after Nina Tucker; should have been over after Homunculi and Kimblee and the sick mirror image of his reappeared father; should have been over after the alchemy; after Hohenheim refusing, a second time, to say goodbye—
Should have been. That’s about as useful a turn of phrase.
Roy can only be what he is. He can only hope. He can only hold on, tightly, and try not to imagine.
Ed will wake up soon, because Al will be here soon, and Ed would never disappoint his brother by dying in a hospital bed without so much as a parting shot. He won’t. He can’t. He simply wouldn’t have it. It isn’t in him. He has not survived the rest of it for this. The world will be charitable, just this once—not to Roy, not to what he is and what he has been; but to Ed. To Al. To Winry. To the ones who weathered storms that should have drowned them, and stood, and smiled, and walked ahead instead of merely pacing.
There’s also the small matter that Ed is on something like a first-name basis with the eldritch horror manifestation of the universe that seems to have some sway, at least, over their corporeal beings, but Roy’s not sure if they can count on that.
He keeps breathing. He uncurls his hands from around each other and uses one to push his hair back. It must be later than he realizes; his hands feel very heavy, and somewhat disconnected from the rest of him. He wants to rub his eyes, but he’s probably a germ repository at this point; he casts back and simply can’t remember the last time that he washed his hands, or… anything. He can’t remember much about today except for dropping the telephone in the office when he got the call.
It hit him squarely in the kneecap. Either that doesn’t hurt anymore, or he no longer registers—
“Hey,” a voice says, hoarse and reedy and faint and utterly unmistakable.
Roy is not too tired to make it to the bedside in what feels like an instant, despite this being the single shortest instant that he’s experienced since he arrived.
Ed’s mouth curves up, which must hurt, because it must pull at the stitches underneath the gauze. “What’s a guy gotta do to get a cup of coffee in this joint?”
“The top of my list of suggestions,” Roy says, “is never getting hit by a car ever again.”
“You say that like I was standin’ in the middle of the street holding up a sign that said ‘Twenty-five points’,” Ed says, with just the slightest flash of teeth. “What part of coffee don’t you and your damn vocabulary understand?”
Roy has no intention of leaving this bedside for anything less than… actually, a governmental crisis could wait, as could most moderate to severe natural disasters. Fuck that.
He picks up the cup that he set down on top of one of the medical supply cabinets earlier, after a nurse took pity on him, and holds it out.
“It’s cold,” he says, “and has creamer i—”
“Don’t fucking care,” Ed says, grabbing with the hand that is not broken in at least two places. He drains the cup in what looks like three swallows. Roy wants to make a very pithy and refined gag reflex joke, but the fact that he will have better opportunities floods him with so much relief that his voice evaporates. “Eew,” Ed says, offering the empty cup back to him. “I’d do a scientific study on whether milk or creamer’s worse, if I hated myself just a little bit more. Creamer tastes better, but only because it’s never even dreamed of seeing a cow, and I’m not sure yet how I feel about that. Please tell me that Al’s not comin’.”
“You know the answer to that,” Roy says. He takes the cup. He does not clutch it to his chest or cradle it gently, which he feels is restrained.
“Damn it,” Ed says, leaning back against the pillow and closing his eyes. “That car isn’t gonna have shit on his whole gentle disapproval thing. That’s like a whole fucking freight train.”
“I’ll save you,” Roy says. He feels like he could stop a freight train just now. He knows that that’s the endorphin high talking, but he doesn’t think it matters very much.
Ed grins, which must make the stitches hurt even worse. It is so colossally stupid, and so toweringly terrifying, that an ordinary hazard could leave him like this. Monsters and assassination plots and outright evil Roy can observe and predict and counter-plan against. An accident, on a normal night, out of the blue, for no purpose—
“My hero,” Ed says. “He’s gonna eat you alive. It’ll probably be cute, though.”
Roy tries to smile back at him. He has to manage that much. “Me, him, or the cannibalism?”
“Shut up,” Ed says. He reaches up, wraps his more serviceable hand around Roy’s wrist, and squeezes gently. “So what’s a guy gotta do to get a second cup of coffee around here?”
“Ask,” Roy says. He lays his free hand over Ed’s. All he can do is hold on.
Ed smiles. “Do I have to say ‘please’?”
“Tonight,” Roy says, “you get a pass.”
“Generous,” Ed says.
“Always,” Roy says.