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batsutousaiTitle: Dragon's Gold
Series: Chimera-Dragons 'Verse
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood/manga
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: Mature
Pairings: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Warnings: Alternate Universe, dragon!Roy, chimera!Roy, prince!Ed (Ed is the worst prince), demi!Ed, whipping as punishment, Ed's potty mouth, mention of inhuman experimentations, mention of torture, dragon!Maes, dragon!Riza, dragon!Kimblee, background character death, graphic depictions of violence, worldbuilding, angst, fluff
Summary: Prince Edward is a pain in his parents' behinds, and they eventually resort to locking him up in a tower with a dragon in hopes that some enforced solitude will help him sort out his priorities. Unsurprisingly, this doesn't quite work out the way they'd hoped.
Disclaim Her: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Arakawa Hiromu and various publishers. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
A/N: For RoyEd Week on tumblr. Today's prompts included such gems as "It's not what you think", "I can handle this", and Altered states.
Yodepalma was trying to get me to write dragon!Roy and I remembered a post on tumblr about wouldn't it be cool if a princess wanted to stay with the dragon guarding their tower, and this terrible idea was born.
I'm not even a little bit sorry. (Except maybe about the length. HOW DID THIS THING END UP SO LONG?! DAMMIT, YODEPALMA!!)
Okay, so, I say demi!Ed, because demi is how I identify, but he can just as easily be read as gray-ace, I think, so if that's how you want to read him, by all means. I mean, I never set out to write him as demi, tbh, but then he had a confused-about-arousal moment, and I was like, 'Oh. You're demi. Cool.' And we just went from there. (My characters never tell me what they're doing until it's too late for me to do anything about it; I'm used to this foolery. XD)
The PoV is a little...odd, at the beginning, because I was sort of leaning toward 3rd person omniscient, but then I just ended up stuck in Ed's head, and I can't be arsed to go out and smooth over the beginning, especially since this ended up being a bit of a last-minute fic finish. ^^;
Uhm... So, I started bolding everything said in Amestrisan before it occurred to me that most of the conversation'll be in that, and since I didn't have time for any edits before posting, I didn't go through and find a way to change that. Sorry if it's distracting. Might fix it eventually.
Also, it might be a little rushed, the latter half or so, but that's because I wrote most of it Tuesday night/Wednesday, while watching my deadline approaching. Whoops?
You can also read this at Archive of Our Own or Fanfiction.Net.
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Crown Prince Edward Hohenheim of Xerxes was, to put it... Well, there's no way to put it nicely, so, accurately: He was a pain in his royal parents' arses.
A fact of which he was perfectly aware, but didn't really care about. In fact, he went to great lengths to be as difficult as possible, because he absolutely, positively, did not want to rule Xerxes. Ever. (Much better that his younger brother, Alphonse, take over from their father, given his temperament was better suited to ruling.)
Edward also didn't want to be be trapped married to some delicate little princess who couldn't hold her own in a brawl. He'd much rather get hitched with his his childhood friend, Winry, but she wasn't of noble blood, and there were expectations on Edward to make a match that was for the good of their country, especially as the eldest prince. Preferably, he'd marry some foreign princess, thereby sealing a treaty of some sort with her native country. If not a foreign princess, there were plenty of noble families in Xerxes looking to marry into the royal family.
At twelve, Edward started a habit of running away from home every other month or so. He never managed to actually leave the royal city once in the five years he'd been at it, which was a small comfort to his parents, given they had to constantly call out the guard to hunt down their eldest son.
At sixteen, when nobles started suggesting a match to Edward, his counter-offer was always that he'd marry the girl if she managed to beat him in a duel, her choice of weapon. This, of course, put off most everyone, but a few were willing to give it a shot, having allowed their daughter to learn swordcraft, most often. But Edward always won, almost never had to put any effort into it.
The first time he tried that line on a foreign dignitary offering their princess' hand, barely a week after his eighteenth birthday, he was ordered to his room for the rest of the night. He promptly escaped out his tower bedroom's window, making it all the way to the outer city gates before a guard happened to recognise him and he was dragged back to the palace, snarling insults the entire way. His absence hadn't even been noticed in the palace, yet, and his father, King Van, finally lost his temper.
"Until you understand your duties to your people, you will be locked in a tower in the most inhospitable location I can find inside our borders, and guarded by the most fearsome beast I can think of," he'd informed Edward, his eyes flashing.
Edward had just smiled and replied, "Sounds like an interesting challenge."
Edward was locked in the dungeon for two days, because Van wasn't going to chance him running away again while he saw to the tower – Edward hadn't intended to, far more interested in seeing what horrors his father thought might dissuade him. Queen Trisha and Prince Alphonse both came down to see him on their own while the king was away, both obviously disapproving, but also clearly regretting that Van had resorted to banishment to deal with Edward.
"Why must you always be so difficult, Edward?" his mother asked tiredly, the deep lines etched into her face especially obvious in the flickering torch light. "Princess May sounds like a lovely girl–"
"So make Al marry her," Edward cut in before his mother could start extolling the foreign girl's virtues, like she'd done about more than a few of the noble's daughters.
Trisha had left shortly after that, having long learnt that her eldest had received the lion's share of both her and Van's stubbornness, which made arguing with him far more likely to result in a headache on her part, than him actually seeing reason.
Edward did feel a little bad, honestly, but he had no interest in letting himself be chained to the throne, having to listen to the petty complaints of nobles and commoners alike, all of whom seemed to believe he had nothing better to do with his days than attend to them. He wanted to see the world, explore all those things he'd only read of in books, like oceans and mountains and snow. He wanted to be just another face in the crowd, to actually take part in a fair fight, rather than always facing an opponent that purposefully lost.
He wanted to be known for what he could do, rather than who he was. And that was ever the one thing he would never manage while he was heir to the Xerxesian throne.
When Alphonse came, he was wearing a helpless sort of smile and opened with, "Could you be any more difficult, Brother?"
"Probably!" Edward returned cheerfully.
Alphonse sighed and rubbed at his face, then pushed his hand through the bars of Edward's cell for Edward to take, and so he did, both of them gripping tightly to the other. "Write me?" Alphonse requested quietly.
Edward raised an eyebrow at him. "Pretty sure Father won't be allowing post in this most terrifying and inhospitable tower he's designing."
Alphonse rolled his eyes, and Edward grinned at him. "Brother," Alphonse said in that tone he always used when Edward was being purposefully dense. "Once you escape." Because Alphonse didn't, for one moment, believe anything would stop his brother for long. (The only reason Edward had yet to make it out of the city, he was sure, was because there were just so many people to dodge, and he simply wasn't naturally sneaky enough to get past them all. But, without scores of guards watching for their prince's escape attempts, Alphonse had no doubt his brother would finally manage what he'd been attempting for so long.)
Edward squeezed his brother's hand as tightly as he could, and Alphonse squeezed back. "I will," he promised quietly. Honestly. Because he was going to miss his brother – his parents and the few friends he had among the guard and castle staff – but not so much that he would let that hold him back. "Give Win a kiss on the cheek for me?"
Alphonse rolled his eyes again. "Yeah, okay. And I'll pass on your farewells to Jean and Heymans and them."
"Thanks."
As Alphonse started to withdraw his hand to leave, though, Ed tightened his grip and tugged on his brother's hand until he looked back at him. "Al, listen to me. You're going to make an amazing king, okay? The absolute best ever. I know it."
Tears sprung to Alphonse's eyes and he roughly rubbed at them. "I know," he whispered, because Edward had told him so many times over the years. "I love you, you idiot brother."
Edward flashed him a wide grin as he let Alphonse's hand go, and he held it until he was certain his brother was gone. Only then did he let it fall, turning away from the guard standing watch down the hall so the man wouldn't see if Edward didn't manage to keep in the tears threatening to fall.
King Van's genius idea to trap his son was a sandstone tower built overnight with alchemy, in the absolute hottest part of the Great Xerxes Desert. The only water for miles was an oasis in the shadow of the tower, around which was a wall at least four times as high as Van was tall. Arrays carved into the tower's walls kept it cool enough inside for someone born in the desert to live comfortably, and there were nearly as many amenities as Edward would have had in the palace, including a kitchen stocked with food – and a merchant willing to make a trip out to the tower once a week to drop off fresh supplies – an underground room with practice dummies and an assortment of weapons, a reasonably sized alchemy/chemistry lab, and a library (which only held books relating to the duties of royalty and the most basic alchemy books Van could find).
And then, because no walls could hold an alchemist – and Van wouldn't put it past his stubborn son to chance heatstroke by filling something with water, then rushing off into the desert – he traded some alchemy secrets with the current ruler of Amestris for one of their prized dragons, which he ordered to keep Edward from leaving the structure, lest he be given reason to test exactly how tough his scaled hide was.
Edward was collected from the dungeon almost as soon as night fell, shackled and blindfolded, then hustled up into a waiting carriage without any but the bare minimum of people aware of the transfer, and no chance for a last goodbye shared between Edward and his mother or brother. (Which a part of him had expected; his father needed him to want to come home.)
The journey was a long one, and Edward couldn't keep from sleeping through part of it, despite his uncomfortable position, because it was boring not being able to see anything, and he hadn't got much sleep while stuck in the palace dungeons.
They arrived while it was dark out, and it wouldn't be until after the carriage, Van, and the guards had left, and the moon rose instead of the sun, that Edward would realise that he'd been in the carriage for a whole day.
At that moment, however, as Van freed Edward's hands from the board that had been holding them apart and took off the blindfold, he didn't know any of that, only frowned at his father and made a show of rubbing at his wrists.
Van was unmoved. (Outwardly, at least; it had been necessary to keep Edward from either removing the blindfold, or alchemising his way out of the carriage, he had to remind himself.) "You will remain here," he said flatly, "in solitude, until you are ready to perform your duties as Crown Prince, without this childish play at rebellion."
"Childish?!" Ed repeated, half disbelieving, half enraged; there was nothing childish about his refusal to sit in a throne he was unsuited for!
Van's expression darkened. "Yes, Edward, childish," he returned. Before Edward could let loose with one of his familiar tirades, Van continued, "I will visit once a month, and a merchant will bring supplies every other week. If I discover you've attempted to join along with either of those caravans, I will have you whipped."
"And what purpose has that ever served?" Edward muttered, because Van had resorted to that punishment a couple of times, before Trisha had put her foot down.
Van, probably wisely, ignored him, instead continuing, "Punishment for any escape attempts beyond that, will be up to your...housemate."
Edward raised both eyebrows at that and made a show of looking around at the open layout of the ground floor room, which was empty, save the two of them.
Van's smile was edged in victory as he said, "Let me introduce you," then turned and led Edward out the only door in the tower walls, which let out into the walled-in oasis.
Across the pool from the tower laid what looked, at first, to be a large, misshapen rock. But then the 'rock' shifted, and Edward couldn't bite back a startled curse as the dragon got to his feet and stretched, wings flaring wide behind him. He was...large. Not as massive as some of the ancient stories Edward had been told of dragons as a child, but his head was still almost three-fourths as long as Edward was tall, and he was easily twice as tall as Van, who had about a head on Edward, and fuck-knew how long.
In the pale light of the alchemical lanterns embedded high in the walls, the dragon's looked like he was yellow or a light brown. Rather than the more common horns, this dragon had a sort of wing-like plate sweeping back to either side of his head. His wings, too, were unfamiliar, as the phalanges the membrane stretched between grew straight out from his back, instead of coming down from the end of the radius, which resulted in the wings continuing down his sides all the way to his tail.
Later, once the sun was up, Edward would discover the dragon was actually bronze, with stains of green on the outer edges of the scales on his underside, and stains of red on the outer edges of the red of his scales. The wing membrane closer to his body was a deep green, while the outer edges of the membrane were stained a brilliant, fiery red, which made him look like his wings were on fire. Nothing at all like the black dragons with bone-white heads that those childhood stories had always told of.
"Flame," Van called, and the dragon turned intelligent black eyes toward him. Van motioned toward Edward standing at his side and said in Amestrisan, "This is your charge. You are to keep him within these walls, as agreed. Clear?"
The dragon – Flame – let out a huff of smoke and nodded, then turned around a couple of times in place and curled up to go back to sleep. It was so similar to the actions of the cats that Alphonse kept sneaking past Trisha and keeping in his room, Edward had to bite back a slightly disbelieving laugh.
Without any warning, Edward was pulled into Van's arms for quick, hard hug, then the king hurriedly turned away, his voice rough as he said over his shoulder, "I hope to find a grown man here in a month."
And then he clapped, made a doorway in the wall as he reached it, stepped through, and closed it behind him without looking back at Edward; the last thing he wanted was for his son to see exactly how much it hurt to leave him alone with only the threat of a dragon eating him to keep him from running away and vanishing into the desert forever.
Edward, for his part, snarled a couple choice curses after his father, then turned and stalked back into the tower to explore it.
He found the kitchen first and immediately went after food, only to freeze in disbelieving horror when he realised he would have to make his own food.
Was he certain he couldn't marry a delicate little princess and play at being king?
He shook himself, muttering, "Pull it together, Ed; you'd have to figure out this cooking thing eventually, anyway. Better when there's no one to laugh at your fuck-ups." Which didn't really inspire him or anything, but it did make him step forward and start taking inventory.
There was bread, a few wheels of cheese, and some chilled meat and vegetables in a large cold-box, so he put together a sandwich, since that was easy, then ate it while he explored the rest of the building.
The lab and practise room were both pretty cool, and the bedroom at the top of the tower was bound to get hot, even with the cooling arrays, but he'd make do. The library was clearly his father's idea of a joke, however, and Edward sealed it off in a fit of pique.
Tower explored, he returned to the oasis, because he wanted to take quick bath because he'd been stuck in the dungeon for two days, and apparently that carriage ride had been a lot longer than he'd thought, judging by the moon's appearance in the sky while he'd been exploring.
He stripped to his underpants quickly and was just about to step into the pool when he recalled the lack of any piping for running water in the tower, which very likely meant this was his only source of it. And the last thing he wanted to do with his water source, was foul it up. So, sighing a bit, he clapped his hands, then crouched to press his palms against the ground.
Alchemic light sparked along the sparse grass around the edge of the pool, then the ground began shifting, pulling a portion of the water away from the main pool, just enough for Edward to comfortably bathe in. He didn't stop the alchemy until there was three feet between the two pools, then he stood and stepped into the water, pleased to find it was still warm from the heat of the day. (He'd never been fond of cold baths.)
He hadn't been in the water long, when the dragon let out a loud snort, and Edward whirled to shoot his keeper a glare. "Do–" he started, before frowning a bit as he remembered his father had used Amestrisan to speak to the dragon, before. It wasn't his best language, but he still grimaced and said as clearly as he could, "Do you mind?"
The dragon snorted again, letting out another puff of smoke, then turned his head to face the wall and rested it on his foreclaws.
Edward shook his head, decided he didn't really care about the oddities of dragons, and quickly finished rinsing dirt off his skin and combing it out of his hair as much as he could, then stepped out of the water and stared down at his clothing laying a heap in the sand. He should probably clean them, since they desperately needed it, but there was plenty of clothing in the bedroom. So Edward allowed himself to kick the pile of clothing toward the part of the wall his father had left through, then stalked back into the tower to find something to dry off with, then get dressed in clean clothing and see about testing out those practise dummies.
Edward had very little to do with the dragon the first two weeks of his exile, as there was plenty to busy himself with between attempting to recreate dishes he remembered liking from court – which wasn't going well – practising with whichever weapon seemed more interesting in that moment, and mucking about in the lab. He did see the dragon fairly regularly, as there wasn't anywhere to relieve himself inside the tower, and he did refill the pitcher of water he kept in the cold-box every morning, before the sun could overheat the pool.
The dragon was usually in the same spot he'd slept in that first night once the sun went down, but he would regularly be on top of the tower when Edward went outside during the day, his scales gleaming like a pile of well-polished coins or jewellery in torchlight.
Still, the day before the merchant would arrive, after cooking failure number... Edward was purposefully not keeping track, actually. So after one failure or another, which had ended up with his food attempt on fire, he stormed outside and tossed the miniature fire and the pot it had been in at the pile of clothing that was still scattered by the wall. The trousers caught fire, starting a chain reaction of fabric going up in flames.
Edward wasn't certain if he was laughing or dry-sobbing as he watched his current frustration and the only thing he'd been able to bring from home both go up in smoke.
A shadow fell over him, then the dragon landed on the other side of the pool from him, cupped a claw and filled it with water, then splashed it at the flames. With the size of its claws, it was more than enough water to drench everything, and the flames went out with a hiss of steam.
Edward squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed roughly at his face, half to check that he hadn't actually started crying, half because he couldn't bring himself to look at the dragon as he said, "Thank you," in Amestrisan.
The dragon let out a sort of rumbling noise, which seemed almost to sound like a wordless sound of inquiry like a human might make.
Edward frowned a bit and looked up, found the dragon sat on his haunches and watching him with his head tilted slightly to one side. Again, he was reminded of Alphonse's contraband cats, and he shook his head in disbelief, even as he said, "I do not suppose you happen to know how to cook, do you?" And then, not waiting for any sort of response, Edward snorted and turned away. "Ha! Even if you do, it is not like you could tell me, could you? Stupid beast."
Just before he reached the door back into the tower, a gravelly voice coming from behind him replied, "I take offense to that, boy."
Edward whirled, shocked. "You can talk!" he exclaimed, before almost immediately adding and angry, "Do not call me 'boy'. I am not a child."
The dragon looked almost uncertain for a moment, before shifting slightly, wings causing just enough of a breeze to set the leaves of the palm trees swaying gently. "You look young, to me. And I haven't a name to use for you."
"I just turned eighteen," Edward insisted, not caring if it came out a little petulant, and the dragon shifted again, head moving forward a bit, like he was trying to get a better look at Edward. He scowled at the dragon and started to say, "I am Cr–"
He stopped, realising that, for once, he'd found someone who didn't know he was royalty, and was unlikely to ever discover such until long after Edward had got away. So he cleared his throat and offered, "I am Ed."
"Greetings, Ed," the dragon rumbled, dipping his head in a manner that wasn't unlike how Edward would have greeted someone with a nod of his head. "I'm Roy."
Edward blinked and frowned at that, confused. "Father called you Flame, though."
The dragon – Flame? Roy? – shifted again. "Flame is the name the alchemists gave me. 'Far more suitable than a human name'," he added in a gravelly snarl, a spark of fire chasing after the last word.
Edward swallowed. "Alchemists? Why would they care about your name?"
Roy seemed almost to pull in on himself, head and wings pulled in close to his body, and tail wrapping around his legs. Instead of answering Edward, he asked, "That man was your father?"
Edward frowned, but he had just enough common decency beat into him – between Alphonse, their mother, and Winry; fuck knew his etiquette teacher had been next to useless – not to press what was clearly an uncomfortable subject. "Yes, my father," he agreed, didn't bother offering a name, since he wasn't certain if Roy knew the name of Xerxes' king.
Roy seemed to relax a bit, his tail loosening its grip on his foreclaws and his neck straightening a bit, closer to his full height again, rather than the attempt at compaction he'd just been making. "Why would he leave you here, in the middle of the desert?" he asked, his head cocking to the side a bit.
Edward made a show of rolling his eyes and waved his hand toward the point along the wall his father had left through. "He has life plans for me I do not intend to follow. He thinks boring me to death will bring me to his view."
Roy let out a huff of smoke and flexed his foreclaws against the sand. "And your back?" he asked, a sort of tightness to the words that was obvious even through the gravelly effect.
"My back?" Edward repeated, thrown for a moment, as he reached back over his shoulder to touch his bare back – he didn't bother with his robes, since there was no one else there to dress up for, and he had no interest in chancing it around his cooking attempts. His fingers brushed old scars from the whippings he'd got as a boy. "Oh," he realised before dropping his hand back to his side and shrugging. "An attempt at punishment that my mother did not approve of. It was long ago."
Roy let out a snarl so vicious, Edward could help but flinch back, turning wide eyes on the dragon. "Whipping a child is barbaric!" Roy nearly roared, flames licking around the edges of his mouth. "You Xerxesians–"
Edward was hardly one to agree with whipping as punishment for as pathetic an attempt at running away as he'd managed during the time period his father had resorted to such measures, but his country pride wouldn't let him stand by and listen as a foreigner defamed his people. "Do not dare to insult my people, lizard!" he ordered with all the authority due his station. "The people of Xerxes are brilliant and kind, and I will not stand here and allow you to malign them simply because you agree not with the actions of one man."
Roy shifted back a step, staring at Edward as though he was seeing him for the first time, for a long moment, before looking away and rumbling, "I apologise. It seems I've internalised more pro-Amestrisan propaganda than I'd realised."
Edward frowned at that and crossed his arms over his chest; it was no secret that Amestris and Xerxes had an uneasy history, at the best of times. Amestris had been founded by a Xerxesian emigrant who had hated his native country and her king nearly four hundred years ago. While they'd never officially been at war with each other, Xerxes had supplied Drachma, to the north, with weapons to use in a number of their semi-regular skirmishes along the Drachman/Amestrisan border over the years, and they supplied Aerugo with alchemical knowledge long before they'd ever offered any to Amestris, who had been asking for such – and sending people to try sneaking books out of the borders, most of whom were returned to their families in pieces – since before Xerxes had officially recognised them as an actual country.
Van's rule had so far been a relatively friendly one between the two countries, but Edward could probably insult Roy just as easily with some of his beliefs about Amestris. Which wouldn't be nearly so uncomfortable an idea if the dragon was less capable of of ending his life before he could get something to protect himself with.
"Somehow," he offered, his voice coming out dry, "I think we will be insulting each other's homes more than we will be complimenting them."
Roy let out a snort of smoke. "True."
Edward unfolded his arms so he could scratch at his cheek. "I did not think a dragon would have country pride, though."
Roy's wings went flat against his back and he looked away. "This one does," he growled, before sort of hopping into the air, his wings opening with a snap, and beating one strong gust of wind, which got him high enough to fly over the wall and spiral up over the open desert until he was high enough to come to a rest on the top of the tower.
Edward blinked up at him, confused, before shaking his head and making his way back inside; he should probably clean up the kitchen and make himself a sandwich, anyway.
Edward didn't bother trying to talk to Roy again that day, and he was distracted from a brief nap next to the pool after a long period of morning practise with the dummies, by someone alchemising a part of the wall open.
Edward rushed up into a crouch, hands held in front of him, almost touching, as he looked toward the new hole.
The first person to step through was wearing the uniform of the Xerxes Guard, and she was carrying the familiar spear and short sword that Edward had grown up training with. The second person was dressed the same, but with the markings designating him a guard captain, and he called, "Your Highness, we're accompanying a merchant here on his Royal Majesty, King Van's orders."
Edward relaxed and stood, absently brushing off his trousers as he did. He spared a brief regret for the robes still hanging up in his bedroom on the top floor of the tower, but he decided it didn't really matter; this was hardly the royal court, where he had to be dressed for his station any time he was away from either his bedroom or the sparring rooms. And, anyway, this whole compound was essentially his bedroom, given the only other being inhabiting it was a dragon.
"I'm glad to see you, Captain," Edward returned as he approached them.
A weedy-looking man stepped through the opening, wringing his hands together, and he performed a terrible, ridiculously low bow. "Your Highness, I am Hamid, a travelling merchant. It is the absolute greatest of honours to serve your every need. Simply name it."
"A ride out of here?" Edward couldn't resist joking.
Before the last syllable had left his mouth, he had two spears kissing his throat.
The merchant let out a whimper and covered his head, but Edward narrowed his eyes at the captain. "Point those somewhere else, before I take them," he ordered in his coldest voice.
And then a rumbling growl came from above them.
"Or," Edward added with smirk he couldn't resist, while the merchant fled back through the wall with a terrified little screech, "you can just deal with the angry dragon."
The guards quickly stepped back, leaving a fair deal of distance between then and Edward. "Angry dragon or no," the captain replied in a voice that only shook a little; Edward could admit to being a bit impressed, "if you attempt to step outside the wall, I've orders to return you inside with any means necessary and then whip you once for each of your years."
The regret in his voice at that last was the only thing that kept Edward from making another joke, just to see how far he could push these soldiers; one of his friends among the palace guard had been the one ordered to whip Edward the last time before Trisha had put her foot down, and it had been months before he'd been able to face Edward again. And, even then, he'd kept apologising at random moments, or breaking into tears.
(Some punishments, Edward had learnt from that, were far harder on the one delivering it, than it was on the one receiving it, and he'd been grateful for his mother's intervention more on behalf of the guards, than for himself.)
So, instead of offering another joke, Edward quietly promised, "I have no intention of being whipped today, Captain." Then he snorted and waved a hand toward where he knew Roy was still perched on top of the tower. "Besides, he's his own orders to deal with me if I try an escape, and I've no interest in discovering what those might be."
Both guards shuddered, and the woman offered, "Nor would I, Highness. I'd fear enough having to live with it every day."
Edward shrugged and looked up toward Roy, finding the dragon perched on the very edge of the roof, wings spread out to either side to either keep his balance or be even more intimidating. (Or both.) He was watching them rather like Edward had often seen the palace hunting hawks eye the mouse their handlers had just pulled out to feed them, and he grimaced a bit at the correlation, even as he waved and called up in Amestrisan, "Just setting some boundaries, Roy! Calm down!"
Roy shuffled back onto the roof a bit and closed his wings, but he didn't stop staring down at them, nor respond verbally.
Edward shrugged again and turned back to the guards. "That's as non-threatening as he gets, sorry. Hamid!" he called after the merchant. "I can't come out to you!"
The merchant poked his head back through the opening in the wall, staring up at the roof of the tower. "Will it eat me?" he asked so quietly, Edward almost missed what he'd said.
He sighed and didn't bother resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "No. What have you got for me?"
The merchant was clearly nervous, and the absolutely refused to come back through the wall, which necessitated the guards carrying the supplies Edward wanted from the cart to just inside the wall, Edward insisting he could carry it all inside himself. (Really, he just didn't want anyone to see the scorch marks from his many failures in the kitchen.)
Once everything was inside the walls, the captain ushered the other guards out ahead of himself, then turned and sketched a bow. "Your Highness. Thank you for being so amiable."
"Of course," Edward murmured, and watched with an uncertain frown as the captain stepped back through the wall, then pressed a piece of parchment with an array for shaping sand against his side, closing the hole and blocking off Edward's view of endless desert.
Sighing a bit, Edward turned to the task of carrying his new things inside. But, before he could get his first load to the door of the tower, Roy let out a roar and took off from the top of the tower to fly out over the desert in the same direction that the merchant's cart had been pointed.
Edward didn't bother resisting a laugh at what looked very much like a territorial display.
It seemed those childhood tales had got some things right, after all.
Edward brought his next failed attempt at cooking outside while it was still smoking. The one he'd thrown at the wall the day before had vanished overnight – and thus had prompted him to clean it up that morning, before his visitors had arrived – and he had a pretty good idea where it had gone; he didn't expect dragons much cared if their meals tasted a bit charred.
Roy was curled up on the ground on the far side of the pool, it being late enough in the evening that the setting sun didn't hold his interest on top of the tower. He watched Edward's approach through barely opened eyes, and didn't offer any sort of greeting.
Edward huffed a bit, then showed him the pot's contents. "Do you want this?"
Roy's forked tongue snaked out and caught the pot, tugging it out of Edward's hands while he stared on in disbelief. Using only the two split ends of his tongue, the dragon managed to upend the burnt mess of not-food onto his tongue, set the pot on the ground at Edward's feet, then pulled his tongue back into his mouth, all without spilling any of the food onto the sand.
Edward cleared his throat as he bent over to pick up the pot, feeling oddly warm in a way he didn't really understand. "Okay, I'm impressed," he offered, his voice coming out oddly rough.
Roy let out a rumble that maybe sounded a little pleased, then closed his eyes all the way.
Edward frowned at that, subconsciously hugging the empty pot to his chest. He knew he should just leave the dragon to his sleep, but the brief visit from other humans had left him missing talking with other people, and Roy was the only other being in sight. So he finally gave in and asked, "Is there a reason you're being so quiet?"
Roy huffed out a pale cloud of smoke that Edward coughed and waved out of his face. The dragon lifted his head off his foreclaws. "I like being quiet," he returned flatly. "And I'm tired. Go away." And then he lowered his head back to its original position.
Edward stared at him for a long moment, feeling hurt in a way that was unfamiliar. "Fine," he said quietly. "Good night." And then he turned and hurried back into the tower. He stopped in the kitchen long enough to drop off the pot and decided that, actually, he wasn't hungry, then retreated to his bedroom to toss and turn for a few hours, before finally falling into a restless sleep.
Edward woke before the sun and got up to go about his usual day, feeling tired, but also too awake to go back to sleep? It wasn't a sensation he much cared for, which made him irritable. So, when he accidentally turned his breakfast into charcoal – he shouldn't have, he'd figured out eggs and toast relatively quickly – the only response he could think of was a wordless scream and throwing the pan full of blackened food against the far wall.
There was silence for a moment as he stared after the pan, struggling with the urge to go pick it up and throw it again, and then, from the ground floor, Roy called, "Ed? Are you okay?"
"Fuck off!" Edward shouted back. "No one wants to talk you you!"
And it felt good to say that for about half a minute, then the silence got to him, same as it had done the night before, and Edward raced down the stairs, calling, "Roy!"
"I'm right here," said the dragon snout poking through the doorway outside. The sharp points pointing down from his chin were scraping the sandstone floor with every word, which couldn't be comfortable, but he'd pushed his snout into the tower as far as it would go, like he'd wanted, desperately, to come in and check on Edward.
A huge chunk of his irritation vanished, and Edward slowed to a stop just in front of Roy's snout, resting a gentle hand on the tip. "I just burnt more food," he offered, though he honestly wasn't certain Roy had actually heard him, with the doorway in the way. Which, actually– "Back up a bit," he called, louder, and Roy's snout obediently retreated out the doorway.
Edward stepped forward, pressing his hands together and considering the wall around the human-sized doorway. There were cooling arrays carved into the wall on either side, but he could move those without too much trouble, he'd just have to reactivate them after. The ceiling wasn't nearly as high as he'd like for what he had in mind, but if there was one material he wasn't lacking, it was sand.
So he knelt and pressed his hands against the floor of the doorway, closing his eyes to concentrate as he pulled up enough sand to give the tower a bit more height and add some additional stairs, while also resizing the doorway so Roy could actually see inside comfortably. He re-carved the arrays on the extended walls, and also some miniature copies around the edges of the doorway, because he had nowhere near enough wood to reshape the door – unless he wanted to take out half the palm trees – and such a large opening was going to let in a lot of heat.
Only once the transmutation had finished, did he open his eyes and give everything a critical once-over. It looked good, though he might have some trouble reaching the cooling array he'd set in the top of the doorway, damn.
"Okay, I'm impressed," Roy admitted, and Edward blinked up at him. "I don't know a single Amestrisan alchemist who could have pulled that off with so little effort."
Edward couldn't resist a derisive snort. "Please. You cannot believe we have taught Amestris even half of our tricks."
Roy snorted out a cloud of smoke. "Ah, like that clapping trick."
Edward managed a thin smile as he walked over to one of the cooling arrays and activated it. Truthfully, the internal array was one secret that had only ever been passed down in the royal family, because anyone capable of it would be one dangerous opponent. It was also, he knew, deadly for someone with either insufficient alchemical knowledge, or insufficient alchemical ability, because when an array backfired, it tended to explode, and internal arrays meant the alchemist was the array.
Which, considering that, he'd probably need to stop using internal arrays once he figured out how to dodge Roy and escape this little prison of his father's, unless he wanted to give away his origins at every opportunity.
Roy shifted a bit, crouching down closer to the ground as Edward activated arrays. There wasn't really room for him on this side of the pool, but he didn't seem concerned by the palm tree he was bending a bit with one side, or the water one of his back claws was in. He appeared far more interested in watching Edward work, which made him scowl a bit as the silence between them stretched.
And then, out of nowhere, Roy rumbled, "It's forbidden."
Edward stopped looking around for something to stand on so he could activate the last array. "What?" he asked, confused.
Roy shifted, his front claws digging up a bit of the sparse grass. "Human speech. The Führer ordered our silence, and our keepers enforce it. Painfully."
Edward frowned at that, disgust and sympathy churning his stomach. He'd never much cared for sympathy, himself, so he turned away to get a chair he'd forgotten about shoved against the far wall from the door. "If they are so terrible to you, why stay? The stories always paint dragons as near invulnerable and perfectly capable of fighting their way out of bad odds."
Roy shifted again and huffed out a dark cloud of smoke. "Maybe real dragons," he agreed so quietly, Edward had trouble understanding the words around the gravel in his voice. And then, a bit louder, Roy said, "You're an alchemist; I assume you know what a chimera is."
Edward dropped the chair, his stomach plummeting. Chimerae were vile, twisted perversions of nature, one of the absolute lowest forms of alchemy, and illegal to so much as study in Xerxes. Edward knew a handful of arrays for it, only because it was the king's duty to recognise and punish violations of their laws appropriately, so learning illegal arrays had been part of his lessons as Crown Prince; the only lesson he'd had both without Alphonse, and with Van as his teacher.
"Tell me they did not," Edward breathed, pleaded, because if the Amestrisan Führer knew enough to forbid Roy speech, then he surely knew what was going on, which meant the leader of Amestris was condoning this perversion of alchemy.
Roy looked away, toward the wall. "I'm a traitor to my country; this is my due," he said, monotone. Like he was repeating something that had been said to him so often, he'd started to believe it.
"Camel shit!" Edward snapped, and Roy looked back at him, something almost startled in his intelligent eyes.
Not being allowed to use human speech, or a human name... 'Traitor to my country'...
Edward swallowed bile as he realised, "You were human."
"Yes," Roy agreed simply, his wings moving in a sort of approximation of a shrug.
Human transmutation was just as forbidden as chimera creation, and to cross the two branches...
Edward couldn't begin to follow that reasoning, especially since he knew the price for human transmutation, the whole royal family did. Perhaps the chimera array helped negate the price enough to make it safe for the alchemist – he couldn't bear to think too hard about the specifics – but still. Crossing two or more species together was utterly against the natural order, and every report Edward had ever read on the trials of such alchemists, suggested that the animals were in unbearable pain. To force animals, who couldn't speak, to suffer such was one thing, but to do it to a human?
He walked forward and wrapped his arms around as much of Roy's neck as he could manage. "I'm sorry," he said, couldn't quite bring himself to feel shame when his voice cracked for the first time in almost a year. "We should never have given Amestris alchemy." Because if his ancestors had known what Amestris would do with that knowledge, they would have done everything possible to keep it from them; of that, Edward was certain.
Warm scales pressed against his back, and Edward turned his head to find that Roy had ducked his head down and pressed his chin against him, returning the hug, and he turned back around to hide a smile that ached against the scales in front of him.
He couldn't say how much time passed before Roy raised his head again, quietly offering, "I was an alchemist, before, and I would be dead, if I wasn't a dragon; comparatively, I'd rather be like this."
To be fair, if given the choice between death and being a fire-breathing dragon, Edward would have picked the dragon, too. But, still... He stepped back a few paces so he could look up at Roy. "Are you hurting?" he had to ask.
Roy's head tilted to the side. "Hurting?" he repeated.
Edward swallowed and nodded, lacing his fingers together to help resist the urge to wave his hands around as he explained, "Everything I've ever read about the surviving chimerae has them in constant pain."
Roy let out a sort of half-snarl, half-grunt noise and shook his head. "I've never had that problem."
Well, that was...interesting. Either there was something different about human-animal hybrids, or the Amestrisans had worked out any issues with their calculations simply because their victim could talk. (Or the Xerxesians had been murdering chimerae for centuries, unaware that they weren't actually in pain, but Edward shied away from that thought for the sake of his own belief in his countries laws.)
He shook those questions away, recalling a far more important matter: "Roy," he said grimly, "you cannot ever let another Xerxesian find out you are a chimera, do you understand? It is one of our laws that any alchemists found practising chimera alchemy and any surviving experiments are to be killed." And that was one law that, even if Edward was willing to sit the throne, he'd never be able to abolish, because it was too much a part of their culture; any attempts to explain a decision to overrule even a part of that law would only endanger Roy. As much as he wanted to escape him, he couldn't knowingly endanger his life.
"It's not something we're given much opportunity to spread around," Roy pointed out drily.
Of course, the rule about not speaking. Too, Edward would bet, it kept the chimerae from being able to discuss rebelling against their captors. From that standpoint, it was genius. But, from a human rights standpoint...
Even the most despicable of Xerxesian criminals were allowed their rights as human beings, including a last meal, the right to say goodbye to any family, and the right for their death to be a public affair, save the attending executioner and a court physician, to ensure they had died before their body was removed to Traitor's Pyre, where criminals' bodies were burnt.
Edward tightened his fingers around each other and had to ask, "What did you do? To be labelled a traitor?" Because he needed to know. He didn't think Roy was a bad person. Being. But he didn't, honestly, know all that much about him.
Roy looked down, at where his foreclaws were destroying the sparse grass. "You've heard about the eastern civil war?"
Edward pulled his hands apart to tighten them both into fists, snarling, "Genocide." Because Xerxes had taken in not-quite a full hundred Ishvalan refugees who'd fled the fighting, most of them badly wounded, even the children. One of them, a pregnant woman with burns all down her left side, Edward had heard, hadn't quite reached Xerxes' borders before collapsing. Her child had survived, thanks to the quick actions of some of her fellow Ishvalans and a couple of the border guards, but the woman had died where she'd fallen.
Edward had been in the throne room, standing in his place by his father's side, when the first of the refugees had come begging asylum. He'd heard, first hand, the story of the Ishvalan child killed by an Amestrisan soldier, the ensuing uprising of the Ishvalans demanding retribution for the life taken, and the swift and absolute response by the military, turning what should have been solved peacefully into a bloodbath.
"It was," Roy agreed, regret in his voice, and Edward frowned up at him, stomach churning. "I and a few of my fellows didn't approve of the decisions made, and we started plotting ways to overthrow Führer Bradley. We were caught."
Edward...didn't really know how he felt about that. On one hand, plotting to murder your country's ruler went against everything he was, and he would have gladly stood by the decision to brand such person a traitor and condemn them to death. On the other hand, Amestris' ruler was no ruler Edward would ever wish to follow, ordering a genocide and condoning chimera alchemy.
"Excuse me," he said, turning away from Roy. "I need some time to think."
Roy didn't give a response to that, so Edward retreated to his weapons room and dropped down in the middle of the slightly cushioned floor, curling into a ball and covering his ears, eyes squeezed tightly shut. It was a position he'd discovered as a child, when everything felt too overwhelming and the couldn't find a quiet place to think; he'd just find a dark corner where people weren't likely to spot him easily, curl himself into a ball, and block as many of his senses as he could so he could focus for once.
This was hardly the same – noise and the crush of people were hardly concerns – but the position was a familiar comfort, one that helped.
He was living with a chimera who'd plotted against his own ruler. Everything Edward had been taught as a child said he should have been killed, was better off dead and no longer in pain. And he was intending to run away, anyway, so hardly mattered how he felt about his jailer, right?
Wrong.
Because Edward did care.
They'd hardly talked much, but he liked Roy. Which, well, maybe it was because he was stuck as Edward's only companion, or maybe because his reasons for plotting against his ruler would have been reason enough for Edward to do the same.
Or maybe, he could admit to himself, it was because Roy had been protective of him, not because of who he was or because he'd been ordered to, but just because. (Because Van was a bit absentminded sometimes, but he'd never tell his guards to whip Edward if he made any moves like he might escape, and then tell the dragon he'd set to guard him to destroy anyone who threatened him; that display the day before had been all Roy.)
Which meant...what? He liked Roy enough to ignore the part of him that said he should be dead?
Yes, apparently.
Edward sighed into the silence of his curl, because none of that really mattered, in the end. Disliking Roy would have been easier, given him the steel necessary to just off the chimera and leaving his little prison. Instead, he'd have to find some way to sneak part Roy, or maybe convince him to let him go?
Edward choked on a laugh, because his father had to have something over Roy to keep him from just flying the coop. But what?
And, fuck, what would Van do to Roy if Edward managed to escape him? Kill him? Dissect him to figure out the best way to defeat Amestris' other chimera-dragons?
Edward straightened from his curl and did his best to swallow down the bile climbing his throat as he stared at the nearest practise dummy, because he knew his father and their court, and he knew all too well the uncertain strength of their peace with Amestris. Xerxes had far greater alchemy, and Amestris had a truly terrifying military, but neither to them wanted to fight in the Great Xerxes Desert, nor to have to cross it to get to the other, so they kept the peace with each other. But, if Amestris could set a large enough group of dragons on Xerxes...
He shuddered, was surprised his father hadn't just gone straight to dissecting Roy. But, then, Van had probably been made to agree not to kill the dragon unless given sufficient cause. Or, perhaps, he'd hoped to win Roy's loyalty somehow, then have him fight for Xerxes' sake, or get his brethren to turn sides?
Edward let off blocking his ears and rubbed at his mouth. Eighteen years, and he still didn't understand his father's actions half the time. Perhaps that was simply because he wasn't ruler material.
That...didn't really matter, however. What did, was that Roy's life was very likely forfeit if Edward managed to escape. And if his people found out Amestris had been making chimerae – and they very well might, if they cut Roy open – it wouldn't matter how hard it would be to send an army through the desert, or Van's own pacifistic nature, they would go to war. And with Edward run away, Alphonse–
Edward squeezed his eyes shut. Shit. His brother was king material, certainly, and he was no slouch as a warrior, but the thought of him going to war was enough to make Edward reconsider giving up his right to the throne, just so it would be his job to leave at the head of the army, and his brother could remain safe in the palace, watching over their mother.
He couldn't let his people go to war over chimerae. And he couldn't leave Roy for his father to kill. But he also couldn't leave his home open to attack by chimera-dragons.
He had no moves, no direction that wouldn't see someone he cared about hurt, except returning with his father when he came out next, and giving up any chance he might have had for his own freedom.
Edward choked out a laugh that was almost a sob and buried his face in his hands, because everything had been for nothing. All those years of trying to run away, all the noble girls he'd turned down, the scars from the whippings and the two days locked in the palace's prison, it hadn't got him anywhere.
His father had finally won.
Dragon's Flight
Dragon's Tongue
Dragon's Quake
.