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They drop directly into sand, the light so bright it takes Ed long seconds to discern that it worked, that it’s no longer the actinic sear of the array that’s blinding him. They’re in the desert. A desert. Ed wouldn’t bet on it being any particular one - but then again, he thinks, catching sight of Hawkeye, seeing her expression set in realization, recognition - maybe it is, and he should’ve goddamn expected this.
They both simultaneously try to orient themselves by the sun, and both simultaneously realize it’s directly overhead, nailed at the dead of noon, and so right now - and possibly for the foreseeable future - trying to navigate by that is useless. Well, they knew going in it’d be a clusterfuck of an even weirder flavor than usual.
“They didn’t just kill him right away,” Hawkeye had said, in the fucked up little emergency meeting they’d had there and then, her and Ed and Al and Havoc crouched just feet away from Mustang’s slack body, MPs and all of Third Company all over the damn place, nobody daring to get as near as them to the active array, the corpses. “Which means they need something he knows. This was most likely for interrogation.”
The array itself supported this: it was very clearly meant to be used on a person, scrawled all over with inscriptions for binding and access, unraveling and stabilization, runes for memory, the mind. The soul. Al theorized that it was meant to put other people into someone’s psyche directly: straight into Mustang’s mind, to bypass the unreliability of torture. There were points of connection all around the central vesicle where Mustang lay, the uniformed Drachman at each one lending great support to this theory; a group of them was maybe supposed to give them control, Al supposed, to outnumber Mustang when it was his soul they were invading. The only true mystery there, really, was why all of them, not a mark on them, were dead.
Now, staring out over the dunes, Hawkeye says, “He’ll have hidden himself.” Her hair’s gone short, Ed realizes, when he wasn’t looking. “If it’s like this - he won’t be out in the open. We’re going to have to track him down.”
Ed nods. The shock of Hawkeye’s hair mutating itself reminds him all over again that they have no idea what they’re doing. They’d theorized, based on the array, that wherever they’d end up would not be the Gate, but wouldn’t just be the not-space Ling described, of merging himself with Greed; the Drachmans needed a way to get information out, which is a little hard when all there is is a howling void of screams. But they are not, in fact, in a real place, insofar as real matters when you’re rooting around in someone’s soul.
Mustang’s soul. Which is why Ed and Hawkeye are even here, since between the two of them they’ve done plenty of that already.
, but as soon as they crest the dune they see it: there’s a whole city below, dusty beige and brown and white,
There’s a shimmering haze from the heat, but no smoke rising, no signs of movement down below. Though maybe they’re just too far away. “That way?” Ed suggests, pointing at the city, but the wary, calculating look on Hawkeye’s face makes it more than half a question.
“Maybe,” Hawkeye finally says. “There may be…rail lines. We should get -“
She breaks off. At first Ed’s not sure what he’s hearing, a vibration almost more than a sound, but Hawkeye clearly does: her head turns sharply back, her eyes narrowing. A second later Ed understands it too: a rhythmic crunch-crunch, boots on the march. Thousands of them.
“Did you seriously fucking march here?” Ed demands, his own boots slipping madly on the sand.
“No,” Hawkeye says grimly. “That’s Dar Rheos. The 405th, 6th and 10th battalions took it in a frontal assault. Infantry, artillery. Cavalry.”
“Alchemists,” Ed says with a sinking feeling.
“The General was with the 10th,” Hawkeye says shortly, and starts scrambling up the nearest dune.
Ed follows her, cursing under his breath. Since Dar Rheos is only just starting to rebuild from wholesale razing back in the real world, Ed has to assume they’re currently in some kind of flashback. The tanks would’ve been transported by rail, and Mustang too, because alchemists are weapons, deployed with strategic intent, not dropped in with the grunts. He’d be deployed behind infantry but ahead of artillery - it’d be his job to clear problematic areas, make passage where it was too difficult for tanks to move through. If that’s the advance of the front line they’re hearing - and Ed is not, in fact, at all sure they should be able to hear it - then their best bet is to find the forward command point and try and catch Mustang before he moves into the city itself. If he’s even here.
They make it to the city walls much faster than Ed thought they would,
There’s no warning: no airborne whistle, no crackle of alchemy, just a sudden whompf and then Hawkeye’s tackle, slamming Ed to the ground underneath her as a thunderous outflux of pressure mows through the street.
“What was that?” Ed wheezes, air knocked out of his lungs.
“I don’t know,” Hawkeye says, wild eyed and grim, dragging him up.
The soldiers’, the Ishvalans’ faces are all horribly indistinct - except for when they’re even more horribly crystal clear, a lieutenant here, a child there.
“They’re after us,” Hawkeye says.
They get mega bombed or whatever and trying to get away from it fall thru door cellar idk hole into new street whoch is NOT dar rheos
, - and they fall through, into a dizzying crush of color and smell and noise.
It’s - a parade, or a carnival, or both. Wide cobbled streets, shouting vendors, Amestris - heaving with people, crowded from edge to edge. The light is glaringly bright, still, flatly white and slightly unreal, as if they never left the desert; Ed doesn’t recognize the plaza, but it could be any one of Central’s wide squares. Ticker tape rains down, the drums and trumpets of a military band blaring ferociously somewhere nearby, and there’s some kind of military - parade float? dais? stage? - at the center of the square.
There’s a figure there, at the top: uniformed, pale skinned. Dark haired.
Hawkeye sees it too, staring intently up at it, fighting to stay in place through the jostle of the crowd. “I don’t think that’s him,” Ed says, and he can’t say exactly why, just knows that something’s off. The figure’s far away but something about it makes Ed think that even if they were right up close the face would still be indistinct. “It’s not…”
“No,” Hawkeye agrees, still staring. “Decoy.”
“I don’t think it’s… not him, though, either,” Ed says slowly, as the indefinite figure turns its head, uniform braid glinting. It feels like the sounds of the parade get louder. “Is it just me, or is it looking at us?”
“It’s looking,” Hawkeye says depressively.
In the distance, a familiar rhythmic thud begins, boots again start to march. “How much you wanna bet that’s MPs?” Ed says fatalistically.
“He’ll use soldiers,” Hawkeye agrees again. “We need to go.”
They turn away from the dais and start struggling their way through the crowd, towards side streets, alleys, anywhere there isn’t such a relentless pressure of noise and streamers and drunken partiers. Their feet skid on trash and spilled food and drifts of confetti; liquid slops onto Ed from above, making him flail and swear, sweat and alcohol stinging his eyes. “Look for a bar,” Hawkeye instructs, starting to get breathless; for all that getting to the walls of Dar Rheos felt like it took moments, at this rate making progress down this fucking street they might as well be going backwards. “Street signs - Merryway and Strand. There’ll be a bar -“
Ed starts throwing elbows, trying to get them some room, but more and more of the crowd has gone blue now, uniforms sprouting and multiplying, rifles held in ready hands. Ed and Hawkeye start trying door handles more or less simultaneously, but everything’s locked, locked, and now the crowd itself is starting to notice them, cries of hey and what are you doing? and watch it! marking their path.
, and they’re suddenly surrounded by a whirling river of dancers, fishnets and feathered skirts and fans, a crush of sequins and perfume and breasts and smiles.
Ed has to grab onto Hawkeye not to get separated. “Oooh, someone got smart!” one of them giggles, wide-eyed and in his face. Hands tug at Ed’s shirt, his pants, making him yelp and jerk away,
One of the soldiers has spotted them.
A dancer girl kisses a drunken paradegoer on the mouth, plucks his beer bottle out of his hands and smashes it across the soldier’s face.
O-kay, Ed thinks. Something isn’t right here. “Are they - helping us?”
“No,” Hawkeye says lowly, then, “Don’t fight it,” and Ed’s about to ask what the fuck exactly when a giggle sounds in his ear and red-nailed hands close around his wrists, an arm dripping with body glitter wrapping tight, tight tight around his throat.
They’re dragged - down. The ground opens up, and Ed thinks for a second it’s the dreamlogic collapse of space again before he sees the metal cellar cover doors, flung open and passing and receding in front of him as he’s borne down into the dark. There’s laughter all around, and the clink of glass, and music here, too, the lively thump of swing, like they’ve just happened to drop into a party lounge. The girls surround them, still pawing and giggling, and Ed’s about to ask Hawkeye if this is what she meant by look for a bar when the two of them get all but shoved together, hemmed in by rows and rows of gleaming, smiling faces.
“Hello, sir,” Hawkeye says nonsensically, and then Ed sees, under all the feathers and glitter and makeup, that every single girl has Mustang’s eyes.
“Seriously?” Ed says. He doesn’t know if he should be exasperated or entertained by the fact that Mustang’s persona on the level of his innermost psyche apparently manifests as a troupe of murderous showgirls. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
That gets one of them right in his face, grabbing his chin and puckering her lips at him. “So cuuuuuute,” she coos, shaking Ed’s jaw back and forth. “Aw. Thought you picked the right face. Didn’t you.”
“What,” Ed says, somewhat muffled. “Cut the shit, bastard, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Of course you do,” she says indulgently, dropping him to twirl away and flick Hawkeye on the nose. “That’s all anyone wants around here.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Ed says, exasperation winning out. “It’s really us, bastard. We’re here to get you out.”
All the girls laugh, an uproarious sparkle that fills the room like champagne bubbles. “Oh, don’t be boring,” one of them chides. “Some of your friends already tried hiding.”
“Playing pretend!”
“Dressing up!”
“Wearing faces!”
“Soldiers and mommies and kids. It was really fun!”
This girl then proceeds to scream with laughter, throwing her head back, a heavy bottle in her hand that she suddenly hurls down, exploding into glittering smithereens. Ed jerks at the shock of it, the spray and sting of liquor and fine glass - he’s expecting her to burst into tears, her face certainly suggests it, but then all the other girls laugh even more uproariously, pointing at her, jeering, so she stares around wide-eyed and wide-mouthed at them until she also starts laughing back, blending back into them, indistinguishable.
Ed decides that this is worse than that time he and Ling got Gluttony’d. While he did then have a bunch of broken bones, he did not also have to deal with the incredibly uncomfortable realization that he’s experiencing someone else’s mental breakdown from the inside. There’s movement in the further edges of the glittery mob that catches his eye, that he can’t quite make out until he can: one of the dancer girls is caught in the grip of three others, struggling. Her motions don’t make sense until Ed realizes she’s trying to slit her own throat. As he watches, the other girls wrestle away the knife, only for one of them to sucker punch the suicidal one, the next to knock her on the head, and the third girl to slit the throat herself.
Ed returns his eyes front and center. Drawing attention to bits of Mustang offing other, different bits of Mustang is probably not going to win him the trust and goodwill of the collective Mustang, who clearly thinks he’s in complete control of this shitshow and that he looks great besides.
“It’s us,” Hawkeye says before Ed can decide whether it’s a safety issue for him to address it. “I can prove it.”
“Can you,” a girl says archly, fluttering her fan.
“You know I can,” Hawkeye says, low and steady. “Go on. Take a look.”
“Uh-uh,” a girl in an enormous peacock headdress pouts reproachfully, wagging a long-nailed finger as the others titter mockingly, glinting and shifting in the dark - and then all of a sudden she is Hawkeye, somehow, blonde and combat-booted. “We know all about things that hide under other people’s faces.”
“But it doesn’t cost you anything to check,” Hawkeye says evenly, unperturbed by her own face leering at her. “Why not?”
“Oh please,” the not-Hawkeye says, abruptly bored, snapping back into the crystal-sequins outfit, her face once more glitzy and indistinct. “You just want me to take your clothes off.”
“If that was what I wanted, sir,” Hawkeye says, still even, “I would have gotten it quite some time ago.”
This makes all the girls pivot on her, as one. They all narrow their eyes. “Fine,” one of them says, “So long as it’s what you don’t want,” and there are suddenly a lot more knives in a lot more hands, stilettos clicking as the peacocked girl stalks towards Hawkeye, eager hisses and stifled giggles rising in the dark. The circle of them is rippling, closing in on Hawkeye like an anemone having found a hapless fish - and when the arm around Ed loosens it lets him jerk forward, out of the grip on his arms.
“No, let him,” Hawkeye says sharply, and Ed hesitates, which gets him strangled back into some dancer’s chest immediately. She reeks of kerosene. The peacocked girl tosses Ed a coy, satisfied look over her shoulder, like she knows he’s helpless but to watch, and slits Hawkeye’s shirt up the back.
The girls stare down at Hawkeye’s bared spine. Ed can’t see what they’re looking at, not from here, but he can see how their bored expressions flicker briefly, in tandem, just once. “I told you,” Hawkeye tells the floor; she’s bowed her chin, extending her neck, hanging docile in their grip. “You know nobody else knows this.”
“Yes,” the girl suddenly says, Ed jolting at the familiar shock of Mustang’s deep voice. “But it’s what I know that matters.”
He shoves Hawkeye away, making her stumble. “It’s my mind,” he says, a high giggly girl’s voice again. “You’re in me,” another girl continues, and it’s not just the arm around Ed’s throat now that stinks of kerosene, the whole room is beginning to glimmer, oozing from the walls. “So what I already know -” Painted nails dig into Hawkeye’s arms, dragging them apart, yanking her head up by the hair, spreadeagling her like Ed is - “you can’t sell me.”
“You goddamn - use your brain, you great paranoid fucking bastard,” Ed swears, renewing his struggle, then stopping again, when a dainty hand slips a knife up to Hawkeye’s chin.
“No no, it’s a nice trick,” another girl says ruefully, snapping his fan open, tossing it end over end, so when it smacks back into his palm it’s a metal lighter. “Playing dress-up. Picking these two. Letting me do all the work. Very cute!” Another one of the girls in the back tries to stab herself, aiming for the eye, and gets caught by five more hands halfway through, one of them her own. A girl takes the knife out of her hand, slaps her across the face and then guts her herself, all with the same brisk efficiency. And there’s something moving behind them now, too, barely visible in the gloom - it could just be more girls, flash of teeth here, glint of sequin there, but the motion is too sinuous, too smooth.
“Too bad, really,” sighs the girl in the center. A circle blossoms on the back of her hand, oozing dark, the cuts razor fine. “They would’ve told you, you know. They’d know I’ll still burn them alive.”
But Ed’s staring at the array, the array Mustang wouldn’t need when he’s got all this fuel and a fucking lighter, and insight hits all at once. “That’s how you’re killing them,” he blurts. “It’s not the fire, you’re - fuck. Mustang, you’re - you need energy for alchemy, only you can’t access outside energy here - there’s only what’s inside the array. The people who come in with you. Souls. You wouldn’t be using alchemy to kill them otherwise. Because if you don’t use alchemy -“ He stares at the lighter, then jerks his head at the room, at the kerosene now pooling around their shoes. “They don’t die.” Ed swallows. “So that’s how you do it. You’re burning up their own souls.”
Mustang’s paused, the girls’ heads all cocked now in unison. “No,” he says after a second, shaking their heads. “I could’ve figured that out. I knew how Stones are made. I’ve seen the arrays.”
It takes Ed a second to understand what Mustang’s even talking about. “Oh my fucking god, listen to yourself,” he snaps. “Are you trying to argue now I’m a figment of your imagination, some fucking, gift wrap on your own realization? Is this how you usually imagine having your own alchemical insights?”
“Why not,” Mustang says lightly. “Down here is not exactly sensible, you know. And who else besides Fullmetal, to be an avatar of alchemy?”
Ed gapes at him. “An avatar of -?”
But Mustang’s already turning away, back to Hawkeye. “I told you - well. I suppose I told others. Before you. You may have some control here, but just mirroring my own self back at me won’t work.” He smirks, a dozen lipsticked mouths gone garish with malevolence. “But please, do continue. It’s certainly quite motivating in some directions. I haven’t tired of murdering you yet.”
“Either we’re Drachman spies here to trick you or we’re your own subconscious, fucking pick one,” Ed shoots back. “You’re not even making sense!”
Mustang glances back at him and shrugs, a dozen bare shoulders glittering in the barroom light. “Either way, no loss to me if I kill you, right?”
“But loss fucking lots if it’s goddamn door number three, we are your actual friends risking our lives to save your stupid ass,” Ed snarls. “A-fucking-gain!”
“What do you gain if you kill us?” Hawkeye says. “We’re not doing you any harm now. We’re not even asking you any questions.”
“Besides what the fuck are you thinking,” Ed says pointedly. “Even if you do kill us, then what? What are you gonna do, stay down here forever? Playing evil showgirl and murdering everybody who comes trying to get you out? What’s the fucking plan?”
“He doesn’t know how to get out,” Hawkeye says suddenly, meeting Ed’s eyes. “He would if he could. He’d take his chances on getting out of the array conscious, over this.”
Ed snorts. “Yeah, no shit. I don’t actually think he’s having the time of his life down here living out some murder gangbang crossdress fantasy. We’re not gonna convince him - anything we both know he’s gonna think is coming from his own fucking brain, and even without that I’m not sure we’d get through. Would you call him especially lucid right now?”
“Not when he’s thirty cabaret dancers in last year’s Carnivale castoffs, no,” Hawkeye observes.
“Excuse me?” Mustang says.
“So we figure out another way,” Ed says, ignoring him. “Al’s gonna try and unravel the array if we’re down too long, and I don’t know about you but I would rather not he go catching our souls with a butterfly net when it all falls apart and we go zooming into the Gate from fucking rebound. Can we fucking - I don’t know, kill him awake or something?”
“That'd probably kill us too,” Hawkeye says. “Before him, most likely.”
“Yes,” Mustang says pointedly. “It would.”
“Can we shock him awake?” Ed says, ignoring him again. He’s not sure what, but - something is happening. The hand holding the knife at Hawkeye’s throat no longer has painted nails an inch long, for one thing, and the sinuous motion in the back has stopped giving the occasional deeply worrying glint. “Like - I don’t know. We’re not gonna convince Mr. Paranoia Pants here we’re anything but anthropomorphisations of his seventh grade insecurities or what the fuck ever, but - maybe we yell boo?”
“Boo?” Mustang demands.
“He can do alchemy in here,” Hawkeye says to Ed, frowning thoughtfully. “And if he can, you can.”
“He’s doing alchemy by sucking out people’s life force, though,” Ed points out. “And I think the only people left to suck down here are us.”
“Could you only take a little life force?” Hawkeye asks. “Just enough to make… Hm. Maybe a defibrillator?”
“Shit, good idea,” Ed says, impressed. “Yeah, maybe? Though like - if he’s just asleep, maybe we shouldn’t start with cardiac arrest right away. Like what if all it takes is just sticking his hand in a jar of warm water or someth -“
“I’m not asleep,” Mustang bellows, his real bellow, all the girls and their voices gone, collapsed into one. “Do think I haven’t fucking tried getting out of here? And you are not taking ‘just a little’ of anyone’s soul in order to goddamn defibrillate me!”
The hands on Ed and Hawkeye are all gone, dissolved into one pissed off middle-aged man. Mustang looks fucking terrible, like he was not only bathing in the damn floor kerosene but fucking gargling it, literally: Ed’s pretty sure that’s what’s drooling out of his mouth. He’s in something that’s trying to be both suit and uniform and achieving neither, his collar torn, his knuckles bloody. The bar music has gone, leaving them in dull, eerie silence, and now the air smells like vomit and cheap floor cleaner and sawdust instead of perfume and expensive booze.
Hawkeye’s straightened all the way up to her full height, relief fairly shining out of her even if all she does is nod approvingly. “Good job, sir.”
“Do not think this means we are now accepting your input,” Ed warns him. “You are still so crazy creepy right now. Hawkeye, you want my shirt? You’re kind of -“
Luckily Ed’s spared from having to find a way to communicate the imminent threat of sideboob, because that’s when the wall blows in.
It’s not an actual explosion, thank fuck - with the amount of lighter fluid Mustang’s conjured or secreted or thrown up all over this place that’d torch them all just when they’re getting somewhere - but it is, arguably, worse. That’s unmistakably Scar striding in through the rubble.
“Well?” he says sharply when they all just gape at him, slack-jawed.
Mustang’s staring, dumbfounded, kerosene condensing on his eyelashes, and Ed thinks finally , something he can’t talk himself out of, only Mustang’s expression is morphing into a kind of resignation, a sick relief. Then he shakes himself, a single convulsive jerk, and says, “Right. Of course. Just like last time. Well, I suppose it’ll make it more difficult to kill you all, if nothing e-“
“Be quiet,” Scar says, not even looking at him. “Are you getting out or not? Your brother is about to violate even more of god’s laws to get you back.”
He sounds like he hates Al and hates Ed more, but what he hates most of all is being here, which, fucking samesies, asshole. “Well?” Scar repeats, sounding like he usually does, namely like absolutely everything in sight is a killing offense and the only reason he hasn’t snapped and murdered them all is because the rage isn’t pressurized enough yet. “Or did you jump into an unknown array without even the slightest idea of how you would be getting back out again?”
Ed snaps his own mouth shut. “Why are you here?”
“Because you jumped into an unknown array without even the slightest idea of how you would get back out again,” Scar says pointedly. “I spoke with your brother. He believed you could arrive at the exit conditions yourself. But I don’t expect divine intervention, and he -“ Scar stabs a finger at Mustang - “has treaties to sign.”
Ed scowls back. “Okay, so how are you getting us out?”
“The arrays used are bastard forms of noun name xerxes idk ,” Scar says shortly. “The monks used them for shared meditations. There are specific techniques to initiate and resolve the dreamstate. Where did you enter?”
Hawkeye points, up and out at the almost visible cellar cover they’d been dragged through. Scar glances over, then around, skepticism radiating. “This is where you entered the dream?”
Hawkeye hesitates, then says, “In Ishval.”
Scar doesn’t go surprised or volcanic, at least, just impatient. “Where?”
“Dar Rheos,” Mustang says sardonically, in his most suicidal move yet. “The day of the ground invasion.”
Ed glares at him. “How do you - you were there? In here, I mean - was that you trying to fucking kill us?”
Mustang’s lip curls. “Why waste the energy? It kills most people without any effort on my part at all.”
“Be silent,” Scar raps, but he’s already turning back to the destroyed wall, glaring once over his shoulder at Hawkeye. “Take him. You,” he orders Ed. “Take the rear. Do not let go of him,” and as he impatiently holds out the end of his sash towards Hawkeye it becomes clear that he wants all of them to goddamn daisy-chain.
Well, it’s not like they have a choice. Hawkeye grabs the sash, then Mustang, who looks bewildered enough by this turn of events that Ed can grab onto him too, fisting a hand in the back of his shirt. They scramble him up the rubble in single file, unsteady, and troop up out into the sunlight behind Scar like the world’s worst kindergarten field trip.
The carnival outside is gone. So is the street: they’re on sand again, the desert stretching out ahead in all directions - and, when Ed glances back, behind. Scar doesn’t hesitate, just plows ahead, flicking his hood up over his head in an automatic kind of gesture. They hit a road pretty quickly, so he probably does know exactly where he’s going, or maybe the desert of Mustang’s subconscious can tell just how done with this shit he is and has decided it’s best to just get out of his way. But then again - Ed and Hawkeye’d been ushered into the bloodbath of Dar Rheos suspiciously quickly, and Mustang is nothing if not full of traps.
He doesn’t look poker-faced or plotting when Ed flounders up enough to check on him from the side, though, just sort of sick again, struggling to stay on his feet. He’s also starting to look a bit less disheveled every time Ed glances at him, like he’s trying to clean himself up when no one’s looking, but it’s only making him look younger, not better.
Ed squints ahead - there’s a white smudge on the horizon, buildings, rapidly growing - then looks back at Mustang, who’s seen it too. “Hawkeye,” Ed says. Mustang’s hair has gone shorter, the scabs on his knuckles starting to well and split. The thing that was trying to be a tie slithers down off his neck and is lost into the sand.
Hawkeye looks back, nods grimly and changes her grip, putting her hand in Mustang’s as Ed does the same, securing him further despite the blood now slicking their palms. They’re more or less towing him between them now, or maybe Scar’s towing all of them, because the gleaming walls of Dar Rheos are right there, the arched doorways unguarded and open, just as they’d been when Ed and Hawkeye had slipped through before.