Chapter Text
As a rule, Roy doesn’t lie to himself.
That wasn’t always the case, as events of his life can attest. Running away from home and into the loving arms of a genocidal military complex at seventeen means you’re lying to yourself from sunup to sundown. After the air cleared and self-awareness started to trickle in—aided liberally by Riza—honesty became the name of the game. Internally, of course; over the past thirty years, fewer than ten entirely true things came out of his mouth, but he was clear and correct with himself.
All of which is to say that he is a hundred per cent truthful when he claims he doesn’t remember much about everything that went down. He was—working. Always working, always busy. Ruling Amestris meant tracking thirty different assassination plots, schemes and collusions. How ridiculous, then, that the thing that finally did him in came out of left field. It wasn’t even about him, he’s pretty sure. Some lunatic read one too many conspiracy theories and snapped. Went after Ed. After the children.
Then—Snippets. Stressed out, panicked flashes. Ed, shouting. Trid and Yara, alive. Olivier, wheezing, tiny droplets of blood flying with every laboured breath. Then, even less; pain, fear, shock. Grief. The sequence is too scrambled to be of much use, but he knows he died. Dying is just one of the things you know, apparently.
The confusion feels earned, with that in mind. At that stage of his life, he knows better than to overestimate what he can handle. Run-of-the-mill humans can’t be measured by the yardstick set by Ed and Al Elric. Conversations with Truth should be forgotten, if at all possible. Judging by the snippets he does recall, he was offered choices, he made his bargains—whatever they might have been—and now—
He exhales a long, shuddering breath. Now he’s here, inhabiting a superlative version of his body of some, say, thirty years ago. That’s—an upside, probably. Heavens know people do crazy things for youth. He’s not in chains, he’s not in pain and, to his best recollection, he hasn’t made any binding promises to destroy a peaceful people. So far, so good.
The downsides can be neatly divided into two categories: the practical and the conceptual. The practical are trivial, all things considered. He’s in an evil, green pool, he’s wet and he’s cold. The lake itself is, if his memory is to be believed, some sort of a Philosopher’s Stone. All this can be solved with a measured and controlled application of Fire Alchemy: a little to warm up, a bit more to dry off, and a lot more to evaporate every drop of liquid and blow the chamber behind him sky-high. Easy.
The conceptual issues are more complicated; Roy knows better than to dwell on them. Fortunately, Ishval taught him how to numb his conscious mind and continue moving by inertia. Don’t think about what you’re doing, only focus on the next step. If you hesitate, if you stumble, the demons will catch up.
***
With one thing and another, Roy never went through proper intel training. Maes and his ilk could be dropped, naked and hysterical, into a crowded city on the far side of the world, and they’d need ten minutes and a couple of discreet murders to blend in. Roy never had the flair, but he had spent enough time around them to pick up a few things. Being a trained alchemist with a skull full of unwelcome yet depressingly true knowledge about this new universe helps, too.
Shock powers him through the first few days. He wanders out of the sewers, transmuting what he needs along the way. Pawn shops become his go-to resource. In Uptown, he creates and sells trinkets: crude jewellery with traces of silver, maybe a cheap stone. As he moves to wealthier areas, he graduates to silver and gold rings. As long as he remembers to be dressed for the neighbourhood, nobody bats an eye. Gotham is full of people who don’t want to leave much in the way of a digital footprint. By the time the inertia fades, Roy has made his way down the Upper East Side and checked into a hotel on the border between the Fashion and Diamond districts.
The hotel management takes cash, asks no questions, and has protocols for men with suitcases filled with crisp bills instead of clothes. Roy’s new body signals “entertainment” rather than “mobster,” but the outcome is materially the same. Nobody pries, Roy rents the suite for a month, then heads upstairs, mind as blank as it had been on day one.
***
The last thing Roy does before shock gleefully hands him over to despair is to use Truth-gifted knowledge to forge an identity. Roy Mustang, high-end escort, age twenty-two. Real name Matsuba Raito, immigrant from China, born in Japan, orphaned at nineteen. It’s easy, too. In Amestris, he’d have had to break into who knows how many places to edit, destroy and plant documents. Here, it’s all digital. He does most of it from his hotel room, transmuting physical documents once he finds examples to copy. Four or five short outings later, he has identity papers, a bank account, proof of higher education, and a premium health insurance plan.
As if to highlight the absurdity of it all, he then proceeds to do nothing at all with all that unearned wealth. It’s not that he trips as falls into it; no, he hurls himself soul-first into the life of a vaguely but undeniably suicidal layabout and doesn’t come up for air. Why not? What else is there? This world doesn’t have any expectations of him. He was placed here, presumably, to destroy that creepy green pond, and he did that in the first half hour.
You don’t notice the strings that hold you together until they snap. He has no outstanding debts or obligations, and no friends or family members to be accountable to. Gotham already has her champions and villains and doesn’t need him. She hasn’t asked for him and Roy, at this stage in his life, doesn’t have it in him to force himself into other people’s stories.
Fortunately, there’s no better place for a complicated meltdown than the Diamond District. Rich young men with nowhere to go but down are a dime a dozen here. As long as Roy follows the script, nobody cares, and he e is, in a very real sense, precisely what they expect. Why bother hiding? If there isn’t any purpose to any of it, why not spend his waking moments hopping from one bad decision to the next? It’s not like any of it matters. Why not drink from sunup to sundown and get into bed with women and men and whoever would have him? It feels good, it doesn’t hurt anybody and it manages to distract him from the desolation for whole hours at a time.
One month stretches into two, then three. Around the four-month mark, real life comes knocking . In this case, it’s a man who slips drugs in Roy’s drink, ties him to a bed, and carves him half to death before Batman and Robin burst in.
***
Drugs were one thing, but the only thing keeping Roy from bursting into laughter was the elaborate, cruel and custom-made gag in his mouth.
“You’re safe, sir,” the boy in red and green body armour is saying. “Batman will be done with the perp in a moment or two, and then he’ll cut you free. In the meantime, I’ll just—get you ready for transport. Help out the EMTs a little and all that.”
The banality of the situation is difficult to comprehend, never mind internalise. Roy Mustang, the most feared war alchemist on the continent, the youngest Führer of Amestris, came within minutes of dying at the hands of a sexually dysfunctional, middle-class businessman. He would have been cut into pieces by a self-hating civilian homophobe if not for a songbird-themed teenager and his bat-themed mentor.
“Not much of a talker, hey? Good thinking. Talking always gets me in trouble.”
Suddenly, even the horror show of spikes and leather in his mouth isn’t enough; a laugh bubbles up, bursting around the blood and spit. The boy doesn’t notice, too busy trying to disinfect and close the worst of the cuts down his sides and stomach, but his mentor does.
“Robin. He’s gagged.”
The boy jerks like he’s been slapped, hands freezing, body language so flustered, it’s marched past performative into artful. An Ed Elric variant, then? Ed Elric crossed with Ms Rockbell, with a dash of Havoc for wholesomeness. “Fuck—Whoops, sorry about that, sir. I, uh—”
Roy’s shoulders are shaking, tears beading in his eyes. None of this is really funny, of course. Roy might be a drifting villain past his use-by date, but Collins didn’t know that. As far as Collins knew, Roy was a twenty-something boy who liked to kiss anyone who smiled at him. On the other hand, he’s more alive now than he’s been since—Since he died. And how could you not laugh at that deranged sequence of thoughts?
“You’re going to be alright,” says the hazy, dark figure. The famous Batman, Gotham’s own mythical Dark Knight. “The police are on their way, the perpetrator is secured; I promise he will spend the rest of his life behind bars—”
Yeah? Well, as long as the man with stylised bat ears on his helmet promises—
“Either take the gag off or come help me keep his guts where they should be,” the boy snaps, then grows still, shoulders hunching. “Whoops. Sorry ‘bout that, mister. It’s not that bad at all, I’m just giving the old man a hard time.”
Bless. Just like Ed, if life hadn’t ground him down into a hellpit of guilt-ridden belligerence.
“Scream if you feel you need to, but I would advise against it,” Batman says after a short, deranged pause.
“Jesus Christ, B, don’t threaten the torture victim—Never mind, you’re useless. Come and take over from me. I’ll deal with the gag and the rest.” Robin’s head pops up in his field of vision not a moment later. The blur in his eyes means he can’t distinguish his features as well as he’d like. Curly hair, generous pout. Uneven, sideways smile. Will likely be a heartbreaker in ten million years when he grows up. “Sorry about that, again. He didn’t mean to come across so creepy. Now, sorry, but this is gonna sting a little—”
The boy cuts the straps off his head without pausing the inane chatter. His hands are gentle but the tremble in them is telling. The purpose of the ridiculous two-man show might very well be to put him at ease. If so, it worked. Roy likes to think it would have even if he were a twenty-year-old version of himself who grew up spoiled and not a fifty-year-old war criminal.
“Here, turn your head a bit for me—” The boy’s palm rests on his face a little, tremble growing more pronounced. “And a bit down—Let’s just—Oh.”
Roy tries to put on a sympathetic expression. Indeed, the gag will not be simple to remove. Collins had installed hook-shaped pieces of metal into the ball, designed to cause more damage coming out than coming in.
“Holy mother of—B, I don’t know, maybe we should let the professionals deal with this?”
“You want to give the young man over to the police with that in his mouth?”
“Good point. Yikes. Alright, mister, sorry about this, but B is right, this has to go. Deep breath, on three. One—”
Roy’s mouth fills with blood as the metal drags down his gums and the lining of his cheeks. He barely pays it any mind, focusing instead on the blessed relief of being able to move his jaw. He spends a few moments opening and closing his mouth like a lunatic. He hadn’t even noticed how painful it had gotten.
“Cheers, kid,” he croaks, finally. The boy flinches; go figure. “I mean, thank you, Robin. Batman. I appreciate your hard work.”
“You, uh—” The pain and time are doing their best to clear up the remainder of the drugs from his system. Roy can almost see straight, now. The Batman’s face is mostly covered, between his cowl and his costume. The boy only wears an elegant black mask over his eyes and cheekbones. In comparison, he’s an open book. “Sorry, we hadn’t—Sorry I hadn’t noticed—Uh, here, hold on, let me see what I can do about those cuffs.”
Is he always this charming, or is he pulling out all the stops because Roy looks pathetic? Some combination of the two, most likely.
“You don’t need to rush. I am not in acute danger, and you’ve gone above and beyond already. If you need to leave before the police get here, by all means, feel free.”
The attempt at establishing professional camaraderie crashed before it took off. The boy looks like he’s going to be sick. “We’re not leaving you here, alone, in a hotel—” Robin breaks off, then inhales a long breath. His hands are shaking up to the elbow. Fair enough; this is all pretty shocking. “But thank you for the offer. We’re in Diamond, so the cops will arrive eventually. An hour or two on the outside. We’ve got more than enough time to—To get you comfortable.”
Roy’s face attempts a smile; it’s not an easy task, all things considered. “I don’t know that comfort is on offer, young sir, but your consideration is appreciated.” He tries to arch his head a little to see the cuffs. Relatively cheap steel by the look of it. “As for the cuffs, I would assume Collins would have a key somewhere on his person. He doesn’t seem the type to go for unnecessary work, from context.”
He is freaking the boy out. Fair enough; a civilian in his position would be catatonic or hysterical. The pain alone would be enough to get him there. Roy could probably play the role if he tried. The problem is, that he can’t summon up the motivation. Why would he pretend? Who for? He doesn’t have any long-term plans, and no public image to maintain. Even the Amestrian persona of a safe, sane, societally acceptable sociopath is too much work.
“B checked him, but—”
“I did a cursory search,” says Batman. Roy swallows an inappropriate huff of laughter. Batman. Gods’ grace, what a ridiculous concept. “If you think he planned to take the cuffs off you at a later point, I will check more thoroughly.”
Roy blinks, a little awed, a lot charmed. Robin’s sigh is sincere and heartfelt. “Your bedside manner is a work of art,” Roy says. “It is a beautiful and wondrous thing.” What must it be like, in his head, that he thought to say that? I assume you would have died in those handcuffs, but I am open to hearing your view on the matter. “That said, you’re the expert. I suppose it’s not out of the question that he’d have cut my arms and legs off instead. I haven’t spent much time with him sans the drugs making a mess of my head, so I really can’t tell one way or the other.”
As if to make himself even more charming, the Batman hesitates, hands not exactly pausing, but growing slow. Like he had encountered something unexpected that he now has to deal with.
Another little observation digs into the back of his mind. The Batman is a bit nuts, too. Something is off, something more meaningful than the surface-level chicanery. Either he’s deliberately blocking his emotions from compromising his thinking, or he was born with them muted to begin with. Either option would be very useful in his line of work. “We won’t hurt you,” the man says slowly. “We’re only here to help. You don’t need to appease or impress us. You can—cry. Shout. You’re safe with us.”
Wow. What happened in your formative years that you don’t realise how deranged that sounds? You don’t need to appease me, honest. Yeah? What’s going to happen to the Batman if Roy does, in fact, freak out and gets smacked for it? Are you going to get reprimanded at work? Will you get a talking to from your department head?
“Consider that I have reasons for staying calm other than trying to impress you, kind sir,” he says. “As shocking as this may be, impressing you hadn’t made it far enough up my list of priorities just yet.”
“You tell ‘im,” Robin says. “Moving on! The cuffs! Key or no key, I should be able to—It’s a straightforward enough lock. I should be—Just about—There—”
Huh. Look at that. While Roy and Batman were sniping at each other, the kid was figuring out how to pick the lock. There is probably a metaphor in there somewhere. A lesson that the universe is trying to convey and isn’t being very subtle about it.
“Your competence is astounding—Ah.” Air leaves his lungs in a whoosh, as a new wave of pain crashes down.
“B! His shoulders are dislocated, leave that be and come help—”
Mercifully, that is about as far as his body can take. He passes out between one moment and the next, feeling strangely at peace under the circumstances.
***
Anywhere else, and a case like his would cause a circus. In Gotham, pretty boys and girls are murdered every ten minutes. Once Roy made it clear he had no particular urge to cooperate with the media machine, they returned the favour and ignored him right back.
It’s unclear what would have happened next, if not for the seemingly random run-in with the Waynes. Roy had been, metaphorically, waiting to die for months. Now that a helpful member of the public had done the legwork necessary to get him that final step of the way, he likely would have followed suit. One look at those familiar cheekbones, sideways smile and improbable shoulders, and something a lot like curiosity finally lights up in his chest.
***