I got better. (He got better).

Lan Fan looked at Ling for the tenth time that hour as he poured over what was a second or third draft of documentation for yet another treatise on trade for yet another route through yet another province. It was unfortunately up to him as the Emperor to work through almost every piece of paper that went through the palace manually due to ever-present agendas that ran sidelong to actual progress. She knew he had of course /known/ about the way his country basically worked...roughly speaking... before he left it to save it, but to actually see it all laid bare– it was staggering.

These tasks weren’t in his official job duties, not by a long shot. He was the emperor— not a secretary for heaven's sake. But...if he wanted to put a stop to the rampant fraud that had wormed its way through every section of the palace, and greater country by extension, this was the way it had to be.

For every writ simply looking to dig a new irrigation duct you had to look on page seventy-two and make sure there wasn't a sub-writ noting that taxes would go up two-thirds for that particular village to compensate. (Then mysteriously stay in as a clause even after the construction had been paid for ten times over.) It was exhausting work. She didn't envy him.

She sat perfectly still in the darkness watching him sigh deeper than the last time he sighed (just minutes ago by her count), resettling himself and resting an elbow unceremoniously on the table, his chin on his raised fist. The room was lit only by a lamp close to him but given his position and the size of the room the picture wasn't cozy, just kind of lonely. He was assembled on top of a decorative platform in the middle of one of his slightly less ostentatious rooms made only for paperwork and the casual display of extreme wealth.

Ling didn’t necessarily feel uncomfortable with the extreme wealth; he was a prince first after all, grown from palace stock. He was planned to be part of all the wealth from the very beginning. Albeit most likely not filling as high of a position as he ended up attaining.

Still. It was tiring, after a while, to worry about breaking a piece off of a priceless statue in a mad dash to another meeting, or scuffing a floor tile that would cost a middle-class family a year of wages and feeling bad about it getting fully replaced literally hours later. When he had the free time (as if an emperor really did, you had to hide out at best) he would gravitate to a suite of rooms that were still sumptuous in style (there really wasn't that much of a choice in the palace) but less...overwhelming.

He mentioned that it made him feel more relaxed. ‘Roughing it’ in his fifth best sleeping robes and snacking on fare that would make the various cooks who slaved over the constant food stream that came out of the kitchens shake in fear at the thought of the emperor LOWERING himself to feast on easy hand to mouth meals like dumplings and crackers. When he got particularly wild he would even wipe his greasy hands on himself and the linens when people besides Lan Fan weren't looking.

This was how this night as well as many nights before it greeted them. Ling would study until the words and numbers swum on the page, occasionally calling Lan Fan over to bounce an idea or two off her. She was pretty flattered at that but it was also something that they tended to only do alone. It wouldn’t do for an Emperor (capital E) to utilize a bodyguard in this way, even one that had saved him many times over.

The greater court knew she had even gone as far as to donate an arm to that cause when the emperor was but a prince vying for the throne. Everyone at the palace was very familiar with /that/ part of the story (that had turned into a modern epic over night) of the emperor finding the long thought mythical prize, the Philosopher's Stone. Other...more— controversial...parts of the story had been agreed upon by Ling and company to never be spoken of outside of a short list of people- and at a whisper only then.

The fact that Lan Fan had performed so bravely among other achievements awarded her some wiggle room in being allowed to be alone with the man who by all rights should be constantly overshadowed by dozens of retainers, guards, sycophants, admirers, vassals, and the various other vestiges of court. Ling had done his part in putting his foot down on that particular procession very early in his rule. Alone time was one thing he absolutely would not budge on no matter how pressed. Having time to yourself and maybe a few close friends was important to emperor Ling Yao and his many advisers took the effort upon themselves to spin it as a humanizing anecdote to the gossips in court.

'Look, the Emperor doesn’t like all the musty trappings, isn’t he refined and debonair!', they cooed. Anything to get on the new guy’s good side. As if they wouldn’t talk shit about him later that very hour.

Shameful.

It was an ushering in of a new regime in a lot of respects and being a little cloistered on his downtime was not the only thing the emperor was doing to shake things up at a court that had changed little in hundreds of years.

Ling was still early in his rule. It seemed like just yesterday that he'd had his investiture into the court. He had made some progress on smaller issues, ironing out little imperfections. Issuing blanket bans on the clan infighting was a start. It didn't stop them from trying to kill each other at every opportunity, it just went more subtle, but a new Xing was not built in a day.

Simultaneously he was making inroads at equalizing the clans in general economic and social sense to go along with the bans, but that too was a mess of knots and snares. Those on top didn't want to lose their hard won sometimes generations long holding of their spots and those in the middle were terrified of losing what they had clawed up from the bottom to gain. Even those on the bottom were scared of asking for more, fearing the backlash from the others. It was a system that was a real humdinger of a set up and something that Ling was still having trouble extricating a working arrangement from more than a year later. Having Mei around and close at hand actually complicated matters because everyone thought he was over-favoring the weakest clan. He quietly marked down those who acted this way in a ledger to ‘be randomly chosen’ to help out with donating money and land to Ishvalan refugees.

In that room, alone as they could be (but for the presence of about seven guards down the hall not guarding anything and currently playing cards to her extreme displeasure) it was obvious to Lan Fan more than anyone else in the palace that Ling was; if she were to use a single word, forlorn. Hangdog. Despondent. Soul-sick.

She saw him there night after night and inevitably when he would forget himself for a moment- his shoulders would slump, his mouth corners would turn sharply down into what could only be the bastard child of a pout and an all out frown. She knew better than to ask him about it because all he would do laugh her off and ask if she was seeing things, 'Him, the Emperor? Upset? Why? Oh! Upset over the writing in this document maybe? It’s so booooring.' Et cetera. 

She knew better. She was aware of his games. He was obviously utterly forlorn and she was one of the only ones in the palace, no, the country— that would even be able to venture a guess as to why.

Ling’s time as Greed and various iterations of Greed and Ling were a very well guarded secret. His irregular chi was explained away by them flat out lying and saying it was because of the fight with Father taking a spiritual toll on him. Any observed 'alchemy' that Greedling had performed was also hand-waved as an after effect of him using the stone he brought home in the fight. Both were not /wrong/ explanations, but they were missing the fact that Ling had also been host to a monstrous being during that time. Just swept that little factoid right under the rug.

If people in Xing found out Ling used to be a homunculus it would not be long before they called for the removal and probably dissection of the emperor to learn any secrets about immortality. These people had been drinking mercury up until a while ago. They were driven, but not very smart as a collective in some respects.

What Philosophers stones were made out of was still thankfully kept secret from the general populace but the homunculi had caused too much trouble not to be made national rumor that relevant ears in Xing had long picked up. The old emperor had taken the stone and it’s supposed immortality and used it, but the souls within it had better ideas and Ling knew he wasn't faring so well. Maybe he would eventually find a rapport with the individuals like another person he had once knew but for now Ling knew he was ‘resting’ on an island out to sea, away from prying eyes as he quietly went nuts.

Lan Fan loitered in the gloom watching Ling work (and maybe also try not to cry). She regarded Ling as—it couldn’t really be called equal terms, but after what they had been through together, the coronation afterward, and then the slog of what was an emperor and a retainer’s daily life- as close to an equal as either of them were going to get given the circumstances. They were… close. Not the kind of close that she preferred most of the time if she was going to be honest with herself (she ended up having to take the initiative more often than not) but she had probably the best viewpoint to see his actual emotions and not the gentle but fixed smile that he wore during the days of his interaction with important so-and-sos. Equal footing and a long history dealing with Ling's changeable moods as a glorified babysitter let her understand what was eating away at him.

Ling Yao, Emperor of Xing, was forlorn over a monster. A /dead/ monster.

Greed.

Lan Fan had to be honest with herself. Ling was absolutely beaten up over losing his, ugh- 'friend.’ The monster. Homunculus. She scowled slightly at the implication. Ling regrettably had always been the most personable person she knew. From a young age he readily tried to make friends with anyone and everyone, something that nearly got him killed many times. The local black market still had stories of a kid who hung around chatting to the doormen at certain clubs way too long for comfort, a little princeling that would laugh at pickpockets trying to rip him off and then excitedly offer pointers.

She still didn’t understand to this day why and HOW he wound up calling what was the personification of avarice ripped from the body of a bigger monster and then forcibly injected into his prone form to haul it around the country– effectively kidnapping him for an undisclosed amount of time him a-... a FRIEND.

More like a fiend, she thought to herself with the thirteenth frown today. This one was over the unwanted wordplay.

Hearing it from Edward, she knew worst of all that Ling had initially accepted the monster of his own free will in a gamble to get a stone to bring back to Xing in his bid for the spot of Emperor. He had gotten a stone all right, it had just come with a little something extra, as well as extra headaches for her. Even after the events in Amestris were long settled.

Then again... she had heard the story. She had seen with her own eyes that monster fight within and through Ling, turning him into a juggernaut of power over the death of Fu. She had heard of the monster’s exploits in fighting the other homunculi, turning his back on his apparent kin to help /them/. She had seen that same monster sacrifice himself for the young lord and Ling’s torn expression at the act. She had heard Ling's wistful accounts on the journey back of conversations and altercations with the beast. Stories imparted with the lightness of talking about a cherished roommate and not what was basically a mass of souls given an impetus.

Her short meetings with the man(?) were not her best memories. (She had heard he was 200 years old but did that continue to track when you were reborn? She wasn’t sure.) She had been trying to catch Greed mostly, not have a chat with him, and he had refused to be caught at the time. Annoyingly, he had slipped through her fingers again and again. 

She had to begrudgingly acknowledge that Ling didn't usually keep terrible company. He was a shrewd judge of character, actually. If Ling didn't like someone it was with the certainty of inborn instinct tempered by the triple speak of growing up in the midst of palace life.

Notwithstanding, it was still difficult to merge the picture of second-hand accounts of the beast (moron, childish, good for a laugh, fiercely loyal if you squinted past the bullshit front he had put up to stop you from thinking he cared about people) with what she knew of him. Her accounts were more along the lines of princenapper, lazy, letch, leech— Lots of other L- words.

Lan Fan didn’t get it. But she was honest with herself. Ling missed that monster. The homunculus. She resisted rolling her eyes and mentally pushing away at the thought for two reasons only:

One: Ling was upset and grieving even a year later, although he’d never admit it to her. He just wasn't himself. Oh, he joked and goofed off, but it was half hearted and always performative in nature. When he was without an audience he -literally- retreated into himself as if looking for something. (Or someone). He hadn't made a proper escape attempt in trying to leave the palace completely in at least a few months. (He still ducked meetings but that wasn't the same thing.)

In the beginning it was hard to keep him within the palace walls for even a few days. He was constantly sneaking out to get street food or rub elbows with the more common inhabitants of the capital. He had told Lan Fan on a time of being caught and dragged back that it was important for an Emperor to extend a hand to everyone and when he was locked in a gilded cage all day he began to lose sight of what was truly important to his people. It was a grandiose statement and endeared him to her until he would come home smelling of beef sauce and cheap drink. The fact that he didn't even want to /try/ to skedaddle anymore was worrisome. 

Within the walls he was also not meeting various opposition with his usual zest. He dealt with the numerous assassination attempts he continued to receive with efficiency instead of goading them on with a laugh. It used to be he'd treat it as a game first and an attempt on his life third. He was wilting like a plant left out of the sun.

This ended up making things complicated in that she respected him too much to just be rude and tell him to ‘Get over it!’.

They all had lost something in the skirmish! She was never going to get Fu back! She had privately made her peace with that, though. Fu died in service to his country as a bodyguard. He had protected the prince as his last stand and his actions had directly helped the prince ascend to the throne. You couldn't ask for a better death as a bodyguard to a prince and if she was going to keep rolling on that train he hadn't been young either. It was either doing something that they both would eternally be proud of or catching a bad fall in the shower in a few years and breaking a hip. She smiled ruefully. She knew Fu would be hiding a rueful smile as well at her gallows humor, they often joked hard about death when it was only the two of them. It was the way of a bodyguard, especially bodyguards in a country like Xing.

Two: There was a problem.

The problem wasn’t that Ling missed Greed, or that he was full on pathetic about it. (These both were minor problems.) It was that to her intuition there was a distinct possibility that the monster was not as gone as Ling thought and Lan Fan hoped.

Lan Fan’s position at the side of the emperor nearly every day and night afforded her a viewpoint of Ling that few people had the privilege of seeing. And....as a result of this position...she had been—

…Noticing things.

These things had started small.

— 'Started' being the operative word. 

They had begun inconsequential enough that she could write them off as Ling going through stages of grief privately (to her chagrin), or possibly just the road bumps of starting out as the ruler of a country. Being promoted to Emperor from expendable at such a young age would excuse a bit of odd behavior out of anyone, especially Ling, but the things had a very obvious pattern to them. When you looked for about a second and knew any backstory.

He snapped more, not angrily, but more like he wasn’t going to put up with anyone trying to obfuscate their true intentions. Xing court was constantly all about hiding your true intentions under eight or nine layers of lies and half-truths. You had to have personas for your personas if you were going to survive a week. This was especially true in the literal snake nest they lived in. Ling was really setting himself up as an Emperor nearly pathologically opposed to lying in any form, especially when it was coming from him.

This was not the Ling she knew. Ling would move around the person like water, nudging them gently in the direction he wanted them to go with a joke and a song. He had always disliked lying but he certainly wouldn't offer up the entire truth unless pressed. He would instead elect to appear harmless, naïve, and goofy as a defensive mechanism and his strategy, if it could be named as such, worked well enough to maintain for years.

This Ling was still water but instead of a current pressing you along gently it would sometimes be punctuated by a metaphorical splash in the face—a rude word or a gruff comment pushing its way out of his mouth almost unbidden. It made for interesting debate surely, there was little talk of the emperor being a total pushover. It just wasn’t Ling-like behavior.

Ling’s chi was also different. It was still Ling at its core but there were flashes and eruptions of apparent other signals and false flags. Lan Fan had explained it as best she could to other chi readers of the dragon pulse when they first had returned home, but now that it was more than a year they had kept their growing suspicions close to the vest. It wasn't yet another lie, exactly, all of Amestris had been wrecked in the spiritual energy department. They had just omitted the extraneous homunculus involvement.

Ling’s chi had been going off like a faulty firework at random intervals for months. Lan Fan had also initially taken this as simply exposure to the Philosopher's stone (and Greed). Alphonse, for that matter, had been exposed to weird reality bending nonsense as well. He was a chi-based nightmare, flaring up and basically shouting to the world via his energy signature that he was entirely different than the average human.

It wasn’t quite the same in Ling’s case. The general scale of the signature was one degree of separation in mass. If Ling was a quart Alphonse was a mere pint. Al’s radius of power was mostly contained and no matter what he was an extremely talented alchemist. They always had messed up chi. The other fact was that Alphonse had a clear baseline as well as an expected wax and wane. Ling's flare ups, especially as they progressed, and they were progressing Lan Fan couldn’t ignore that, had that specific feeling more and more of that other thing that looked out of his eyes for a time.

His tastes changed as well. He was more given to having less than polite more than repeated sips of wine and other libations at courtly functions. He had gone as far as to get saucily drunk at the last few gatherings. The most recent event had led to about six different social faux pas for the evening and a very disgruntled aide leaving in a huff after getting sauce spat back out at him in a surprise laughter attack from the emperor. The aide hadn't even said anything funny, he just looked like a squirrel in chestnut brown and nibbling on a nut cake like he was at the time had caused the ever-so-slightly plastered emperor to lose his cool and remark loudly about it to the packed room in between guffaws. Lan Fan had hissed admonishments at the walking embarrassment while ushering him out of the room at a fast walk but her save was met with giggles only, not to mention general crowing over the outburst like it was something hilarious he had overheard from someone next to him and not something he had said himself.

Further still, his appetite, something to truly fear about him on a normal day, was through the roof. He was constantly gnawing on something almost as fast as they could serve it to him, his metabolism doubtless on overdrive because he had not gained a pound. Lan Fan suspected that he even had lost a couple, and he was already on the thin side. (Lan Fan was always jealous of Ling for things that a woman at court would kill for. His clear skin, his effortless trimness, and hair to put many of the doting maidens to shame. It wasn't like she expressly cared about that stuff but enough was enough!)

Verbally, besides the existence of the outbursts, were specifically the /content/ of those outbursts. He was developing a potty mouth to rival Ed’s in his quiet moments, swearing and muttering under his breath distractedly even during times in which they weren’t as alone as Lan Fan hoped. Most recently he had cursed out the tailor spectacularly for stabbing him one too many times during his fittings for the newest trappings they were trussing him up in like some kind of cocoon of fine linen.

His outfits had changed as well. He had forgone the purples, greens, and yellows of traditional wear. He had instead taken to inserting black into his wardrobe in a big way. He had said originally to the selfsame tailor in charge that the changes were to mourn the dead lost in the battle at Amestris. (Something that humanized the emperor enough to the tailor to spare the court the particular bit of sweet gossip that the Emperor Ling Yao cussing out the help would have been).

Those days of wearing black quickly turned into months. He would mix it up with splashes of color and more regular prints of dragons and flowers (reds and yellows mostly) but there was still the insertion of embroideries of flames, or skulls, or even a few times, a grinning face with big white eyes into his many layered robes he would use when receiving hoards of visitors. Lan Fan couldn't blame all that on her suspicions, Ling's fashion sense was almost as bad as what she had seen from Edward. The juxtaposition of a smiling everyman kind of guy, gangly still with a brand new growth spurt or two, wearing that kind of dress really would throw people for a loop. Attendees thought it was some sort of scare tactic to get one over on the away team. Lan Fan of course had more insight into the matter.

A few times when she would routinely check on Ling in the night as she made her patrols she would find him sitting up in bed, staring into the middle distance, frowning. Or really it was more of a scowl. He would do this for any time between twenty minutes to nearly an hour and be utterly unresponsive to outside stimulus. She had whistled and clapped at him to be sure. The last time she had resolved to sit and wait until he was supposed to have drifted off but by the time the state had gone on more than an hour she had gotten fed up and tried to shake him into wakefulness. His eyes had refocused on her and positively leered in her direction for a half a second until he quietly mumbled “Hi Lan Fan I don’t want anymore duck,” and went limp in her arms. She had taken the opportunity to shamelessly smell the top of his head (it smelled like fresh cut grass and sandalwood) and then push him off of her in a jumbled heap, back into his blanket nest he slept in.

There were the amnesia episodes as well. Which, if Lan Fan didn't heavily suspect an ulterior diagnosis—would be sort of worrisome. Ling had begun that line of events with walking into a room and forgetting what he came in there for. Getting something to eat, eating it, and then asking Lan Fan where his noodle bowl was, he was hungry! Zoning out during meetings and missing chunks of time in his day. Never long, five to ten minutes, tops. But it was noticeable enough for Ling to be confused about it.

Once or twice Ling forgot how to read? He held the scrolls up and complained that it looked like gibberish; rubbing his eyes and squinting. Lan Fan would check them later to find that they read fine, perfect Xingese characters. She told him it was stress related and waved him off to take a nap, quietly thanking the powers that be that doctors were banned from the upper court. 

Besides forgetting things it was also him ‘remembering’ other things that tipped her off. On one of the evenings after the bulk of the work of the day had been finished, she had crept up on him cracking into his not-so- secret-stash of fine booze. Alphonse was there as well. Enabling. He had been in Xing for less than a week at the time and was already making himself at home in Ling’s personal problems. Lan Fan worried what longer exposure to Xing was going to do to the boy.

They were sitting at a low table Ling had to entertain small groups. Bottles at various states of fullness and shades of the rainbow littered the top of it. Alphonse was on his knees halfway leaning over the table in the act of handing Ling a plate of olives, celery, and other drink spikes when Lan Fan had stormed into the room. 

“-so then you add hot sauce—oh wassup Lan Fan care to join us?” Ling waived shamelessly, with a slur to his voice and a huge grin on his face.

“Hi Lan Fan, come sit with us! Ling here was teaching me the art of the cocktail; this stuff is harder than it looks! Reminds me of alchemy, actually," observed Alphonse, studying all the bottles and various colors of liquid like it was a science experiment.

“What are you doing with them after Ling demonstrates?” she asked with an innocent lilt to her voice. Her innocent voice did not meet her eyes.

“Well, we can't waste good booze, Lan Fan,” countered Ling, comically serious as he quaffed back what looked like a malted something or other.

An expensive and vintage something or other given that the container where it had originated from was still next to him and gleaming in fine crystal. Ling grabbed ingredients while he drank and combined them with deft ease even in his inebriated state, sticking celery and what looked like hot sauce in the top of the concoction. It looked disgusting and red to her but was assembled prettily enough.

“How do /you/ know how to do something like that?” she asked.

As far as she knew her lord was the type to go for ease of consumption when it came to food and drink above all. He didn't really /make/ things, he couldn't even cook! Ling meanwhile sat up and slid the glass towards Al at the other end of the table, the stem of the glass between his thumb and index finger. This was a practiced and neat motion that she had also never seen the likes of from him before.

“Well,” he mused drunkenly, “when I was at the bar I had to figure out a hangover cure-all and this was the best I could come up with. Trial and error, something about the tomato juice really takes the edge off-”

“Bar?” she asked. 

“Yes! I. hm. Yes the bar. Did I–?" Ling became increasingly confused as he thought about it for a minute.  "...Huh. I...um.. guess I don't know where I picked this up…?” he muttered, trailing off.

He sat back down and continued to sip at his drink with a frown. Al looked at Lan Fan pointedly, only raising a brow.

-

She couldn’t ignore the pile of obvious signs of Him being around. They were practically beating her over the head at this point. Unless Ling was possessed by a hungry ghost from the stories of her childhood. Which, as she ruminated to herself, Greed technically was some sort of hungry ghost more than anything. Some kind of boogie man made to scare children and wail on ruling underground despots of countries, apparently. If ghosts traditionally came in annoying rather than scary she'd have called an exorcist by now and been done with it. She thought about this as she made her way across the silent hallways and passages to possibly the one other person available that could understand her concerns.

The enabler. 

-   

Alphonse was still awake. It was later than he cared to admit but he was still awake and passing the time inhaling the recent additions to his growing library housed in his frankly too nice suite of rooms he had been thrown into in the forty-five seconds he first occupied the palace. The rooms were spacious and tastefully decorated in the style of 'look how much money we have' minimalism, with hanging lamps and screens made of fragrant wood. They even opened up onto a small walled garden a few dozen feet across. The babbling of a small pond that housed fish within it could be heard from the bedroom. Frogs and crickets were chirping in the reeds that ringed the space in the quiet evening air outside. It even had a deer scare, despite the lack of city deer to scare. 

Ling was over-eager to share his embarrassing wealth with his friends whenever possible. Al could understand, sort of. It was still tough for him to reconcile living in a set of rooms bigger than his entire childhood home and having it being called one of the ‘relatively decent’ set of guest rooms by staff when he was eavesdropping on them.

He had been in Xing for going on two full months by his clock. Recovery had taken a while after the events of the Promised Day and there was also the travel time to account for—he was about as far as he could get from his usual stomping grounds. Al had taken his time getting here by making good on his promise to see the world with his own eyes. He was still on the thin side even now from aforementioned events, although every day he stayed in the palace that small problem was a day closer to being alleviated.

Ever since gaining his body back things had been pretty great for the young man. He could eat again, for one, something he was eternally glad to be able to experience within the Xingese capital. The food here was something he would pretty willingly die for (again) and the palace especially had so many different delights to offer it was hilarious to admit that he had not had one item of food twice in his extended stay. He liked the efficiency.

He could sleep, for another. Something that he normally liked doing.

Well—/had/ to do, he guessed.

Sleep was wasting time when he got down to it.

That was one thing he kind of missed about clanking around, he got a LOT done when it was just him and his thoughts while Ed was snoozing all those nights. Long buried angst about being alone at night aside, not needing to sleep was a real productivity boost and he missed those hours very much when he had so much on his plate to learn.

This night found him in the same position. He had been fighting his bodily imperative yet again to work his way through another of the fascinating books of the history of Xing, combing it for mentions of the Xingese special techniques of alkahestry.

Alphonse was in Xing to learn of this ‘mystical’ art and see how it could be applied with the addition of alchemical principles. His late father had been the one to actually make the modern art of alkahestry in the first place so Alphonse had a particular drive in wanting to see how it worked himself. The art of healing was also very interesting to him and Ed both and they were supposed to meet up in a few months to swap research and possibly game the system into giving Ed some of his talents back. Or a leg. They'd even like a leg for now. Ed was one to try and take more than he bargained for on a deal and Alphonse liked to think that whatever that entity was that they met (god probably?!) would like to see them try. So therefore another sleepless evening awaited him.

His mornings were filled with Mei’s hands on teachings; the girl was a dab hand at the art to be sure. She did hang on him rather closely for comfort, though. He was still getting used to being touched and feeling it at all! Not even going into Mei hanging off him like a bat for hours at a time!

Reminiscing back to those first few weeks being flesh again he had been a mess of bruised shins and toes. Other casualties included his forehead and arms as he learned to negotiate space once more and hell— even vertigo from the change in height.

Nobody could have prepared him for a lot of the side effects of getting his body back. He slammed off of everything, he was clumsy, having pain receptors back was a blessing and a curse. The first time he burned himself on the stove was like torture. He had grabbed the pan with only his hand like a dunce. The pluses for sure outweighed any negatives by far but the negatives did still exist. 

Afternoons usually involved sitting in on meetings with Ling and the Important People. They weren’t alkahestry dependent but they were too interesting to just ignore. His official presence there in the country and at the immediate side of the Emperor Yao was as a ‘guide to Amestrian diplomacy’, after all. That was how they spun it in court. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

He surmised that he just ended up being a guest at parties most of the time. He had to put in some face time actually doing important things like going to meetings and actually acting like he was earning a paycheck to support that he wasn’t just a long overstayed party guest.

As it was, the other constituents would talk behind their hands about the young man who treated the Emperor as a peer and not with the proper deference! He could tell that he wasn’t well liked by more than a few of the palace’s regulars, they would say so often.

When he was in the room.

Xing was full of this kind of behavior. It was a little less repugnant to the die-hard traditionalists if Al filled a niche in an advisory role to His Majesty rather than a freeloading scholar. Even though truthfully the only advising Al had really done with Ling was try in his own way to help out with Ling’s personal problems from the shadows and certainly not egg Ling on at parties, no. Never that.

Al knew that Ling had some major baggage after the events they all witnessed. He would be lying if he didn't also have a lot of bad dreams about those days. But, /Al/ was dealing with his problems remarkably well! Ling... Ling was not. The parties in question had become somewhat of a farce. Lan Fan would swoop in before they got really fun but Al always enjoyed himself heartily before that point. 

Evenings were filled with getting grilled by every available body at whatever function he had to attend for that night. Those aforementioned parties. There were many. Adversaries of his included; silver spoon fed ten year olds, catty beyond their years with something to prove. The geriatrics, prodding, sticking their fingers into his backstory as it was one of their only sources of amusement to goad the foreigner with his extended stay and seemingly deep camaraderie with the newly crowned emperor. Also eternally present were those clan heads that truly did not like him one bit. They were open about it.

Little did they realize Alphonse had an ace up his sleeve with these people. They didn't know that he knew Xingese. It still never ended no matter what language they used to interact with him, they just kept the worst of the insults to their mother tongue. They were rude enough when they spoke with him in his own language. He endeavored to put on a brave face (he had to keep remembering he had a face to put on; it was terrible those first couple weeks when he kept forgetting everyone else could see his expressions.) (('Resting bitch face', as Ed called it, was a big problem!)) and sucked up any small grating feelings he felt.

He was not used to people being rude for rudeness sake at him, another detractor from losing a foot or two in the height and heft departments. At the end of the day Ling needed someone in the wings to be his political support so Al stuck it out. Plus, Ling was getting increasingly more fun to be around as his inhibitions crumbled. 

-

“Ahem,” a polite cough issued from a darkened corner of his room, snapping him abruptly to the present.

Alphonse jumped like a cat out of his pensive funk and slapped his palms on the ground, nearly activating a reaction that he had been practicing to deal with intruders before realizing that a true intruder wouldn’t have coughed. He focused in to the hazy darkness in the corner and spied Lan Fan in the center.

“O-oh hey Lan Fan!” said Alphonse, refusing on principle to stutter any more than he already was. “How- uh, how are you??” Now he was going to commit to refusing to stutter.

“Uh—nice night huh? I-I was reading -why are you uh, up? And in my room?” Okay, maybe just give up on the refusal, it made the stuttering worse.

“Alphonse, I need your help with Emperor Yao,” Lan Fan ventured, still standing in the darkness. Straight and to the point. Classic her.

“So, with what- because- I mean  I’m not /great/ with trade disputes I was getting a little lost during today’s meeting in fact and—” She cut him off there.

“No. Ling, the young lord, has— I think he has some other problems besides those.” Lan Fans eyes flicked to the side in a gesture of uncertainty.

“Oh. What? You mean because he’s sad all the time and his depressive spiral is starting to affect his professional and personal dealings?” Alphonse shot back readily.

Lan Fans eyebrows shot up in surprise, her face pinching into an expression of curiosity. “You can tell that as well? It must be worse than I thought!”

“It’s not that it’s all that bad. A stranger probably would miss it entirely or chalk it up to Ling being weird. I’m not a stranger though, am I?”

“I suppose not, Alphonse,” she replied with a slight smile.

“So tell me,” Al said sitting back down and gesturing for her to take a seat next to him. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“It is not what is on my mind, Alphonse, I think it’s about what may be on Ling’s...”

Lan Fan sat down next to him, after she moved a stack of books out of the way, and proceeded to fill Alphonse in on her suspicions and the surrounding evidence therein. Alphonse quietly sat until the end, nodding a few times and humming under his breath in acknowledgement at key parts.

“Did you know I caught him sleepwalking the other night? At least I thought it was sleepwalking? He looked disoriented. He had a bundle of treats from the kitchen under his arm, but when I called out to him I swear he looked at me like he didn't know me at all and—” Al started.

“Yes I know. I have had the same thing happen to me when he is under the influence of sleep or more often… booze... lately.” 

“He has been drowning his sorrows in the cups a lot, huh? He seems a lot more lively when he's corked. Closer to classic Ling in my scientific opinion,” he remarked. “It's not emperor-ly behavior, but it's always my personal highlight of the party!”

Lan Fan’s frown deepened.

“O-kay,” Al pipped with a clipped inflection, sensing a land mine and changing the subject. “So, we’re just going to come out and say it, right? There’s a possibility of more than a little residual Greed still within Ling Yao,” he continued, crossing his arms with another slight smile. Lan Fan shuddered slightly at someone else sharing her thoughts and/or worst fears.

Continuing with a deep breath, Al went on with a primer about homunculi.

“You know I kind of thought so. Pride survived despite Father being destroyed. He has that odd marking and the lack of memories, but it /is/ him and he apparently is growing up nicely at last check in. I was thinking about it and maybe Greed left off a bit of himself in his sacrificial state. A core or something of himself to persist after his ‘death’. Which, I was told, was very melodramatic. Even for him," Al's expression turned to one of reflection. "You know I watched an incarnation of his get his head knocked clean off his shoulders on less than a dare one time! Always something to prove, that guy,” he shook his head but looked sort of impressed.

“We know that homunculi can be divided from a root mass and still exhibit whole personalities and ambitions that are independent of the main branch— so why wouldn’t you be able to divide a division? We don’t know enough about the species to be able to call what’s possible. I had been keeping an eye out for a mark like Pride's possibly to show up on Ling, but with those sleeves he wears and the nature of his condition being in and out I may have missed any occurrences of the phenomena. It would absolutely one hundred percent be like Greed to fake his own death,” Alphonse chirped.

“You really are on board with this quickly, huh,” deadpanned Lan Fan. She took the liberty of pouring tea that Alphonse had on the table and sipped at it angrily. It was lukewarm. 

“I’m a scientist and an alchemist; I see a hypothesis, I look for the truth in it,” he said, eyes sparkling in discovery.

“Fair enough,” she deadpanned again. /Scientists/. 

Past the point of no return on the sheer possibility of it they began to workshop how on earth they would go about proving their joined theory. Reluctantly, in Lan Fan’s case.

Al brought up that greasing Ling's conscious mind with substances brought a change in him and Lan Fan agreed on that point.

“Booze and the act of being unconscious free him up, Lan Fan,” he said, “he’s clearly so far gone that he's worked himself in some sort of mental block over Greed. Yet because he wants him back so badly he's fighting internally and making himself into a mess. If Greed is coming back he might be having trouble because of Ling’s erratic mood or possibly Ling’s denial is blocking him somehow. I don't claim to know how that whole... 'thing'-... works." He wiggled his fingers around his temples.

"So, I think our main two priorities are; are we going to tell Ling– and if so, how?"

He paused.

"Also, we’re probably going to have to end up drugging him,” Al finished with a wide grin.

Lan Fan spat her tea at Alphonse.

“WHAT?!” she coughed hard, covering her mouth belatedly and trying to get tea out of her nose.

Alphonse wiped his face on an empty pillow and patted her on the back, paying it no mind. “I’ve been doing some reading on an upstart psychologist by the name of Freud? He's been coming up in the world of the mind in a big way. Most of his patter is terrible and his theories sound like the ravings of a lunatic but I think some of his papers could apply to what we have going on here specifically. An accident on his part for sure. He talks about awakening the Id via hypnosis," not even waiting for her expression to change in silent asking to explain he plowed forward.

"The Id is the 'interior drive of a human being’s baser instincts', according to him. If I know Greed as well as I do, and we’ve met, Greed is about as Id as you can get. Normally, I’d just want to hypnotize Ling, but I also don’t want to get his hopes up if things don't pan out, hence the drugging. We can’t rightfully tell him if we’re not sure ourselves. I think it would break his heart and he’d waste away from sadness like a pet rabbit,” Al looked at her with a smile at the mental picture but Lan Fan’s eyes narrowed at the jibe.

“What?! You know I'm right! He's mooning over Greed like he lost a childhood pet!” Al countered in response to her expression.

“Greed /is/ kind of like an animal,” she smirked, letting her anger simmer down a little. She pointedly ignored that she was newly speaking about Greed in the present tense.

Barring interacting with the stories told out of boredom and remembrance on Ling’s part on the long way home Lan Fan never brought Greed up unless directly prompted. She honestly was trying to forget a lot of what had happened in the first place. It wasn't healthy but rationalizing her charge was friends with a blood ghost was even more unhealthy to her mental state. She hadn't even talked to Ling about him in what had to be weeks recently despite the uptick in peculiar goings on.

Happy times. It was almost like as they tried to move on his percentage of presence in their lives increased. Like a spiritual temper tantrum at being ignored. It was even more evident that Greed was alive after this revelation. It was like they were being haunted by a revenant. A petulant child of a revenant.

“If we give him a relatively powerful sedative that induces light dream-laden sleep I think I can use Freud's practical applications to delve deep enough to get at what I hypothesize is a dormant but still active Greed within him,” Alphonse said in a rush, trying to get his plan out the door before Lan Fan could stomp it. His eyes turned to hers expectantly. 

“Okay.”

“Okay!?”

“Yes. Okay,” said Lan Fan, resolutely nodding to herself. “This is probably the best plan we are going to come up with so we are going to do it and we are going to do it tonight before I talk you and myself out of it. I /cannot/ stand watching Ling pine anymore and I am going to come to terms with the fact Ling misses what I am led to believe was a gigantic soul face made of souls and teeth.” She held her head in her hands and spoke through her fingers, the misery making her much more casual than usual. Alphonse was also a good listener.

Al blinked a few times at her complete concession.

“Well alright, if nothing is gained from this we both agree to never speak of it again and try to help Ling cope as much as we can,” he said cheerily, very acquainted with borderline illegal goings on from adventures with his brother dearest. They finished their tea, they were going to need the energy boost now, and cleaned up Al's research.   

After they were done they left Al’s library-bedroom at a slink, grabbing the necessary supplies quietly on the way. Key items included the controlled herbs of a few different kinds that were supposed to be for pain relieving practices from the locked holistic areas (not locked anymore), a box of matches, and a still hot teapot. They dodged a few roaming sentries on the way and made their way to Ling's suites. Lan Fan's opinion of Alphonse got more muddled as he kept up with her subterfuge. Wasn't he supposed to be the voice of reason? 

“Emperor Yao I bring Alphonse to see you as well as some light refreshment,” Lan Fan said while gesturing to a smiling Al who was holding the teapot, all business, even though privately she was squirming in distress at tricking the young lord.

“Oh, tea! Thanks! You make the best stuff, I wanna drink your tea forever!” Ling gushed with a wide grin, and worst of all it was utterly genuine. He put down his pen, corked the ink he was working out of, and pushed the paperwork he was done with into a messy pile at the corner of the desk, coming over to sit. 

Lan fan looked at Alphonse and closed her eyes in shame. He was so damn trusting!

Alphonse crooked his mouth, showing his teeth in a grimace, and shushed her with barely a sound.

They talked about inconsequential dealings with Alphonse using the excuse of not being able to sleep to keep him in the room. Ten minutes and three cups of tea later on Ling’s part and his eyes were starting to droop. Simultaneously, Lan Fan and Al were inching closer, getting more agitated as the apparent time of semi-dark deeds drew closer.  

“So I says to the … to the magistrate… I says to him.. I say! You there! You don't want any more duck either! You—” Ling didn’t get much more out before collapsing abruptly on to the table like a sack of grain, knocking over the empty tea glass. Lan Fan and Alphonse jumped up, grabbing him by the arms. They shuffled his tall form awkwardly over to a chaise lounge and threw him on top of it, propping him up with seven or so local pillows.

“Now what?” asked Lan Fan, she reluctantly checked underneath an eyelid of Ling's and saw his pupils were very dilated. 

“Turn down the lights and I’ll get to work!” Alphonse said, grinning.

“Remind me to tell Edward on you,” she snapped, extreme disapproval radiating off her.

“Oh he’d be SO proud,” he beamed back.

They dimmed the lights, Al putting a couple of fingers on Ling’s neck and arm to monitor his pulse. He instructed Lan Fan to gently move the flame back and forth in front of Ling’s half lidded eyes (which were more than partially rolled back up into his head).

She did this for a time until his eyelids started to flutter.

“Okay– Your Majesty, answer me if you can hear me, I’m going to talk to you nice. And. Slow”. Alphonse affected a passable professional drone for this bit. Like he hadn’t been doing this for all of twelve minutes.

“What is your name?”

“Ling Yao,” mumbled Ling with very little intonation.

“And what is your profession?”

”–Profession??”, hissed Lan Fan.

“SHH, it’s in the script!” Al hissed back. He took a hand off of Ling's pulse and flapped it at her angrily.

“Em-ror,” muttered Ling.

Lan Fan rolled her eyes but didn't stop moving the flame back and forth, slowly.

“Okay Ling, we’re gonna go a little deeper… okay can you tell me about anyone else with you? Who are they?”

There was a hesitant interval.

“Who are they Ling, tell me about them?”

More of the hesitancy.

“Hard.”

“Why is it hard, Ling? Just tell me what you know.”

Another pause.

“Gone—saw him gone?” An inquiry this time. Ling's brows knit in confusion. He thrashed slightly in agitation, shuddering.

“Okay, let's try something different,” said Alphonse, clearly on to something now. It wasn’t that Greed was gone but Ling /saw/ him ‘go’. It was a difference.

“Ling. Move away for a bit and let me talk to him. Go on now. Get.” Lan Fan stared at Alphonse who was talking to the Emperor of Xing like he was a dog or a stubborn lizard.

Ling’s body that was very tense despite being under the influence of a Lot of controlled herbs relaxed all at once like he was truly unconscious. Al looked back at her in a flash of triumph and pressed forward.

“Greed?” he cajoled, “Greed, you’ve been making yourself known well enough and I want to talk to you. I know you’re there you wily little bastard!” he demanded.

"Greed!"

Ling's eyes suddenly rolled open to stare at a point beyond Al’s shoulder. They were tinged with that currant red that was very familiar to them both, angular and harder than Ling’s usual gormless stare. Looking down, Lan Fan was unsurprised to see a mark flare up in a rush of red on the back of Ling’s hand that was very similar to depictions she had seen of Pride’s forehead. It was smaller than the ouroboros and more perfectly circular. (She had been doing more research than she thought on the possibilities of homunculi returning than she had previously admitted to herself.)

“Greed the Avaricious!” commanded Alphonse, “—answer me right now! Can you hear me? Are you there?”

Greed’s eyes, for that is what they were now rolled in Ling’s sockets and settled on Alphonse with an abrupt flick, focusing right at him eerily.

“Not yet,” Ling’s voice deepened an entire register, growling out of his chest.

“Not. Yet.”

He suddenly sank back on the pillows with a low groan, clearly spent and coming back down into a deeper more natural sleep. Lan Fan blew the flame out with a puff and let the ambient light filter into the room. They both sat in the complete silence. They were kind of stunned that not only had the plan worked but the results were very clear indeed. Alphonse had brushed straight towards what was probably the heart of the problem. Ling was trying to move on from Greed so hard that it was making Greed who was obviously clawing his way back leak out in other ways like Ling’s soul was a sieve. He wasn’t sure what "not yet" was supposed to mean but one thing was indisputable. Greed was alive and relatively cognizant.

“Welp, I’m no priest Lan Fan but you've got yourself a very possessed boy on your hands, here,” Al said, picking up Ling’s limp arms and wiggling them back and forth like wet noodles. He was trying his best to break the tension of the room. You could cut it with a knife.

“Oh. Good. That’s ... Great,” she groaned, putting her head between her knees and placing her hands on top.

Lan Fan and Alphonse quickly went their separate ways after tucking Ling in following their impromptu drugging session. She felt like hyperventilating. How was she supposed to tell Ling anything about what they had seen tonight? It was irrefutable even to her advanced denial! Greed was making a return from the dead!

Ling would certainly be ecstatic and probably down to do everything he could to fully awaken what was basically a sentient parasite within him once he knew.

Lan Fan was floored that their experiment, stupid as it was, had /worked/. Deep down, she had harbored hopeful suspicions that Ling was just going quietly nuts under the pressures of running a country. She wasn't so lucky. Hard truths.

“SO— When are you gonna tell him?” Al belted at the volume of a half a whisper half a shout, appearing next to her in the darkness. Lan Fan nearly screamed and scooted back, scampering in surprise.

“Wow, I know I've gotten lighter on my feet since I dropped a couple of dozen pounds in metal but you must be preoccupied as heck to miss me. I’ve been following you for quite a while, too!” he said while holding his hands up in a peaceful manner.

“Tomorrow after the full moon party,” she grumbled. “It is all he is going to want to talk about when we tell him, therefore we will have to wait until the end of the day if we are going to get any work done. The young lord is still emperor and he has important duties as always.” She was stalling.

Al knew she was stalling.

“Lan Fan, let me be crystal about this. He has /got/ to hear if from you. Soon. I honestly think he won't believe me if I'm the one to tell him but if you do it he'll have no choice but to believe. If you told him pigs were flying around outside he'd be begging you for pig wing stew.”

“How do I even broach the subject??” she groused, affecting a cute pose with her hands on her hips in mock peppiness. “‘Oh yes, your Majesty here are those plans you wanted with the aqueduct and also by the way not for nothing or anything you are still harboring the pure distilled form of avarice in your body and probably soul that you long thought was dead and it is the reason you are all funky and feckless lately–and also can you sign these documents!' Al you cannot put this only on me, you need to be my moral support!” she cried, putting her hands on his shoulders and shaking him rather hard.

“Okay, Okay!” stammered Al, mid shake.

Lan Fan was a lot stronger than she looked and he was being shook hard enough to be sore in the morning. He knew he needed to calm her down. It wouldn't do to have the pragmatic one of the group be this upset.

“I won't make you do it alone. In fact, I’ll not only be there with you but I’m gonna give you a suggestion! Put it in writing and make it the last thing he reads that day, that way you wont be flustered. Make it like those weekly reports you do!” Lan Fan did submit official reports to Ling in the form of hand written missives. They mostly contained suggestions on how to improve security or bits of gossip she had overheard. She also would rat on employees of the palace not performing up to her exacting standards. 

Al suggesting that she put it in writing was a good idea.

She hated that.
----------

She had finished writing the report with an efficiency she didn't feel with all her findings and observations about Ling, what they both conspired to do to him, and finally that in Al’s scientific opinion Greed was alive. She was going to throw Alphonse under the horse cart somehow on this for even going on with these schemes. She was not a schemer! She disliked schemes!

Rolling the paper into a scroll, she took it to the Pile in the reading room and stashed it under the bulk of it; it was a different color than the rest of the reports so it would be easy to hand over to Ling if he didn’t get to it by the end of the day. Another helpful nudge from Al.

Ling's Pile was the large mass of incoming correspondence and busywork that he had to tackle in the evenings. The Pile never got smaller and always occupied the same space no matter how much Ling took out of it. She had really wanted to use this opportunity of Ling losing the report in the paperwork nest to stall very much. She knew everything was going to change the second that Ling got this news but she also knew that everything was at an impasse. Ling couldn’t continue on acting like a widower with family lost to sea. Even coming to terms with that, Lan Fan was still not looking forward to what was absolutely going to be a lot of trying experiences in the near future.

-----------

The next day passed in a whirlwind of activity of course. Ling met with people, argued with other people, and refused to argue with still others. Around midday he orated for a time to a large group of special people of nebulous backgrounds (rich as hell being a common outlier) who felt they had every right to interact with the emperor that loved and worshiped his poetry (that he had lifted from an Amestrian book of limericks and then translated into flowery Xingese prose). After leaving the garden they had held this session in which they passed Al in a hallway exactly once. He raised his eyebrows at Lan Fan and pointed to the back of his hand a few times. Lan Fan angrily drew a finger across her neck with a quick chopping motion. Ling thankfully missed the exchange.

The full moon party later that evening went decently, chiefly relating to the fact Lan Fan had dumped a lot of the harder booze near the back of the tables of food, away from Ling’s grabby hands. The party was an excuse for powerful people to mingle and gossip about each other in the same room, get passably drunk, and look at the moon a whole lot. It was once a month and to be frank after more than a year of dealing with it it was a very tired concept in her opinion.

Ling at least was having a good day. He was relaxed, a smallish cup of rice wine in hand and a bowl of thick broth in another. He was even slouching a bit, a sure sign that he was enjoying himself. She had noted the more he endeavored to sit ramrod straight the more he didn’t want to be in a room.

As custom dictated the Emperor (thankfully!) was supposed to leave the party first, thus calling it to a close officially and allowing the guests to filter out after him in small groups. It was a power play kind of thing. This was when the gossip would get really good as they would take the emperor leaving as an excuse to chit chat about him immediately. Alphonse hung back in a corner with a plate of food to watch the inevitable show. 

Ling was followed from the room by a small procession of the young, rich, dumb, and hot for appearances. (They flew the coop like startled pigeons the moment they made it to the first adjoining hallway to the party with an eyeball from Lan Fan.) Only Al, who had finally followed them out, and the other two remained. Al looked at Lan Fan and twitched his head at her a few times in encouragement.

“Your Majesty, perhaps it is time to revisit your open basket of work?” she ventured to Ling with a look at Al over Ling's shoulder that would have lit a lesser man on fire from the intensity of it alone.

“Oh not you too Lan Fan– I’ve had advisory people on my ass all day about reading scrolls and scrolls. I hate the Pile! Let me take the rest of the night off! I beg of you!” Putting his hands up in a praying gesture Ling affected a huge frown and crocodile tears leaked from his eyes.

Lan Fan opened her mouth to gladly tell Ling that of /course/ he could take a few hours off!

“—Uh. Perhaps you could read one or two documents? We'll keep you company!” interjected Al and manually stepped in between them, sensing that Lan Fan was going to try and ruin the plan.

She glowered, her easy out gone.

“I suppose you’re right young Alphonse, the work of an emperor is never completed," Ling admitted sadly. He began walking back to his suites where he had abandoned the paperwork. There was a dejected note to the procession from both him and Lan Fan. Al's stride was jaunty until she threw eye daggers at him.

 ----------

They both followed a few steps behind Ling as custom dictated, the hallways were not empty of watchful eyes. It paid to pay into the mystique of royalty as much as they could in public. Before they both knew it they were sitting awkwardly in Ling’s rooms waiting for him to pick up the last scroll Lan Fan had prepared for him on a small tray.

“Oh good, it’s your report Lan Fan! I love hearing you rat on all the guards playing dice because I know who to ask to play dice with for next time!” said Ling jovially.
He walked over to the tray, opened the scroll with a flick, and started to read.

Alphonse was literally holding his breath and Lan Fan had broken out into a sweat. Her palm on the one side of her body runneth'd over. In the silence of the room her automail even creaked audibly in tension.  A minute passed. Two.

Ling sat down. Hard. On a mountain of pillows so he continued to sink down slowly into the plushness for a full minute as his sallow indoor skin tone went a sickly curd white.

“Lan Fan. Tell me this is your idea of a joke,” Ling’s voice shook. “Lan Fan, you never joke to me so I don’t know how to take this joke you’re giving to me. It’s very bad! You have bad taste in jokes!” The corners of his mouth were drawn in a rictus of a grin, but his eyes were wet with unshed tears.

“G-Greed? Is alive!?” Ling asked, touching his head in disbelief.

“Yes, your Majesty.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes Ling— we’re as sure as we can be. You did finish reading what Lan Fan wrote, right?” asked Alphonse gently.

“Haha… yeah! I, I did! I just can’t believe it–” Ling cut himself off by laying back bonelessly on the pillows in a dead away faint.

Lan Fan sighed. 

                                      -

It took a long time to revive him. They finally resorted to going to the kitchens to grab and dangle an entire roast pheasant leg over his face. Ling mouthed at it like a newborn and awoke with a start. After partially stripping it and gnawing on the bone for a while, disoriented, he endeavored to ask questions. He ate with wonder as they answered his food mouth mangled inquiries in a rush.

“How long have you known?”

“Not even a full day,” Lan Fan said. 

“But how!?”

“Like my report and Alphonse say, it is hard to rule out the impossible when homunculi are involved! Your Majesty, you cannot tell me that you haven’t begun feeling different? Especially lately!? You are all over the place, you are a wreck! You are out of control!”

“Lan Fan I like your energy right now, very cool, very commanding, keep a hold of that feeling it looks very good on you,” he appreciatively said, holding a finger gun in her direction.

His shoulders roller forward, head sinking below his breastbone. “Greed is....he’s gotta be dead. We saw him… you know… die,” he argued wistfully. He curled his feet under his robes and laid his head on his knees. “To tell you the truth it's not like I haven't been looking for him, Lan Fan, Al. I don’t feel anything!”

“Ling Yao you are at the center of a hurricane of weird shit and you cannot even see it because you are so deep in denial! Your habits! Look at you! Among other things that I would be bringing you to a doctor to examine your brain for, you have become a lush practically overnight!” Lan Fan interjected furiously, forgetting again about her station.

“That’s just the stress! I’m kind of a big deal now, Lan Fan. It’s getting to me a little, okay?”

“Is worsening amnesia and sleeping episodes stress? What about the fact that you're eating enough for three men every meal on any given day, Ling?” Al accused brightly. He was much too peppy for what was turning into a bit too much of an intervention for Lan Fan's tastes.

“I’m not a doctor! Probably!? I /mourned/ him!” Ling said with a cry.

Al rushed to his side to slap some sense into him ‘lightly.’ Lan Fan was kind of mad he got there first.

“Get to un-mourning him, you idiot! Lan Fan and I are getting tired of you acting this way! You're making yourself sick!" Al took the softer approach of an open palm rather than the fist his brother would have used. "You are being really fun at parties lately, but I would rather you do it for the fun factor and not because you're depressed!” He was not so jovial now.

“You hit me! That's treasonous!” gwaped Ling.

“Lan Fan will let me do it again!” Alphonse threatened. 

“I didn't know it was up to her whether I'm /allowed/ to be hit or not!”

“It is.”

Al ignored the stinger from her. “Ling you're being dramatic! And an ass! Instead of being God King of the largest country to exist maybe you should have tried out for the theater if all you're going to do is moan like this!” he snapped, sarcasm evident. He tapped his foot a few times and reconsidered a point. 

“Okay, that's enough of this. Ling. You and I both know that he would find it hilarious that you mourned him,” Al said, settling down on a knee with conviction. He placed his hands on Ling’s shoulders and looked into his eyes that were still wide open in surprise from the slap. “He’d call you some form of the word baby and laugh that you cried,” he said with an utterly straight face.

Lan Fan wondered for the thousandth time why Ling regarded Greed as a best friend.

“So... what now?” asked Ling, still crumpled in his seat. He rubbed his face from the slap. 

“Scientific method!” Al beamed at him.

“What?”

“We've got ourselves a hypothesis; we tested to see if it held water. Now we're on to practical experimentation, my favorite.”

“I feel like I kind of want to steal your lunch money,” Ling said.

“You know I get that a lot?” Alphonse asked, innocent.

“No!” hissed Ling in mock-candor, coming back to himself a little.

“So I guess the simplest way to go about it would be to check if you can reach him now that you know for sure he's there.”

“But I've tried!” Ling's voice cracked like it hadn't since he was eleven. 

“Try again. Try super hard or I will ask Lan Fan if I can hit you real good!” Al lasered, channeling how his brother thought that it was okay to interact with others with a raised fist.

“Fine!” Ling flapped his sleeves in a huff and dusted himself off. His clothes and hangings were still immaculate of course. He rearranged himself on his seat primly and proceeded to enact the peculiar process of dropping into himself, something that he had gotten quite good at pre Promised Day.

There was no torrent of souls to greet him, no real visual cue that he had retreated inward. It wasn’t red like the depths of hell but absolutely black and featureless. Outside, his eyelids fluttered and an expression of consternation set itself upon his features.

He went deeper, nudging around mentally like a pig looking for a truffle. Now that he knew that Greed was alive…

Greed was alive! It hit him again. Lan Fan and Al wouldn't be so cruel as to lie to him about something like this, he realized. He wanted to shout. In fact he did with a mental whoop, turning it into a shout of Greed’s name, singsong. No response issued back.

He dug around more and felt, objectively speaking, that it did feel different in here in his mindscape, or soul, or heart, or whatever one wanted to call it. It was pitch black, but it was muzzy and indistinct. It felt like the inside of his eyelids though he was cognizant of feeling like he had a body standing in a room and not sitting on the floor on a ton of pillows in a palace so he knew he was in the right place.

As for the general feeling? It wasn't empty like he at first thought when he had tried to call to Greed all those other times. It was like finally giving up on finding your keys only to see them on the table after the sixth time looking in the room. It was like just missing someone after they walked out of a space and knowing that they had just been in there a second before.

He didn't know why Greed couldn't answer him; and it was probably a couldn't rather than a wouldn’t after Ling had tried shouting waves of expletives and comments about Greed’s fashion sense and IQ to test if he was just giving him the silent treatment a ton of other times.
He rolled out some bigger guns.

“Greed you IGNORANT SLUT!” he practically bellowed. “I WISH I HAD MORE TIME TO TALK TO FATHER WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE! MAYBE I COULD HAVE ASKED HIM IF HE TOOK NOT ONLY HIS GREED BUT ALL THE STUFF THAT MADE HIM A DUMB BITCH AND USED IT IN HIS CREATIVE PROCESS WITH YOU!” 

These were the choice insults he had worked on months ago as things he would regrettably never get to tell Greed. If Greed /was/ here he'd be screaming in rage and going for Ling’s eyes right about now.

Meanwhile on the outside Ling's expression was deepening from a frown to sass and his limbs were twitching slightly.

“It's like a dog having a dream,” observed Alphonse with an appreciative air.

Lan Fan desperately did not want to be involved anymore.

That last comment from Ling caused a slight stir in the blackness like a draft in a cave. An echo of a growl wove around him. It felt like he was just barely touching on a prone sleeper that rolled over in the night- and then it was gone. The blackness stretched ahead of him but when he looked down this time he could see himself. He was wearing a version of the outfit he had worn on that day years and more ago when he first met Greed. A coat, open at the buttons. A white collared shirt, half opened at the chest and rumpled. Black slacks and nondescript shoes. It felt comfortable after months of robes. Having a clear mental image of himself helped to orientate himself in the space. He set off at a walk.

He meandered in the darkness for a while to no real effect. The general presence felt interestingly aware in a nebulous way. It caused the hair on his arms to raise. He also yelled some more in the meantime but the moment had clearly passed and with a little disappointment he shifted his awareness to the others with his mouth pulled in a sheepish grin.

“Alright. Maybe I do feel something. But it was slight and maybe not all there and I tried really hard but I couldn't talk to him,” he said, dejected.

“It was worth a shot!” Al offered. “Alright, we move on to plan E.”

“What happened with B through D?” asked Ling curiously.

“Plan E is where I put in a call to my dearest brother for familial advice!”

----------

Alphonse was connected through the local calling center that was handily within the palace itself. It was a beautiful room off the side of the main entrance where guests and officials could make calls in comfort. It was a sight better than phone booths. There were handsome chairs everywhere and incense burners letting off nice fragrances. Behind an opulent and polished desk a worker sat moving wires around the connecting boards. A few people were taking calls in hushed tones so as to not disturb others that were on their own conversations. Xing was antiquated to a point but even the antiquated realized the value in having near instantaneous talk time with other areas of the country and the world. For an exorbitant fee. As it was, Al was being charged a mint every minute he sat on hold as he was transferred through boards and operators to the hotel he knew his brother was staying at many miles away. Luckily, it was on the emperor's unending coin so he wasn't upset. Double luckily, it was late and he knew Ed would probably be in residence. At the very least he could leave a message with the concierge.

Ed’s expertise is what they needed in this situation. Al was out of his depth. It really wasn’t expertise nessesarily but more like Ed was just good at coming up with ideas from left field. Ed was book-smart, same as Alphonse, but he really excelled at thinking outside the box and that’s what had made him a very good alchemist. Ed waxed savant when it came to spitballing weird bullshit out of nothing.

Finally with a buzzing tone he was connected, even better it was to Edward himself! After the pleasantries of greeting and Ed's surprise at being called so late Al got to brass tacks. 

“Hey, Ed, long time no talk! You got a few minutes I gotta ask you a couple questions”.

“Al! What’s up!? Man, I miss you! I have to say—travelling alone? Pretty lonely! Who knew!”

“Ha, yeah. I’m glad to hear you too Brother. What say we catch up a little? Wanna hear about Xing?”

Al took the lead in the conversation, he was going to have to be careful how he phrased himself from now on. He was sure this phone was tapped by at least a few interested parties, not to mention the information center he inhabited currently had a few loiterers that were trying their best to look busy.

“Sure, Al, I know you’re loving it there. What’s cooking lately?”

Their passphrase. Good. Ed cottoned on quick as ever. They had taken a page out of Marcoh’s book (literally) when they needed to talk and not be overheard passing sensitive info along they would talk about cooking.

“It’s crazy you talk about cooking, Ed. His majesty, Ling, has been so /greedy/ lately that I’m having no trouble sharing everything that I’m making with him!” Al had actually taken up cooking as a hobby but that was not what this was about.

“Oh? Well yeah, he’s always been greedy! Remember back in Amestris when we hid out at that run down shack I told you about? When he ate literally all our rations in a single meal? He was such a punk. I’d really love to kick his ass. He was so greedy I’d call him Greedling and he’d hate it!” said Ed with a slight amount of suspicion hidden under his chatter.

“Yeah Brother I remember. It sure feels like I wanna start using that name again with the way he’s been acting!”

Ed paused at that, realizing the scope of what Al was communicating to him.

“Okay so tell me what you’ve been making him?”

“Apple pie!” (Human form/sin)

“Well there’s more than one way to make a pie, what's going on with it?”

“It’s not turning out right. I serve it with lots of apples (sin) in the crust (body) but I can’t seem to keep it from leaking out all over before I serve it. Ling gets so upset over that!”

“He’s always upset over food, what makes this different?”

“Well at first we thought the right way was to just have the pie and go easy on the apples or possibly forgo them all together and make something else but lately it’s been harvest season and the cravings snuck up on us! Especially Ling! So I thought if he’s having trouble with my pie then I would try some other stuff, any suggestions?”

They continued on with this line of questioning for a while and by the end Ed knew now that Greed was back in some capacity and that Al was trying to help Ling because he wasn’t back all the way. Only Lan Fan and him knew about it. Ling had been losing his entire mind without being aware he was doing so up to finding out about it yesterday evening. Al had launched into a complicated diatribe about chemical imbalances in the batter to communicate they drugged Ling because he knew Ed would nearly keel over with laughter.

Ed nearly keeled over laughing at Al’s coded story.

“A boron solution! You card, Al!” he cackled out loud for the benefit of the people probably tapping this phone call. He was not very privately ecstatic over the continued reports of Ling’s odd behavior over the last month or two from Al and it's culmination in illegal not to mention morally reprehensible behavior from his brother–and even more surprising, Lan Fan. Ed didn't think her the type. Ling had been a burr in his side, and it chafed at him that he was emperor now and able to enact executive punishment if Ed said ‘Boo’ in his general direction. It wouldn't stop Ed but the threat was there. His brain went a mile a minute weighing what Al had told him.

So, Greed finally reared his ugly head. Ed knew someone as tenacious and annoying as Greed couldn’t have actually died for real. That would mean there was justice in the world. He had independently come up with the same thought process on the traits of homunculi that Alphonse had. He was aware of Ling’s depressive spiral and resulting mania this last year and the antics therein and he put it together just like Al that maybe things were like this because of an unwanted ‘houseguest’ loitering within him.

Al needed his advice on what to do with Ling now, given that he had communicated that they couldn’t awaken Greed on their own. Ling was probably over the moon about Greed’s return and Ed was glad he was literally countries away from the horrible monster they were conspiring to create by attempting to bring Greed back. 

“You said the Emperor was looking for a pick me up that he can snack on in between meetings? He’s always hungry, huh?”

Ed had a pretty good theory as to why Greed couldn’t come back. It was an energy problem. Greed most likely cut the part that was himself out of the part that was the souls and gave that to Father as a dodge like a lizard cutting off its own tail to escape from a predator. Father didn’t suspect that the souls weren’t the entire homunculus and that Greed had grown a few buds of real humanity in his interactions with their group. Without the souls powering him, he had to have gone dormant and buried himself deep to hibernate.

Now that it had been more than a year he was trying, perhaps unwittingly, to wake back up. Humpty Dumpty was working within the confines of human physiology alone this time and the power source apparently wasn’t enough to kick start him completely. That would explain Ling’s metabolism going nuts. Greed was trying to absorb energy to coalesce. Or so Ed thought.

“Have you tried a fritter? It’s kind of like a pie, don't forget to add salt and then fry it. Maybe add a Xingese touch with the spices.” (Ling needs an energy boost. Jump start him like a car battery. Use alkahestry. You’re probably going to have to use a lot.)

“Brother you’re so smart! That sounds delicious. I’ll call you later on about it after I make a couple test batches!” Al said brightly, signaling the end of the coded portion of their call. They had been talking for too long. The cooking analogies only worked for so long when you wanted to throw various parties off the scent. They exchanged more normal chatting between brothers as fluff to cover things and Al hung up with Ed after a little while longer. He had diagrams to make.

Ed meanwhile looked at the phone that rested on its cradle thoughtfully. He detested what he was thinking about doing but he still picked it back up to dial the front desk to ask about early check out times.

After hearing about Al’s talk with Ed, Ling insisted that they not wait even the full day like Lan Fan had known he would. Of /course/ he was willing to throw himself headfirst into possibly life threatening danger on a plan that /maybe/ would work.

Maybe.

Over a monster! Lan Fan resolved that the next time she saw Ed she would ‘accidentally’ put him into a sleeper hold.

Another caveat also presented itself; they were going to need Mei on board. The group hesitated on involving anyone else but they had come to the conclusion that she was indispensable. Al’s grasp of the art was too new to be of much help practically speaking and if they were going to deliver a shock to Ling’s system on the magnitude Al suspected they had to it was going to have to come from an expert. They didn't want to accidentally kill him or anything equally rash.

They couldn't just call for anyone else under some other pretense because of the sensitive and frankly insane nature of what they were attempting and the many ways it could go wrong. Al barely wanted to grab the relevant books from his room just in case someone was keeping tabs on that kind of thing. You never could be sure.

Mei was a walking information bank, though her explanations were somewhat tailored to her own unique worldview. She had the other plus of being fully up to speed on what had actually happened those few months in Amestris. Ling had been sure to inform her of the events she wasn't around for on the long way home.

Lan Fan most of all was reluctant in implicating her in case something went wrong today, she couldn't forget she was still a child. A child that had survived what was basically a world war and also grew up in Xing—which was also like surviving a world war, but still a child. She argued those facts in another last ditch effort to get them to drop the whole thing. But- with Mei being Al's 'superior' and them all possessing rough childhoods she couldn't exactly dissuade them under the banner of protecting Mei's innocence.

To learn to heal correctly one has to understand how the human body works. Mei had already been acquainted with not only books of questionable material for a child on those subjects but more than a few open surgeries even before her trip to Amestris. She was far from coddled. If Alphonse spilled the beans later that she had been left out she'd never let the group forget it, especially if they cited the only reason she couldn't stay was that she was a kid. 

They called her in after clearing the entire day of official duties, supplying the lie that the emperor had caught a small cold after catching a chill at the moon party last night. They communicated the importance of him needing his rest and that he would not be receiving any official business for at least the rest of the day.

They had then barricaded themselves up deep in Ling’s rooms, refusing all the callers that had shown up to bang on the doors and yell plaintively at the clueless guards anyway. Lan Fan had posted those guards she trusted most at the entrance to the most labyrinthine of sleeping quarters that Ling had.

The room they were currently in possessed no windows and was about as sound proof as they could make it. All the furniture was pushed against the wall on the one side, and the large area rug with the ridiculously high pile was rolled up and tossed unceremoniously on top. What was left of the room was a scrubbed wooden floor of what looked like fancy cherry boards done up in swirling patterns. Why anyone would go to the trouble of having it done to just cover it with a rug underlined that showing off expense first was the main priority rather than appreciating the work. The lamps on the walls shone with clear light but the lack of windows made the room look a little gloomy and slightly threatening— with what the details of the rest of the contents on the floor looked like.

Mei, to her credit, was very fast on picking up the concepts Al had explained to her on the way to the room and while they set up the array he had spent much of the night designing. She knew with a maturity beyond her years that King Ling was sad about stuff. She wanted to help him not be sad! If bringing back that monster guy was the way to do it, that was fine by her. She was no stranger to keeping odd slightly villainous company, after all. Mei was pretty unshakable in that regard.

They had already experimented with giving Ling small jolts of the stuff, passing it through his body and back into the ground like he was a lightning rod. The amount they used the first few times would be enough to heal at least a medium wound by Mei's reckoning. Far and away sufficient for simple overtures. It hadn't been nearly enough for what they wanted because nothing outwardly had changed. Ling had been quick to assure he could tell it was doing something to him. It felt like somewhere inside was sucking up the power like a sponge, and some reaction was better than nothing! Even this much alkahestry was overloading him a little bit, a standard human body could only take so much. Through his counterarguments his teeth chattered and goosebumps rolled over his skin.

Mayhaps that last physical reaction was more from the water. He was standing in a wash basin filled with ice cold water and salt up to his shins. Naked from the waist up. Al had claimed that the water helped with conducting the current, which, he explained, was still an energy source just like electricity. (This was all well and good but the set up looked more like they were interrogating an enemy of the state.)

“It looks like Brother was right, we’re going to need a harder jolt,” Al said through the hand that was on his chin in thought.

Everyone was dressed to work, Al in a shirt and slacks, barefoot, Mei in a pink (as always) tunic. Lan Fan had even taken off some of her armor and tied her hair up out of her eyes. They looked like they were going out to tend the garden and not effectively raise a demon. That particular sentiment was harshly echoed by the giant five point star painted on the ground in black ink. There were other signs and writings looped around the star and sub diagrams located within the star itself. It was a mess of commands and protocols. Al and Mei were splattered with ink from the amount of writing they had been doing in preparation. Chalk was usually Al's tool of choice but with such a large array, the presence of water, and the fact that there were people walking around, (meaning the array was in danger of getting scuffed) meant that a more permanent material had to be produced.

The diagram as he sussed from Mei's lessons had the overall effect of connecting to the dragon pulse and the characteristics of energy propagation and flow. The energy would be channeled into Ling with the direction of a general healing command. Hopefully the amount of energy imparted that quickly would make Greed wake up fully from his semi-dormant state and not just fry Ling like a bad wire. Mei compared the procedure to resuscitation and Al neglected to mention the car battery analogy that Ed had used.

Within that larger framing text there were also back written commands to help with feedback to himself and Mei as well as a kill switch if they gave Ling too much at a time. Al was confident in his skills in making a decent array but this problem was a little too vague for him to relax completely. This was alkahestry and not his standard forte he had grown up learning for however much alchemy relied on it.

He made sure to keep a confident face around Mei despite his worries. He needed to at least look like he had a handle on the situation as the older person. (Even though she was his mentor...) Lan Fan already got the point across via a lot of yelling that she didn't want this plan to go down /period/. Al not being confident in his percentage of success wouldn't help their case with her either, so he found he was affecting an air of self assured for the both of them. He didn't have to worry about keeping up appearances with Ling. Ling wasn't going to take stopping no matter how unconfident his attending staff were now that they were almost ready for an answer.

Ling meanwhile was in the center of the array standing in his tub and feeling a little foolish. He was also keeping up appearances for the group. It wouldn't do to get cold feet now, despite being a little nervous. Maybe a tiny bit. He considered that attempts on his life these days didn't phase him in the slightest and awarded Al a private clap that he had got him to sweat. Ling could tell Alphonse only had an approximation of a plan and Lan Fan was radiating displeasure at his back. He tried to hide behind the core fact that luck had gotten him this far.

Furthermore, Ling's mounting displeasure went beyond the presence of simply metaphorical cold feet. He was legitimately freaking freezing! He stamped his feet in the basin to try and get a little feeling back into them and almost slipped. Yet another reason to get this over with no matter what was going to happen.

It would look possibly the most bad it could look if someone were to burst in on the group at that moment, which was why Lan Fan was posted at the door. It was locked and the room they were in was situated behind a few more rooms and locked doors, not to mention guards, but it was best to be careful. She also lacked much to actually do, barring the initial movement of furniture and harangue of her Emperor. Ling had already asked pleasantly if she could please please please keep her opinions to herself so she settled for projecting the deepest frown she could muster while watching them work on the final technicalities of the array. 

“Okay Ling, here, bite this, I don’t want you swallowing your tongue. We’re gonna give you a bigger kick here in a second,” Al said, proffering a bit of rope.

Ling took it in his hands and made somewhat of a final speech before putting it between his teeth, hands gesturing to his chest area, “I’m going through a lot for this idiot! I hope he’s grateful!” He hit his chest with the hand that didn't hold the rope for emphasis.

“Oh—I feel the same way about you,” said Al to Ling while cocking an eyebrow at Mei, who giggled.

Al clapped his hands in readiness after doing a full walk around, checking over the array for the last time. It was as done as he could make it.

“Kay! Here goes nothing! Hope you don’t die! I don’t wanna rot in prison for murdering the emperor in a botched experiment! Mei–blast it!”

Lan Fan rubbed her eye sockets and turned away from the impeding light show, placing her forehead on the adjacent wall with a couple bangs to the surface thrown in for good measure. She really thought Alphonse was the mature and thoughtful brother but it was clear that the Elric line ran deeper into foolhardiness than she had hoped. Al really had… loose.. affiliations with morality at points and being in Xing was confirmed to be working a further terrible change on the young man. Was having to be the more ‘proper’ brother to offset Edward the only thing that had been holding him back?

Mei meanwhile had placed her hands on the circle and activated it. Arcs of power traced the lines of the circle and bounced off the ceiling. Ling immediately groaned around his gag at the current of power hitting him. It was a bigger jolt than he anticipated. Mei was getting better and better by the day, he was /so/ proud of her!

He focused his attention inward, not wanting to waste time, and lost his grasp on his outside perception. It took an edge off the not quite excruciating pain it was to get zapped like this. The level was much more than what was the standard allowed for a human healing. Still, he had taken on the stone itself not so long ago. This was cake in comparison, although he suspected that that had only worked because Greed was there trying to make it work at the time. He had needed a new body, naturally.

Ling was NOT going to communicate that suspicion to anyone in the room. They, meaning Lan Fan, didn't need another reason to call this off. Hey, he had survived that event, not something many others could claim, and hopefully he'd continue his streak here. Nobody could say that he wasn’t freakishly resilient in general.

-

In a beat he was again in the unadorned dark of the inside of his mind. He could feel the alkahestry doing something even more to it. Everything was more energized, the very 'air' tasted of metal. He rode that wave deeper down into himself than he had ever been and caught sight of something in the deep darkness that looked suspiciously like the ghost of a familiar face.

His eyes couldn't play tricks on him, not here. He enthusiastically made to move closer towards it but was held back by an abrupt guttering in the power that was facilitating his exploration. Too quickly to fight it he was ripped back to wakefulness as the energy wave retreated like the tide.

He gasped for a breath outside, light nearly blinding him, and plucked the rope out of his mouth, “Don’t stop the juice until I tell you! /I had something!/” He nearly fell out of the basin and held his arms out wide in an effort to right himself. 

“Ling we gave you a lot! You were shaking like a leaf!” Al said, pretty alarmed but happy that Ling was up and talking after a jolt like that. Medically dubious as that was.  

Ling's hair was on end, it had busted from its ponytail and lay around his shoulders like a cloud. He looked crazed as he shakily bent down to take a couple palmfuls of water from around his ankles to smooth it down and splash his face. He shivered in combination from the leftover juice still playing his nerves like a string instrument and the water temperature. 

“Don't stop. Until. I tell you! That’s a royal decree by the way!” he punctuated his words by jabbing a couple of fingers in Al’s direction after he stood back up with knock knees.

“Okay, sheesh, you don't have to toss out the majesty card,” said Al in a huff. He turned to Mei, “Mei, can you keep it up for longer?”

“Yes my dear Alphonse! Anything for you!” Mei glowed from her position on the floor.

“Right then, give him what he wants, I guess!” called Al throwing up a hand to his face to shield his eyes from the light show.

Ling crammed the gag back in his mouth and smiled around it at the many double entendre going on currently. Greed would love hearing about them later. He crossed his arms on his chest and nodded. Mei needed no other indication to continue and threw an even harder whack at Ling.

Ling was transported with a snap to black. It was faster this time. He rode on the back of the power with a little more finesse until he stood directly in front of a placid version of the face that he remembered from all his internal talks with Greed.

There were a few differences. This one’s eyes were slits where the old’s were big and expressive. It was not framed in red screaming souls but was red muzz on the darker matte black of the surrounding nothingness. It was slightly indistinct but as he looked it started to appear more solid by the second. It hung in the air about eight feet (if his soul had any type of actual measurement system in place) above the ‘floor’ he was standing on. It was pretty big and utterly still.

“GREED!” Ling called loudly with the authority he had fully laid claim to over this past year or so, crossing his arms and standing with his legs splayed wide. “GREED WAKE UP THIS -SECOND-!”

He paused for any sign. Still no response. Not a twitch. Ling changed tactics.

“Greed, if I’d have known you were still squatting in here I would have been charging you rent, you loitering asshole! You couldn't even leave a note? No call? Not even a quick message? As if I could think you would /ever/ go out on a note of self sacrifice! You LIAR.”

Was it his imagination or did those slits narrow ever so slightly? Ling checked out for a second and vaguely felt himself screaming pretty loud ‘outside.’ He didn't have time for this, he needed to double down!

“Yeah, that's right! I'm calling you a liar!” he affected a very passable impression of Greed and crossed his eyes. “This is the first and wast wie I'll ever tell! I'm Greed the stupid hypocrite! Nothwing is impowsible!” he mocked.

“You lie to me about leaving, you lie about dying, you even lie about what you want! Greed! Not knowing what he wants! Wow! Interesting!" Ling was full on ranting now, pacing in front of Greed's face and seething to himself more than anything with long bottled up emotional turmoil.

"Well, you know what /I/ want? Greed? I want you back! We are not done, Greed the ‘Avaricious.’ What a JOKE. Where’s that avariciousness now? Here I am! Emperor! I promised you we'd rule! Together. And I'm greedy enough to keep my promises! Unlike /YOU/.”

Greed stayed immobile, but the power licked around them, humming in the air at a tone just beyond hearing, elevating in force by the second. Ling grit his teeth and forged onward, on a roll.

“Greed, I swear, if you don't come back with me /right now/, I'll abdicate. I'll wait a couple years until Mei is big enough and I will leave this whole damn thing and restart my life as a pauper. Are you gonna let me give this all up? An entire country? Are you? You PUNK. What kind of shitty Greed would allow that to happen!?” he snapped, gesturing hard with his arms. He was suddenly able to look Greed in his immobile face rather than up at him. Space was pretty mutable in here. He wasn't sure whether Greed got smaller or he got bigger.

“Don't even give me crap like 'why do you have to share'!” he shouted, rebutting a quip he could just about hear for real, getting in close and headbutting the face just like he had done in another argument long ago.

“THERE'S MORE THAN ENOUGH ME TO GO AROUND TO ALSO INCLUDE YOU, ASS. I'M THE EMPEROR AND YOU ARE DE FACTO ONE OF MY SUBJECTS. I WAS READY TO ACCEPT AN ENTIRE STONE NO PROBLEM FOR A COUNTRY THAT HATES ME AND YOU THINK I CAN'T HANDLE LITTLE YOU? YOU ARE ON MY RETAINER /INDEFINITELY/. AFTER ALL THE SHIT I PUT UP WITH REGARDING OUR PREVIOUS ARRANGEMENT, YOU'RE WORKING FOR ME. WHEN I SAY YOU'RE NOT DEAD YOU. ARE. NOT. DEAD! NOW GET OUT HERE!” he ended on a shout, breathing hard and stamping his foot.

Did he breathe in here?

During his explosion his perspective had shifted again. Greed’s huge face had shrunk until it was about the size of a dog, hanging in front of his own at roughly his height. It was solid looking now. Ling knew his time was almost up, he could feel it. He only had a couple more minutes at best. He grabbed at Greed at a loss for any other ideas and proceeded to try and stick him under his arm, hanging off him like a squirrel on a bird feeder. The extended contact between them both rung a gong in the power ripping through him.

-

“Are you done? Is it over? I guess I'm not gonna get any sleep after all if all you wanna do is keep mouthing off directly in my face. Brat.”

The voice came muffled from around his middle. Ling pulled back, revealing Greed's face looking up at him with reproach. Ling screamed and hung tighter on to Greed.

“Greed oh my GOD—!” he cried.

“You son of a bitch!” Ling barked angrily, punching him many times, hard, in the middle of his face.

“Ow! Ling you shit!! My eye! You want me back so bad and this is how I get welcomed? Take that fucking tone with me–!” Greed bucked backward and tossed Ling on to the ground with a thud.

“We are long past tearful reunions, Greed! I don't have time! Come with me!” he admonished from his position on the ground, pointing away from himself.

“Boy yeah you don't, it sort of feels like you've been licking battery acid. What are you doing out there, kid?” Greed said with interest, looking up.

“It's complicated! Later! This is the only way we all could think of getting you back and it is time /sensitive/!”

“Who says I wanna come back?! It's peaceful here. I was having a good nap before you showed up and started squalling at me.”

Ling could have torn at his hair, of all the– “Greed cut your shit you've been frying my brain on and off for months! I'm ‘monstrous in my attitude and a danger to myself and my position’ because of you!”

“Hah? Oh those uh… they weren't dreams, huh?”

“No.” Ling looked at Greed with an acidic expression. He suspected Greed was talking about all the outbursts of his.

“My bad.”

“Whatever! We'll revisit that mess at a later date. Time sensitive, remember stupid?!!”

Ling felt his time fizzling quickly. The pulse was in flux, but he sighed and sat down anyway, crossing his legs and putting his hands on his knees.

“You heard what I said before? I meant it.” He said opening an eye wide and resting it steadily on Greed above him.

Greed didn't meet his gaze. “As if I could tune you out! Yelling in my face…”

“So, will you come back?”

“What's in it for me?” Greed countered. He looked at Ling for a second, then suddenly turned his face away.

"You got your own life now, kid,” he said gruffly.

“Half.”

“Half of what?” Greed grumbled.

“Half, Greed. You saved my life so I'm offering you half of it.”

Greed grunted with a start, eyes widening, scrutinizing Ling with intense suspicion, and looking away again all in a quick motion. If a face could twiddle it's thumbs and fidget...

“Greed, I'm not leaving without you. I meant what I said. You don't come back? I'm staying here,” said Ling matter-of-factly.

“Besides, I kinda feel if I wait around anymore I'm not gonna be /able/ to leave. I'll probably slip into a coma or something equally bad. You'd be stuck with just me. Here. Bored. With only you for company,” he observed with a casual tone.

There was a threat there, underneath.

Greed knew how god awful Ling was when he was bored out of his mind. Months of torture were still fresh in his memory from Amestris. Greed stayed silent and looked at him in appraisal. Ling peered back at him equitably. Something unsaid passed between them. Ling stood up and started moving slowly to where ‘out’ was. He probably only had seconds now; he could feel the power guttering out like a candle flame.

Greed’s eyes narrowed into twin crescents, a sly grin evident in his demeanor. He stayed still for a second more as Ling moved away in the darkness and then followed behind him, quietly. Like he wasn't following him but just so happened to be going in the same direction. Ling smirked slightly at the movement in the corner of his eye but didn't look back. He saw that this was as close as he was going to get to acquiescence on Greed’s part so he picked up the pace.

Greed spoke suddenly:

“Eighty-Twenty.”

Ling stopped dead in his tracks and turned around to look back in wonder at Greed.

“HALF. GREED, ARE WE ACTUALLY DOING THIS RIGHT NOW?”

He felt the pulse contract, his window rapidly began to truly shut. They glanced at each other and started moving again. They both lurched forward in unison, Greed parallel to Ling instead of behind him, starting to rush faster and faster, heading ‘upward’.

“SEVENTY-THIRTY.”

Ling flagged, grasping at the power that was leaving him. Greed got behind him and buffeted Ling along, lending him a boost.

“HALF.”

“SIXTY-FORTY?”

“FIFTY-FIFTY EVEN SPLIT, YOU PRICK, AND BE GRATEFUL!"

“We have a bargain! But you can’t say I didn't try to go for more, it's in my nature!”  Greed exclaimed with a cackle. He sensed when someone wasn't gonna budge an inch. They were almost out. “Hope you're ready for me, Xing!”

This last yell and subsequent laughter echoed out from Ling's mind as Greed tossed him forward. Ling came back to himself with a deep heaving gasp. His chest spasmed, he realized he was flat on his back and sopping wet. They must have dumped the water on him. He spluttered and coughed, water up his nose and making its way lung-ward.

“I-cough- I got him! -cough-,” he choked out, hitting his chest in punctuation to his words. Ling could indeed feel Greed lurking like he couldn't before, passively. 

Al, Mei, and Lan Fan were crowded around him. Al held his head and Lan Fan had her hands on his wrists. He must have been convulsing or something, he could feel the ache of it set in on his muscles. Mei had dropped the towels she was carrying onto the floor where they were absorbing water in a heap. Ling felt himself losing consciousness now that the worst was over, he was completely wiped out. At the same time he felt Greed rising in him like a soap bubble to the fore; he wanted to say something, clearly.

Greed pushed at Ling's influence, looking to knock him aside. Ling didn't fight him; he really didn't have the energy to do that at the moment. He knew that his body was finally at its hard limit. He could practically feel his consciousness winking out. What damage could Greed do in ten or so seconds?

He turned inward to some rightful sleep, letting Greed have at it without a word— and with that he knew no more. 

His body stiffened and sat up. Alphonse jerked backward to avoid getting hit in the chin by Ling’s forehead. ‘Ling’ looked around and wheezed a breath, starting a proper rolling laugh as his eyes rested on each of the faces of the small assembly individually. He looked demented with his hair sopping wet and stuck to his face and neck, his expression equally beastly.

“WHEW! BORN AGAIN! THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM! FEELS LIKE I GOT KICKED BY A HORSE! YOU, BLONDIE, TAKE A MEMOoo —do I know you?-” Greed cut himself off and goggled at Alphonse while fighting to stay awake. Ling's body was gonna make it's need to shut down known without either occupant's say. Lan Fan’s lip curled in disgust. He must have realized his time limit was coming near and continued on.

“I'M GONNA PASS OUT IN A SEC. BUT LET IT BE KNOWN THAT TODAY MARKS GREED THE AVARICIOUS’ RISE TO RULERSHIP. AS MY FIRST DECREE, I STATE: I'M GONNA TAKE A NAP, NOBODY BOTHER ME.” He flopped forward suddenly, folding like an accordion, fast asleep. A total black out was more applicable of a description. 

“I regret everything leading up to this and everything that is going to happen because of this,” said Lan Fan to nobody in particular, zero expression in her voice.

Ling first felt himself lying in bed in an ambiguous way. He wasn't sure what time it was or why he was in bed; these days he usually didn't even make it all the way /to/ his bed. More often than not he was wiping spittle off the table top he had collapsed on the night before upon awakening next morning— or whatever time this was. He was aware he could get up and be fully conscious if he wanted but he stuck the mental equivalent of a toe outside and knew that he was in pretty rough shape. For some reason.

What the hell did he drink last night? What hadn't he been drinking lately. Honestly? Full disclosure? He knew he kind of had a problem.

His body throbbed as a unit and he felt like he had been hit by a cart full of bricks so he buried his awareness inward. After everything in Amestris he discovered he had a tenuous connection to his physicality, if he wanted. It was almost like advanced meditation. It was handy for dampening most pain, even the pain from an apparent ballistic level of a hangover he surmised he must have. Another pretty neat trick he got from sharing with Greed.

Greed.

With a start he remembered why he felt the way he did.

He wasn't hungover.

He connected back to his senses in full and opened his real, and therefore crusty, eyes to his sleeping chambers. (Or one of them anyway, he had twenty or so at last count.)This one was one of his favorites. It was all done up in burgundy with a lot of designs of birds and peach trees on every available surface, capped off by a nice view of the capital from big windows. Those windows opened up to a very sharp drop, as well as a pit– with walls lined with traps along the way to said pit. These additions deterred anyone that wanted to use the tempting opening to meet the emperor privately for more malicious reasons.

The room was empty. He scanned with his extra senses and perceived that the others were down the hall, there was no mistaking Alphonse. Ling could feel other pinpricks that represented people but they were either farther away or under him in other rooms of the palace. He didn't have the strength to assess any more detail than that.

He lay there on the knife edge of sleep for a while, feeling like a headache but everywhere. The pain ultimately dulled after an undisclosed amount of time but he was going to be shuffling around in the near future, he could tell.

Evening, a familiar voice rung out from what felt like right behind his ear. Ling jumped slightly.

“Hey Greed,” he whispered with a croak.

Greed surged forward and Ling, with long practice, moved aside instinctively, not wanting to waste what little energy he had accumulated in fighting for control. Instead of getting pushed all the way back it was more like Greed moved him just outside the ‘door’ into an atrium of sorts. He could use all his senses and it felt like he could take control back very easily if he made a move to. Rather than do so he chose to sit back and wait, interested in what Greed wanted. Instead of the back seat, or locked in the trunk of the car as it was in the beginning of their ‘relationship’, it was more like Greed was driving and he was in the side car. He recalled it wasn't much different of an arrangement than the way they were right before Greed ‘died’. It /was/ a lot calmer, though.

Greed sat up from the bed and stretched, cracking ‘his’ neck from side to side and eliciting some nice snaps. He rubbed it thoughtfully. Standing up with a low groan and extending all his limbs like a cat he rolled his shoulders a couple of times. He cleared his throat with a cough or two and twisted his arms above his head tightly. This alleviated Ling's aches somewhat. Ling could feel that Greed's condition was pretty good in comparison to him feeling like dogshit. Greed must have taken most of the healing energy for himself. No surprises there.

Greed craned his head around the room, taking in the lavish décor and accessories in an organized way. Ling could practically feel a calculator start up in the back of Greed's brain. Sauntering over to a floor length mirror backed in what looked like pure silver propped in the corner Greed looked at ‘himself.’ Ling was dressed in what he would deem semi-casual pajamas in cut and color, but it was still the nicest quality fabric Greed had ever worn. He picked a bit off of his shoulder and rubbed the material in appreciation, whistling. Silk, of course. Xing and their silk. 

He got closer to the mirror and gave it a cheeky grin, knowing Ling was watching. Ling rolled his eyes internally, knowing Greed felt it, but continued to stay silent.

Greed leaned in closer to the glass and checked the capillaries under an eyelid. Stuck out his tongue and looked down into his mouth. Looked at the lack of his complexion, tracing a deeper set cheekbone with a finger. Grabbed his ponytail, it had gotten longer, and tossed it back over his shoulder. He hummed noncommittally at each of his assessments.

He looked down at his arms and saw the marking on the back of his hand. He raised an eyebrow at the new design but that was all. He lifted that arm. Holding the hand with his marking in front of himself he made a peculiar internal command and with a crackle and a flash his nails as well as the tips of his fingers down to his palm began to turn black. He backed up and sat down on an adjacent sofa, a little woozy.

“Hmm thought so,” he mused, finally breaking the silence.

Ling was always surprised to hear Greed’s voice come out of his vocal cords, it sounded so odd. It was one thing to hear it in your head but it was different when he was making it himself. He meant to ask Greed sometime how he pulled that off.

What? Ling asked. He had taken a seat inside, cross legged. It was pretty nice without the souls screaming at him, he noted. 

“Don’t got souls now so I gotta use this sparingly. I think a full shield would lay me out for a day or so. Healing too, no more miracle working." Greed sighed, "Hmph, what a bad trade off. Just what I have to deal with on this downgrade, I guess. I can catch a bullet or two but no more head bashing trick. I'm gonna miss that. It was such a power move,” he grinned and shook his head sadly.

He dismissed the ultimate shield with another flex and his fingertips turned pink and soft again. He sat still for a second, eyes closed, and then jumped up with no apparent provocation, startling Ling a little again.

“Okay!” Greed said with a conversational tone and a clap of his hands. “We're going out!”

What?!

“I know you heard me, we are going out!” he replied, slightly louder but still conversationally. He kept his voice down from his normal boom, not wanting to alert anyone down the hall that he was up and prowling around just yet.

Greed shucked his pajama shirt off and tossed it on the ground. He gave another appreciative glance at the mirror and flexed an arm. Pinching at the muscle that was there he waved his index finger back and forth in reproach at Ling, implying he had gotten soft. Ling scoffed hard.

He motored over to Ling’s closet which was a whole other adjoining suite to the left of his bedroom and began to dig around in the opulence, eyes darting around and taking in all the overt wealth on display.

“You got any shoes that look like they're not made of crepe paper and glitter, brat?” he said, tossing another pair of dainty slippers into a growing pile in the middle of the floor. 

Bug out bag. Top right. Underneath the hat boxes. Where are we going?

“Hoh? Practical little king, aren't you?” Greed climbed halfway up a shelf and moved some boxes out of the way (and on to the ground in a shove) to reveal a simple bag of medium size. He took it down and started examining the contents on the floor among the mismatched pile of slippers he had made and a couple discarded over robes.

Ling had dozens of these bags stashed around the palace in positions only Lan Fan and Alphonse knew about. If he had to bail for any reason he wanted money, (forged) papers, and clothing. He was very done with the experience of starving in a foreign country. Contingency was a big part of staying alive while also staying emperor. Maybe some of Lan Fan's pragmatism was rubbing off on him. 

Greed stopped rifling through the bag with a start. He had pulled out the clothing he found on the bottom and stared at it when it unfolded into his lap. It was an exact replica of what he, Greed, had last worn. Knee length black duster, black tunic with a high collar, bordered in white. Slacks, leather. Simple black shoes. The quality of the material was better, he absently observed. He clutched the lapel of the coat in one hand as he stared.

What? It's a good outfit. Nondescript. Good for sneaking around with all that black. Can't go around wearing what I prefer if I need to gun it out of here incognito, Ling interrupted the silence and said with a sniff. Maybe Greed wasn't the only one who had a rough time articulating things sometimes.

Greed wasted no time putting everything on. He opened his mouth to say something and shut it a few times. Ling also brooded awkwardly.

“You got money?” he finally asked.

Left duster chest pocket, inside.

Greed slapped his chest and found the indent of a small bag. He dug for it inside his coat and felt the weight of small coin and the crinkle of some bigger bills when he took it in hand. It was apparently enough for his immediate needs.

Where are we going? Ling asked again.

Greed sat back down on the couch and bent down to slip on the shoes. When they were on he hopped up and kicked the tips of the toes on the floor to secure them and check the feel. 

“Walk. I need to stretch my legs— it's been forever.”

They're /my/ legs and I get adequate exercise.  

“Whatever. You know what I mean. I wanna get out and go for a stroll, sue me.”

Greed trotted over to the window and opened it. He stuck his head out to look for onlookers and seeing nobody close he began to lever himself out of it in a fluid motion.

Wait! At least let me leave a note this time!

Greed scowled but stopped crawling out of the window with only a knee still on the sill to back out awkwardly. He pulled Ling forward with a grunt and looked out with interest. Ling jogged to a drawer for a pen and paper. He slapped a quick note down in Xingese explaining what he wrote to Greed quickly at a prompt from him. (He didn't like being out of the loop).

The note read like something unrelated to a casual reader (list of foods) but it was in code for Al or Lan Fan to recognize that he hadn't been abducted. (It was somewhat willing.) It contained phrases that would assure them he was fine and he wrote it in Xingese so they wouldn't think Greed had gotten the idea to ghost like he had so loved doing to them repeatedly a while ago. Greed still couldn't read or write Xingese, after all.

“You done?” Greed asked while making to move forward again as Ling put down the pen. Ling held up a hand with Greed halfway in control.

Hold on. Greed halted on his way to the window again with another deep scowl.

"What -now-?" he asked, annoyed. 

Your chi, said Ling simply.

Their combined chi was a lot more normalized now that Greed was awake and Ling was aware of him, less bursts of energy and generally more stable. Greed's swirled around Ling’s currently, as it always did when Greed was in control. Less violently now than when Ling was struggling inside to break out every waking moment long ago. It also was more normalized than it had been in the last few months. It was thanks to those two factors that interested parties down the hall weren't coming to check on them at that very second. Greed couldn't sense this dumb stuff like Ling could but he took his word for it and understood that it was unique enough to track from experience. 

Here, hold on a second and let me do something. Ling wasn't a pulse master like Mei but manipulating his own was a skill he had picked up quickly and polished to a shine to sneak out of the palace and around the city since he was young. He now extended that skill to Greed, ‘showing’ him without words how to dampen his signature. It was a considerable extension of trust on Ling's part; if Greed had this skill back in Amestris they would have never found him.

Greed fumbled with the sensation Ling tried to impart to him. He was a fast learner but it would take him a while to get it at any kind of functional level.

“This shit is too hard. Do it for now?”

Ling wordlessly replied by neutralizing their shared chi nearly completely in a breath. It was easy. Easier than even dampening his own. Their respective signatures were almost diametrically opposed. Instead of letting them butt up against each other Ling simply ran them parallel. They cancelled each other out.

Greed felt Ling do something.

“Done now?”

Yeah. Let's get, said Ling, getting into this. He hadn't successfully escaped the walls in a while!

Greed turned around and bounded over to the open window in a couple of strides to throw himself bodily out of it head first. He took the many stories that he was off the ground at a controlled drop.

A whoop burst out of his chest, whether it was from him or Ling he couldn't tell. He flexed his powers again, a scant inch of his fingertips and nails alone turning black in another small crackle of red energy. He used them to slow his fall to a stop, gouging a perch in the smooth side of the palace wall. Taking the pause in movement as a cue he ogled at the scenery all around him, coat flapping about in the wind as he hung off the side of the tower. The evening sun licked the edges of the buildings and lit the capital like it was gilded entirely in gold. (Many of the roofs were actually gilded in gold leaf or copper but he didn't know that yet.)

Greed whistled low and long at the sight, impressed. Ripping his claws out of the side of the building he continued his descent. Wouldn't do to linger. He fell another twenty feet to land on top of a smaller adjacent building’s roof and didn't pause, letting momentum take him into a breakneck run.

Ling hadn't really realized until now how semi-terrifying it was to not be in the driver's seat when his body was being tossed around like this. Greed was overdoing it. Last time he was in this situation he was too preoccupied with trying to break out or not die to notice just how peculiar the sensation was. It had to do with how close he was to the controls, he guessed. He could feel everything happening like he was fully in control but for the animating force of Greed behind his movements. When he had first ‘met’ Greed he had been shoved as far back as possible and had only a vague impression of the outside world at all at the best of times.

As their time together had progressed and Greed relaxed a little he would allow impressions and senses filter back to Ling. It was an unspoken agreement to start that if Ling had helpful info he would share it as Greed navigated Amestris with no plan. Greed was a newborn and while he had information like what things were he didn't have practical acumen like where everything actually was due to the amnesia he was saddled with at the time. As a reward for cooperation Greed would relax his grip on Ling slightly.

Neither communicated this arrangement in direct terms with the other. It was a war of attrition, neither of them wanting to admit weakness. It was quite a while from the time that Father had put them together until the time that he had met up with the one Elric and the chimeras. Ling wore away at Greed, complaining of boredom, until Greed gave him a few creature comforts like being able to look outside. Mainly to have some peace.

After a few particularly good turns to Greed in that Ling tipped him off on places to stay and places where you could steal the best food Greed had done him a good turn in exchange by delivering a message to the Elrics for Ling. Leading up to this exchange was a lot of double talk:

‘This body needs to eat so tell me where I can get food’ Greed would interject suddenly, like he was talking with a phone operator. 

Ling would cross his arms and pout. ‘I guess I can protect my own interests, I can't inherit anything if you let me starve to death. Let me see where you’re going— I can't give directions /blind/.’

This eventually evolved into:

‘Let me send a message to my retainer, I owe her at least that, Greed, it's only fair! Take it to the little guy and the armor guy and I'll tell you where we stashed money for emergencies, but I’m gonna need to write it. She needs to know it was me. Give me an arm and thirty seconds.’

‘Hell no! I don't owe you shit, you're gonna grab for control and try something!’

‘Steak dinner and a bed at an inn.'

'Keep talking.'

'And I'll shut up for the rest of the day’

‘You have ten seconds.’

Ling reminisced as Greed backflipped and ran lightly from roof to roof.

“You've /really/ let yourself go, I'm slightly out of breath!” Greed said, breaking Ling out of his reverie mid jump in clearing the gap between rooftops.

I sit all day, man. I keep trim, though! You're just tossing me around like a ragdoll! Don't blame me! I haven't even gotten a good assassination attempt lately!

He sent Greed a mental image of the last pair of assassins tied up. The sharing of memories was another old ability that Ling had discovered along with the direct merging of more body-localized skills like fighting. He found use of it again.

Took these two out with one hand as a 'hand'icap a little while ago. I'm quite insulted at their efforts, they're barely trying these days.  

Greed travelled at a sprint to what smelled and sounded like an open air market. They were already pretty far from the palace; he could really move. It was how he gave Lan Fan the slip all those times. Wordlessly he hopped down off a small one story building into an alleyway that was devoid of people and cut itself off at a dead end directly behind him. Peering around, he stuck his hands in his pockets and stalked out of the side street casually, looking at the array of stalls.

The market was packed with people but no one paid them any mind as Greed stepped and wove between the crunch. He fingered the sack of money in his pocket and lifted a few coins into his hand, rolling them in between his fingers. He ducked bodies in the throng with practiced ease as he strolled. Stopping at a few stalls and looking at the treats on display, he even paused for a second to pick up a particularly gaudy bit of jewelry and manhandle it for a minute. Looking closely at the clasp he put it down with a comment more to himself than Ling that it was just copper filled and not worth the price. He appeared to finally settle on a clear destination when he lined up at a street vendor that was selling some kind of bun with meat and vegetables inside.

Oh! I love this place! I try to make Lan Fan pick these up for me when she runs errands. How'd you know? Greed elected not to answer but the stall had the best smell coming out of it by far so Ling could guess at his simple reasoning.

“Hey guy? Anyone ever tell you you look like the Emperor?” asked the vendor conversationally with a searching look at Greed's face as Greed mutely pointed to a random assortment of half a dozen buns, showing the coin in his hand.

“No.” he growled.

The vendor looked nonplussed but he bagged the buns and threw in an extra slightly smaller one with a wink.

“Well, if you're cousins or something give him my regards and tell him to lower import and meat taxes, okay?”

Greed grabbed the bag and slapped some coins on the counter, there might have been a bit more than what the buns should have cost. Ling stole back his face for a second to grin a thanks, which made the vendor do a double take, before Greed took off at a jog with the bag to what was another tall building at the opposite side of the square. He put the bag between his teeth and climbed the wall facing away from the markets, making his way to the upper portions of the structure quickly. He crawled all the way to the top and startled some roosting birds out of the way while he was at it. Picking his path almost daintily over their nests he made it to the edge where it was clear.

He jumped down from there to another part that was less gross with city grime. Finding nothing wrong with his spot he flopped down onto the flat decorative outcropping of roof that jutted out from the front of it. This spot didn't have birds living on it and it also showed off an impressive vista of the market and city below. Greed looked down at the view, opening the bag in his hands and took an appreciative sniff of the contents. He was /starving/. He tore into the buns, taking one per hand and alternating bites.

Ling let him eat three before he spoke again. Greed hated to be interrupted when eating, especially at the single minded intensity he was putting them away. It was his first meal in more than a year, after all.

So, what was it like?

“Hmm?” Greed hummed around another bun, this one filled with lamb.

Dying.

Greed paused and chewed thoughtfully.

“Well I didn't exactly die. I'm here eating, aren't I? Idiot.”

You know what I mean.

Greed chewed with more contemplation, he didn't mind a bit of dinner conversation if it was about his favorite subject– himself.

"It was quick. I knew you weren't letting go like the stubborn idiot you are so I had to think fast. I didn't even know if what I was gonna do was gonna work. I distracted you and used the opportunity. When you ripped at me I broke off and lodged ‘me’ in you but I was also 'me' in Father. I think. That part is hard to remember.”

You sucker punched me and lied like a bitch— I sure do remember that part.

“Shut the hell up I'm not done.”

Ling threw him the feeling of a shrug with an accompanying eye roll.

“I thought you guys, namely tiny and metal man specifically, had the rest of the fight in hand. I didn't have any energy left to do much more than exist so I hid and went to sleep. I had to get my strength back. I knew I slept for a while but it was hard to wake up. I'd have dreams of stuff– people. Parties? Foods. But it was spotty. I'd wake up pretty plastered most of the time. It felt like that anyway." Greed shredded the rest of the bun he was holding into scraps while he spoke and palmed some to toss into his mouth.

"I didn't have enough of me yet to stick around for longer. I knew enough that you probably won given that I could tell time was passing and we weren't in a smoking crater or whatever dear dad had planned. I think the first time I woke up and actually could tell where I was and what you were doing was right before you caught that arrow to the neck.” He broke another bun into larger pieces and popped them into his open mouth between breaths as he spoke over more crumbs. 

Oh yeah...we were wondering how that broke off.

Roughly six months after his coronation Ling nearly caught a stray arrow to the Adam's apple from a particularly lucky attempt on his life. He had dodged it enough for it to be probably non-lethal but when he grabbed his neck in anticipation of a wound he found nothing there but a broken arrowhead and shaft falling down into his robe’s collars. It had puzzled him, Lan Fan, and the assassins before they both attacked the living hell out of them, at the time. 

“Did a patch of shield when I realized what was happening.”

Thanks.

Greed gave a small 'hmph' of acknowledgement and continued.

“I think the life or death situation you were in was enough to wake me up for a bit but it still wasn't enough for long. The energy was the problem. I'm used to souls. You only got the one so I used your body's stuff instead. There wasn't much. Everything took a lot longer. Also, still didn't know what was a dream or not even as time went on.”

Seems like all of it wasn't dreams, Greed, because I don't remember a lot of what I got up to the last few months! Mostly because I was blitzed out of my mind!

“I said I didn't know I was doing it and it's not my fault you can't hold your liquor. You did that mostly to yourself,” he replied, stuffing another piece in his mouth and licking crumbs off his fingers.

So your first instinct when you're dreaming is to drive me to drink? Ling accused.

"I was more there when you were drunk, it was easier to stay around. So maybe it was instincts on my part. Seems to me you didn't need much help getting there on your own.”

Well if you communicated with me directly I would have known you were around and not inadvertently stifled you so much you precious lily.

“Shut up.”

Greed sat still for a moment looking at the setting sun and the buildings below. Stars were starting to be visible against the darkening sky. Ling had long ago surmised that Greed liked high places because he liked to be up over it all. It gave him a sense of superiority, he could feel like he owned the place. Ling was dead on. Except this time Greed actually, by association anyway, /did/ own the place. Greed’s mouth curled up into a razor blade of a grin at that thought.

“So, bring me up to speed with events and such,” he commanded with a touch of imperiousness. He set aside the bun bag next to him and laid back on the ground throwing his hands behind his head, crossing a leg on top of the other. He looked up at the sky but didn't really focus on anything overhead, scrutinizing Ling instead. 

There's—kind of a lot Greed, it's been more than a year. Lot of junk happens in a year.

"Just give me the highlights.” On ‘highlights’ Greed pounced, mentally knocking Ling aside to grab at his memories. Ling had his guard down completely. It was no contest.

Hey! Ask!?

Greed quickly thumbed through a few basic impressions, rolling backwards through a timeline of the last year or so. Before he awakened, Ling’s foibles. Assassins. Assassins. Infighting. Names and faces he didn't know, he got the roughest gist of a few months in a couple of seconds.

“Who's the blond? Looks familiar.”

Alphonse, grunted Ling, still trying to fight Greed off.

“Aaah, so he got to be a real boy after all. Good for him, we need to party about it. Oh, would you look at that–! He was a big help in getting you almost killed today. Have to thank him for that, I guess." Ling shot Greed a withering look while continuing to thrash behind the wall Greed put up.

"Hey it worked out! I'm not dead, you're not dead, he did good!" Greed said with a laugh. "Side bar, being real for a second, you know if I wasn't actually there you would have kicked it, right?"

Ling stopped freaking out for a second to contemplate that.

I didn't get to where I was by making smart decisions. In fact, they were all very stupid and there were a lot of them in quick succession, he replied back.

Greed snickered. "Ha! We got that in common, don't we?" He went on looking around. Ling laid low and waited for an opportunity to strike.

"Hmm it seems like this Fan Lan chick still dislikes me greatly, good to know,” Greed continued, referencing a few memories of Ling's Greed-like behavior at parties and her very angry expression in regards to said behaviors. Greed was well acquainted with this look being about him because it was most of what he had seen from her the entire time he knew her. 

You know her name is Lan Fan and she kind of wanted you to stay dead after everything you put her through. Can't say I blame her… Ling trailed off and dove at Greed's hold over his memories. Greed knocked him away again.

“Then she is Fan Lan until further notice.”

See if that doesn't get you stabbed and hogtied.

“Sexy.”

Ugh.

Greed held Ling off with ease. (Once he had his foot in the door it was hard to keep him out. Ling kicked himself for getting complacent.) He continued to look around, going back farther. Ling squawked in alarm as Greed overturned something very juicy that had happened only a little while after they initially got back home to Xing.

He covered his eyes with his palms, squinting them tight to get a real good look at what Ling's memory showed. “Ho hooooo! Hooooold on! What's this? You had a funeral!? FOR ME? And am I mistaken or do I spy tears?? Was the emperor Crying? Ling, did you /Cry/?” Greed kicked his legs back and forth on the ground in joy and opened his mouth wide to voice a loud cackle, mean spirited. “Ahahahaha, wow, what a /baby/!!!”

Shut up, you DICK. You were dead! It seemed like the right thing to do! I didn't want you coming back to haunt me— we do right by the dead in Xing. You STILL ended up coming back anyway so I don't know why I fucking bothered! Nobody really knew you existed for the most part— What was I supposed to do just go on being Emperor and let everything go? Heaven strike me, you are such an /ass/!  Ling fumed. He was also angry over Alphonse being right.

Greed ignored him and wiped a tear of mirth from an eye while still chuckling, sitting up. He scanned the horizon and found the palace looming in the distance. It wasn't hard, it was the tallest building on the skyline. He got up and dusted his back off while Ling raged, reaching down to pick up the bun bag next to him. Crumpling the bag in one hand and orienting himself in the direction of home he made his way to the edge of the outcropping.

Time to head back, Ling guessed, reluctantly letting the anger go. They had been gone for a while and he grudgingly agreed with Greed's decision to return. He was surprised that a search party hadn't been sent out for him yet. Greed took off at a run again and tossed himself over the side of the building. Midway down he opened his mouth.

“Brat.”

What!? Ling was still pissed.

“Thank you.” It was nearly a whisper and almost lost to the flapping of his garments as they hit the wind.

HUH?  Ling froze, not believing that he heard what he thought he did.

Greed abruptly tossed Ling forward and took a backseat. Ling screamed at a very high pitch and scrambled to right himself as he was still in free fall. He grabbed at a long flag that was draped on the building wall with his clan house colors ironically worked into the fabric with an arm, swinging down with little grace to land in a jumble on the ground. He got up, extricating himself from his limbs, and brushed himself off angrily.

“The hell was that for?!” Ling griped. Greed had moved way back and was decidedly pulling the mental equivalent of not looking in Ling's direction. Ling found he was still holding the bag that the buns came in. He went to throw it away but the extra weight inside it stopped him. The smaller bonus bun was still uneaten. Ling grabbed it and took a bite– peckish always.

“You're welcome, you fucking bastard,” he mumbled around the bun. It was delicious.

Ling threaded the rest of the way home himself without any problems. It was properly night by the time he got back. He wasn't looking forward to explaining his absence but he couldn't say he regretted the escape. He had taken his time to fully enjoy the rare uninterrupted evening walk back through streets and alleyways instead of using the more expedient pathway of the rooftops. It had been months since he was loose on the streets of his country. Knocking aside any lingering awkwardness he took the liberty of pointing out a few of the more interesting landmarks to Greed on the way and answering a couple of his offered questions.

Most of those were along the lines of ‘how much did that eyesore cost?’ or ‘which clan's house was that and do we hate them?' Greed liked knowing where enemies lived, and Ling supposed his enemies were Greed's– if Greed was so inclined. It was almost a tour, although a true tour of the capital would take nearly a week at their pace. Xing was /huge/ and the capital was to scale. The streets they took from the market were narrow and maze like. They wove into tucked away corners and a greater amount of dead ends, statues riddled the squares, and fountains burbled everywhere. Many houses had their own gardens attached, especially as he got closer to the palace and the quality of the buildings took a sharp turn upward. Trees hung into the roadway with attractively low sweeping branches. It was late enough that the bustle of the day had gone but the night crowd wasn't yet out in full attendance. Quiet chatter and the sounds of the city could be heard. It was humid but there was a persistent breeze weaving in and out of the roadways, enough to stir his duster behind him in gentle vacillations as he walked on.  

Ling found the side of the palace where he had exited and waited under cover until the guards that were patrolling around vacated the premises, jumping up quickly and hauling over to the wall. He didn't particularly like how easy it was to get back in here. It made it nice for him but assassination attempts, while fun, were still sort of dangerous. He twitched his hands in soundless entreaty and Greed supplied the claws again in short order. Very handy.

Ling climbed the wall like a spider, jabbing his temporary claws into wood and rock alike. He avoided the traps with long practice and directed their locations to Greed in another off the cuff tour. He popped his head in the window of his bedroom. The lights were dark, which meant someone had been in there to turn them off. Not great news. He propped an arm on the sill to pull his weight through. Greed sounded an alarm and Ling ducked simultaneously. A knife narrowly missed him as it was thrown in the direction of his face and head area. Ling heard it fall and embed itself in something outside. 

“Lan Fan! It's me!” Ling said in alarm, seeing her telltale silhouette standing in the darkness. (Not many of his guards were so...compact.)

“I know,” she said with another few knives loaded and ready for throwing in her hands.

She stood in the middle of the room poised to attack. Alphonse straddled a chair off to the side, holding the back of it to his chest and resting his chin on the top of it. He reached back nonchalantly and turned on a desk lamp. It filled the room with a mellow glow. Ling pulled himself through the window when it was evident in the stand off that Lan Fan wasn't going to throw any knives at him for a few seconds.

“Your Majesty you cannot just up and leave the palace whenever you want- we have talked about this!” Lan Fan settled into a very familiar argument opener. She probed the young lord and could barely feel his chi even with his proximity and her advanced skills. He was getting too damn good at ducking her.

“We needed a quick break! We were only gone an hour or two. I left a note?” The note in question was crumpled in a ball on the floor in the corner where Lan Fan had left it after throwing it. 

At "we" Alphonse raised his head off the back of the chair.

“So uh, he's really—y’know?” Alphonse asked, gesturing to Ling’s head with a twirl of his fingers.

“Yeah! He’s- We- Hm? Okay,” Ling started to say, then cocked his head to the side, a listening gesture.

Suddenly, a change overtook him. Alphonse never had an opportunity to see it up close like this with nothing else distracting him. Ling’s open and animated posture turned inward and stooped slightly. His shoulders raised upward and his head drooped down. His stiff hands found his duster pockets. His eyes sunk into his head slightly, becoming more open but shrewd and glittery in exchange. His brows furrowed. His mouth was still turned upward in a smile but it gave itself over to becoming all teeth. His center of gravity shifted downward, his feet splaying themselves outward. He walked over to another chair and sat in it, throwing his legs on the armrest and his two elbows on the other, treating it more like a throne than Ling did to the real deal.

“Look at that Lan Fan, Ling could realistically walk about town and nobody would take him to be the emperor looking like that. Maybe you don't need to worry so much,” said Al in observation of the transformation and the familiar set of clothes. With his face and outfit Greed only looked like a distant echo of Ling at best.

Lan Fan raised a knife. Al smiled and raised his hands in surrender. “Hello again Greed, the prodigal Sin returns, huh,” he said, turning to Greed and keeping one arm raised in a wave.

“Hey kid, nice flesh body you got there. Congratulations. Good on ya'” Greed clapped his hands in appreciation a couple of times.

Al raised both his eyebrows in a questioning air.

Greed tapped his temple, “Played catch up on my stroll. Little bird told me some of the details. Told me that you headed up my retrieval brigade, too.”

“Ohhh. Well thanks! Glad you're back in one piece, too! Happy to help!” Alphonse was nothing if not polite. Greed looked at him warily, trying to find an angle and coming up empty as he studied Al's smile. He accepted the earnest welcome with a smile in turn. One that was rather predatory in nature– but still. 

Lan Fan didn't relax like Alphonse had around the monster now in charge of his Majesty. She wasn't sure what to do next. Upsettingly, she could just barely feel Greed's chi as well despite being VERY acquainted with tracing that particular signature. Ling must be doing something. She was relieved for a second at the thought of not having to explain to any chi readers but also terrified that Greed was nearly undetectable even though he was here and she was practically on top of him. Greed turned his attention to her with a wide grin, sensing she was distressed and it was probably about him.

“Heeey little lady, long time no see? Deepest apologies for all those times I outwitted ya' and skirted. We had different goals in mind at the time, you understand,” Greed got up from his chair and said with only a touch of mockery. He shuffled over to start ringing her like a shark. 

“I do not LIKE you, monster. Let me be clear. You may get a pass from Ling- but he is an idiot. I do not /like/ you and I’d say I trust you about as far as I can throw you but I can toss you quite far,” she said while watching him amble around, a challenge evident in her voice.

“Ling's hurt by the idiot comment, honey. I'm similarly wounded over the monster comment but I'll get better,” Greed said with a purse of his lips. He took his hands out of his pockets and touched his chest with both palms, playing at being aggrieved.

“I never knew how that worked,” Al interjected into the burgeoning spat, curious, “he's there all the time and stuff? Can he hear us, is he like— /aware/, or does he go to sleep or–?”

“Well I can but—We're mostly awake when- Don't wanna miss anything—It's boring being asleep–I got enough of that already–Right here,” they both talked over each other in a dizzying display.

“Never do that in front of people ever,” said Lan Fan eyes wide. It was freakish how Ling's facial features morphed and rolled between the two with ease. If a stranger saw it they'd want him admitted.

Greed picked up on her discomfort. “Hey, hey, you can't tell the Emperor what to do, sweetie.”

“You are not the Emperor, cretin, you're just squatting.”

“Hey, squatters have rights! He says I'm gonna call the shots too, it's only fair since I got halvsies.” Greed jabbed a thumb at his chest and then put a hand on his hip.

Lan Fan did not want to know what ‘halvsies’ entailed or what Ling had agreed to.

Ling's stomach growled loudly, garnering everyone’s attention in the room.

“Let's continue to talk over dinner everyone. I'm sure we're all hungry and it's getting pretty late,” said Al, acting for once like the diplomat he was being paid to be. “Didn't you guys eat when you were out?” he followed up with Greed while ushering everyone out of the room. Ling broke through and answered.

“Only like a half a dozen buns from Wuzhaos, barely a snack, I'm still hungry. Eating for two, am I right?”

Al replied with a snort of laughter.

----------

“/Yes/ you have to change! The servants will be here any second and you cannot be seen in those street clothes!” shouted Lan Fan into the closet she had cornered Greed, who was stubbornly insisting to remain in his various shades of black.  

“This is fine! It's clothes!” Greed spat and moved an arm, flicking his hand from side to side and motioning to his body with a sweep of his arm.

“No it is /not/ fine!” she hollered and tossed the ball of a many layered evening robe at his head while Alphonse watched in quiet amusement. Greed stalked out in the finery a few moments later after a word or two from Ling about how his meal hung in the balance. He kept his hair in a ponytail instead of tying it up in a proper top knot as a last act of defiance.

They sat at a long table in an outer room for receiving guests that was adjacent to the bedroom on the floor on some pillows for seating. The servants arrived those few moments later with many trays of food. Al had ordered a lot. A few were brave enough to look at his Majesty directly and comment that they were glad he was feeling better. Greed was still evidently present but had a Lingish demeanor as he nodded acknowledgement at them. Lan Fan didn't like how hard it was to tell who was in control at that moment.

The servants left them alone after an additional few moments. Seconds after they left Greed leaned back on one arm and stuck his legs out from under his robe, lolling his head and scratching his neck in slovenly relaxed movements. He blew Lings bangs out of his face with a puff and regarded the spread. The table was decked out with a lot of platters of different fare. Some had vegetables, others were still sizzling with meat and the heat of the skillet. A tureen of soup practically still boiled in the middle of the table. There were condiments and eggs, spreads and sauces. There was even an entire loaf of bread.

"Alphonse, what did you order?" Lan Fan looked disbelievingly at all the food, this was enough for a gathering– not what amounted to three stomachs.

"I just said send up an assortment, don't look at me! They always go overboard!" Al was sure that even this late at night the kitchen was bustling with activity.

Greed rubbed his hands in anticipation and looked for drink to go with the food. There was a pitcher of water and a chilled flute of what looked like some kind of juice. Probably orange given the time of year. He ignored those and addressed Ling out loud. 

“Got anything decent to pair this with?” he pointed at all the food ladening the table. “Red would be nice, I'm parched. No rice wine tonight that gives you—and by extension- /me/, cottonmouth.”

Greed listened with that peculiar head motion for the subsequent and inaudible reply. He snapped his fingers a few times in Al’s direction.

“Be a sport and go in the cabinet over there, get the third? Third right? Yeah, third okay—bottle out. Bring it over, will ya?” He pointed to a squat wooden frame with glass fronts that was sitting along the wall.

Saved it just in case. Was gonna pour it on your grave but I couldn't waste it like that, Ling muttered.

Greed spoke internally, Grave? Oh man. I got one of those? Always wanted one! Ling didn't laugh at the joke. Greed did and pressed on. 

Oh we have /got/ to go to my grave sometime soon. I'm /so/ going to dance on my own grave.

Ling was the picture of impassivity. 

Anyways. Gifts? Don't go sappy on me, boy, I didn't get you anything! Figured the best gift you could receive is getting to be in my magnanimous presence all the time!

Shut the fuck up and look at what it is, then talk to me again.

Greed blew air out of his nose in a snicker and turned outward.

Al dutifully did what he had been asked and Lan Fan primly dunked some chopped asparagus in some sauce, ignoring everyone.

Al brought the bottle over and presented it to Greed with a flourish. Label up. Clos de Vougeot. Greed’s eyes widened. He actually gasped.

“An 1800!?”

Pause.

“Okay. You have actually done the impossible and impressed me,” he said with a rigid poker face. 

Greed's hands actually shook a little as he accepted the bottle from Alphonse.

“Didn't think these were even still in existence, how'd you—?

- uh huh.

Hoh, wow, and you entertained the meeting just because he had the wine, huh? You didn't let him have the political position afterward?

-uh huh.

Mmm.

Jail? Embezzlement? You confiscated everything? The whole cellar?

Two -hoo boy- two hundred assorted bottles? Oh you really are making my heart sing here, kid. I'm touched. I'm nearly weepy!” he cawed. Half an entire conversation was lost to the other two at the table.

Greed shined the bottle with a napkin and used a newly formed claw to slice the top part of it clean off. He clearly didn't want to be able to seal it again. He leaned forward and grabbed a decanter that was meant for serving the juice as well as a couple glasses in his hands, setting the bottle down in reverence when he was finished. He proceeded to enact with expertise a very complicated set of movements.

First, he took the bottle and smelled into it; eyes closed and a growl of intense appreciation deep in his throat. Then he took about half of it and poured it in a long glittering line a foot or more into the decanter in his other hand with a swift gesture. He shook the liquid hard for a time, plugging the opening of the decanter with a thumb. Then he opened the decanter and poured the ruby and plum colored fluid into three glasses. He grabbed one and placed his pinky and ring finger of his other hand on the table in a delicate motion of offering with his palm splayed upward.

“Take a sip of that shit.”

Greed held his glass up to the light while he waited for the others, rolling it from side to side so it caught the light and shined out of it in colors ranging from deep scarlets to violets.

Lan Fan cautiously grabbed her glass, cowed by the display of what was clearly wine knowledge out of her depth. Greed knew things? Real things? Al opened his mouth to say something along the lines that he was under aged but Greed stopped him with a look.

“This isn't getting drunk. This is art in a bottle and you aren't gonna get anything like it ever again so enjoy it. It's one glass and fancy,” he said with absolute seriousness. Alphonse grabbed his portion with a blink.

Greed raised his glass in a toast, poised to say something rude by his expression. Ling grabbed control.

“To Greed. Not the sin but the guy, glad to have you back, buddy.” Lan Fan and Al echoed the toast. Al with a genuine air and something nice to say. Lan Fan slightly resigned and frustrated with only a muttered "Cheers", but happy at the expression of extreme distress it brought Greed. Greed spluttered and hawed at the genuine good will.  

“Yeah okay— fuck off already! Fuck.”

They sipped and Greed was shockingly right. Lan Fan had sampled wine as a side effect of being a retainer to the emperor. One needed to have a passing knowledge of a lot of rich people hobbies if they were going to work closely with royalty of any kind. Protocol, fine wines, and clothing. It did not do to insult a guest by not knowing the difference between vintages and guests would absolutely take the time to probe retainers. How could someone even hope to compete if ‘the help’ wasn't up to snuff? It was insulting but totally in line Xingese upper crust behavior. The wine was phenomenally good. She didn't even want to know how much a glass cost, if you could even put a price on it.

Alphonse meanwhile didn't have a sophisticated palette like the other two and a half people at the table but he did cook and eat good food regularly. He had an inkling of what was being served to him and it's deep and complex flavor.

Ice relatively broken over Greed’s ludicrous display of actual knowledge on a topic, they caught up together over the meal. Ling and Greed both tried to chat audibly for the benefit of the other two at Al's behest; he was tired of missing half of what was being said.

It was fascinating to watch them work to eat. They traded over bites of food and bits of conversation, fighting over a choice table scrap or who was going to tell the next story. At one point they had operated two sets of utensils in tandem and continued to have a four way conversation all while still eating at a fast clip. Greed stabbed at a lot of his meal with the sticks, unused to the utensils, but working his way around them bluntly. He only dropped the food a few times but rapidly got better when Ling started to snatch it out of the air from his fumbles and eat it in his stead. 

Lan Fan had stopped eating a while ago and watched the show with a combination of disgust and curiosity. Al ate more, clearly enjoying the free dinner entertainment.

“Isn't it the same means to an end anyway? Eating I mean?” asked Al to Greed around a mouthful.

Greed chewed a huge bite of meat and looked at Al while thinking up an answer to his honest question. Without taking his eyes off Al he slapped at his hand that was going for the wine glass to his left seemingly independently while he was conversationally distracted. His fingers flipped him off and went for the soup instead, pouring a bowl and cracking a few raw eggs into it deftly. It stirred it with a few whisks of the chopsticks he was using and proffered it to the side of Greed's face with a couple of wrist flicks. Greed’s face set itself into a frown at an inquiry from Ling that the other two didn’t hear but could guess the details of.

“My gift, my rules! Go to hell. I /ain’t/ sharing!! Uhhh that’s my /deal/, punk, remember? Greed? Sharing isn't in my wheelhouse. Okay, okay, Fine. ONE glass. Fine, you get next.” Greed said in a rush. It was probably about the half drunk bottle of red on the table and whether Ling could have his own.

He swallowed his bites and sipped at the soup his hand held.

“Hmm. Soup is good like this. Alright, try this on for size. Yeah I know what I’m doing!”

Suddenly it was Ling sipping the rest of the soup with relish. He revisited Al's original question.

“Sure, yeah— I guess, but it tastes better when you get to eat it yourself. Dunno? You and I both know that I don't like sharing food as much as Greed does. We're not missing out on food. We both can agree on that.”

A hand of his snaked out while he was explaining, grabbed at a flat pancake and layered medallions of baked duck into it. It ladled sweet jam sauce on top, rolling it into a cigar shape and holding it at Ling's face level. Ling bit at with a side snap also not taking his attention off the conversation and his other hand off his soup bowl.

”Fig preserves huh? You got weird taste, Greed. Can't say I hate the results,” he remarked around the bite.

Greed's approach to food was something like 'many good tastes taste good together'. When he was a home grown homunculus he didn't have to eat or drink and would do so just to sample the finer things in life. With Ling's dietary needs actual hunger put extra spice on everything.  

Al looked at Lan Fan as they watched both squabble over the last half of the pancake until it dropped into the soup. Ling reacted with a cry of joy when he sipped at the resulting combination at the heels of Greed's reprimand at how stupid Ling was to waste that bit of food in the mix.

Greed broke off arguing to down the rest before Ling could out of principle and made a similar noise of approval at it. Ling abandoned the bowl and reached over the table to grab at the bread and nearly got a serving fork in the hand for his trouble. He snatched at it anyway and ripped it in half, then half again after glancing at the other two at the table. He took the quarter and used it to mop up the soup. Greed snatched the other quarter and dunked it directly into the tureen. He burned himself upon inhaling it and sucked in air like an intake valve trying to cool his mouth. He then went to double dip but got distracted by Ling looking to grab a scoop of some kind of cheese concoction and raced to get there first.  

‘What did they create here?’ was the unspoken sentiment between the two onlookers as Ling jammed a chopstick up his own nose to rouse an angry cry out of Greed as Greed went for what was apparently Ling’s plate of goodies.

Greed made more pancakes and threw a couple on Alphonse' plate with a dare to try them. Al grabbed them, never one to turn down food, especially /new/ food, and gushed at the combination of flavors that shouldn't work but did. He demanded that Greed replicate what he did so he could make the treat later for himself. Greed made another while Al watched and rooted around for paper to write it down, offering it to Lan Fan with a grin. He knew she wasn't going to take it and smiled wider when she held up a hand in curt refusal. He ate what he had offered her and told her she was losing out with the tip of his tongue sticking out in juvenile mockery. She turned her nose up at him which only made Greed want to agitate her more.

Ling tugged on his own ponytail in a bid to distract Greed from yet another altercation with Lan Fan. It worked when Greed's head turned back to the table to find that Ling's glass looked fuller than the last time he had assessed the food situation. He opened his mouth to start arguing and Ling shoved fancy shrimp into it. The ploy worked as Greed settled down to chew. 

Later on when most of the meal had been eaten and even the combined bottomless pit were only picking at the rest they all goaded Lan Fan into participating in the conversation despite the earlier snub. She reluctantly gave in, electing to describe many of her accounts of the times in between meeting up with Greed because Al had never heard a good chunk of that time period from her perspective before. She relayed the story much like a hunter talking about stalking an animal. It was interesting stuff, Greed even hung on her words even though she spoke about him derogatorily. She hated that, as she was looking to get a rise out of him.

Knuckling under to interacting with the group in earnest she even told a few embarrassing stories about Ling at Al’s prompting. Greed noted that Al was quite the little smoother of relations privately to Ling and Ling replied evenly that a diplomat didn't just hang out at parties and pass him drinks. Only sometimes.

Ling then pouted while Greed slapped his knee over the time he had gotten into the pickled vegetables when he was a lot younger and nearly took his eye out with a flung lid that had been under too much pressure from the pickling process when he had tried to open it. Ling meanwhile shared a few choice bits of his and Greed's growing pains with Al that Lan Fan had heard before.

Highlights of those times included; Greed running away from the local authorities after ripping off a diner with the old 'dine and dash' but going further in faking his own murder in a nearby alleyway by slashing himself up and laying in a heap. It had worked extremely well at the time as his pursuers screamed and bolted to get the real police— Greed picking himself back up and scooted before they came back, leaving only stains on the ground and a lot of questions from the staff.     

To her horror Greed had even gotten a small snort of laughter to creep out of Lan Fan’s mouth over telling a story how he had broken into a chicken coop to steal eggs when he was on the lamb and got attacked and bit to hell and back by a fox who had the same idea about the chickens.

They cleaned up and left the nearly spotless dishes in a neat pile in the hallway for the servants. “So now what, with like, everything?” asked Alphonse, addressing the two jointly.

“Oh I've got some great ideas,” Greed said, mouth curling over itself into a slash of a grin. “For now let’s see about those meetings -We- have tomorrow."

Lan Fan glowered at Greed making himself at home.

The meetings next day were 'interesting' if they were to be quickly defined. Attendees knew the emperor had been under the weather so they excused his odd behavior as best they could and kept gossip to a maximum under the table.

Emperor Yao wore what was probably his second most opulent set of clothes outside of the ones he wore during his coronation. It was honestly neck and neck. He was practically dipped in precious stones, even wearing earring cuffs and a few pins with jewel tips in his hair. Every ring had to share a finger with at least one other. His robes were red edged with black with at least four layers to them, despite the heat of the packed room. The large effect was that he owned the eyes of the room with the local clans that, while opulent, were decidedly out gaudied. They didn't know how to take the overt display of wealth from the Emperor who usually was dressed sumptuously yet tastefully most of the time. A few rings and possibly a hair ornament being the norm. Was this some kind of new tactic?

The room was jam packed with people, from the other clan heads looking to interject their business, to many foreign representatives gathering information real time as laws were being set out. Ling had set down that his court was to be kept relatively open in the interest of fostering foreign relations and representatives from all over jumped at the chance to sit in on Xing being changed. For the aid of their own causes of course.

For the benefit of Alphonse and other foreign representatives sitting in they had been speaking in Amestrian for the duration of the meeting. It tended to be at least everyone's second language because of the influence the country had had on the rest of the world so it was fine to work in with almost everyone that wished to talk politics. The more xenophobic clan heads even used it but under the heading of 'we don't expect these boors to learn the right language so we'll be the polite ones and translate for them'.

It was passive aggressive but at least they were all talking without the need for translators. Too much room for error. Ling was also thankful he didn't have to roll a translation at Greed while trying to keep his head above water with what was effectively two clan heads squabbling over apparent personal problems under the guise of politics.

“So you mean to tell me we have not moved at all on the topic of clan reorganization?” Ling asked, notes of agitation evident even in his Emperor voice. He sat on a high chair, literally elevated from the rest of the group. He hated it up there, all the heat rose in the stuffy room and made it more unbearable to be in than it already was on the floor. The two who had been arguing amongst themselves looked up.

“No– your Majesty! We cannot continue until this is settled! It is old business, old business comes first!” Cheung said, all pinched face and overly done up in kingfisher blue. A lesser ruler than Ling would have rebuked him already for his rudeness but Ling was Tired and not willing to get into it.

I don't like these two; they're hiding something.

Shh!

Nuh uh, I got something to say.

Ling went to argue but realized that besides an occasional comment (rude), or question (less rude), Greed had been completely silent and well behaved for the five hours they had been at this already. Ling stepped back with a warning:

Greed, please don’t do anything too out of step….

Yeah, yeah, keep your crown on—I’m aware of how to act.

Ling immediately needed to stop Greed throwing his legs up onto the table that was also up high with the chair and lazing back, causing an international incident. Greed turned the slight fight into a smooth motion of getting up instead but pushed Ling far back in retaliation.

Once again Greed had gotten the jump on him! Ling struggled, but couldn’t even make a dent (he was out of practice and additionally didn't want to make his body collapse or anything else that could be upsetting to the crowd of onlookers) so instead he uselessly yelled at Greed that he better knock off whatever he was about to try. Greed used the stairs next to the chair to come down to their level and traipsed over to the two clan heads. He paid no mind to Ling as Ling got increasingly furious and rattled his figurative cage.

“You, Red,” He bypassed the head looking to talk to him first and snapped his fingers at the other head (who was dressed in light red robes and had /not/ mouthed off at Ling) a couple of times.

Name! Greed barked at Ling.

Ling stopped yelling for a scant moment to reluctantly supply Greed with the information. ‘The Emperor’ couldn’t just suddenly forget a minor clan head’s name after listening to him talk for hours. He had an audience watching.

“Hmm, Chen? Chen. Yeah. Oh of course it's Cheung and Chen! Make matters worse. Not today. Let's make it easy! Red!” he muttered while emphasizing the last part at a clearer volume and pointing at the man decked in that color.

The man reacted by staring at the emperor and then pointing at himself slowly.

“Yes, /you/! Reiterate for me why we have been listening to you two argue about -nothing- for HOURS!” said Greed, shooting both men dirty looks.

Ling was intrigued and yet horrified at Greed's approach. He not so secretly had desperately wanted to start yelling hours ago. The men had been trading insults veiled in political jargon about land ownership and road maps since the meeting started.

Both men were extremely out of their depth regarding the attitude the emperor was exhibiting. They even shared an honest look of confusion in a quick second of eye contact. ‘Red’ took initiative and opened his mouth.

“We have two differing viewpoints about how to utilize the road system between two or more buildings owned by different people—” Greed cut him off with a chopping motion.

“No, Red. Give me the real reason.”

Red gaped, considered his options quickly, and then with a deep breath said,

“The Esteemed Cheung’s daughter ran off with my son. Eloped. He blames it on me that she ran off with him and says that I’ve convinced my son to do it for the money. Our clan, to be frank with you Your Majesty, is poor. As you know. I have not seen nor heard anything from my son or his daughter in months. He refuses to pay any dowry despite it being my first born and his sixth daughter. We need that money to continue on." The sheepish way he admitted his poverty colored his face close to the shade of his robes which, at close inspection, had a few carefully hidden alterations and repairs.

"There are dual reasons, the main one is our financial status and needing to support the rest of my family without my son. The second for the legality reasons of having to pick a new heir to my humble estates in the event he does not return. Naming a new heir in an official capacity is rife with paper work—I don't have to tell you that part, your Majesty,” he finished despite the spluttering from the other party.

“Alright, now that makes /sense/. Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Greed asked. He clapped him on the back in a friendly manner. Ling was pretty stunned at the revelation but didn't let off hammering at his captor. 'Red' seemed to forget exactly who it was he was talking to and smiled widely at Greed. ‘Blue’ remembered.

“Your Excellency! The Chen clan has always been jealous of us! We of course do not fraternize with them, as they are far lower than us. My daughter would not have run off with such filth! I was in talks to have her married to someone properly befitting her station!”

“How long since you started having those talks?” asked Greed with an air of already knowing the answer. 

“A-a few years, Excellency,” he said, clipped and proper. And sweaty all of a sudden.

Greed cuffed his wrists into his sleeves. He stood between the two clan heads and cast a quick eye at his audience. 

“Sounds kind of like exactly what Red said over here happened. If they wanted the payout for selfish reasons his son would have hung around and made it official. He had enough clout as the family head to bring it to court and probably win. She is only your sixth daughter and the barrier of receiving your blessing on the marriage wouldn't entirely hold up when all other parties were enthusiastic," Greed continued with aplomb.

"He probably knew that his family wouldn't see a single coin if they ran but they most likely /had/ to run because you would have made his death look like an accident if he stuck around. Don't bother arguing I'm right and you know it." Greed broke off for a moment to analyze the faces of the two men. 'Blue' was getting redder and redder. He looked like he wanted to say something but was barely keeping it in.

"And—?" he continued, "It doesn’t matter, you’re paying out. Eloped is still married and I have the opinion that matters so you either pay what you owe or I give him some of your land to do what he wills with it. You have two years to put together a proper payout plan and have this clan fully compensated, that's more than fair considering you should have done this months ago," Greed put a few fingers on his chin in thought.

The onlookers were entirely silent, hanging on his every word. It wasn't every day the Emperor climbed down from his tower to give someone a verbal thrashing. They had never seen the like from Ling Yao before. Greed popped a fist down into his open palm, coming to a decision.

"I give him... let's say about a sixth of your land to hold as collateral. He can sell it at the end if you don’t pay. Or, new plan, building buildings that he owns on it would be a good start. I seem to remember a law that if you build a building on unclaimed land and let it stand for a year that land is yours now.” Greed said airily and flapped his robes near the fringe that trailed on the floor behind him free of imagined wrinkles like that was the most important thing he could be doing at the moment.

‘Blue’ went nearly apoplectic.

“What gives you the RIGHT—” and also suddenly didn’t remember who he was talking to.

Greed's expression which had been very congenial sharpened into something more rakish. “Since both your estates are within the capital I have the /right/ to seize holdings within the capital at any time and award them to sub contractors under the law sub-clause of beautification of the capital. I would like to seize your land in order to build a new park. Too many walls around here. I put Red here in charge of building something nice on it, a bathhouse maybe.” Greed went over and squeezed the very emotionally compromised clan head’s shoulder.

Truth outed to the floor there was nothing the men could do now but pack up and take their seats. 'Blue' desperately wanted to open his mouth again to argue but didn't push his luck when he saw Emperor Yao's quick expression directed his way. It was barely a flash of murderous intent but 'Blue' felt a chill hit the humid room despite his layered robes.

If anyone tried anything funny there would be...implications. Everyone involved had to go by the book based on everyone else in the room knowing the gossip now. If ‘Blue’ welched on the deal set down by the Emperor himself he would be a laughing stock and thrown into jail at best. Red had no heir and had to stay above board if the Emperor was going to allow the naming of a new one; something that Ling did indeed preside over. If the elopers came back and tried to collect on the original price now the better deal would be void and if they annulled the entire thing would be thrown out.

Greed’s keen ears picked up some interesting subvocalized comments from the onlookers, “Oh thank god."

"That’s what this was all about?"

"— A dowry?"

"— Thorn in all our sides."

"— I would have paid had it gotten them to shut up.”

There was also more than a little tittering at the outburst of the Emperor in general but it was drowned out by the larger wave of abject relief from everyone in the room. 

He directed his attention back to Ling who had stopped kicking and screaming at some point.

See, knew it was a simple fix. Sometimes instead of trying to untie a difficult knot you just gotta cut it all off.

GREED, you can’t just invoke that kind of law! Nobody has even used it in years!

Seems fine to me, laws is laws.

Gods! I should have never—

Contrary to popular belief I can understand being too greedy about something, brat. Blue was glad his daughter was gone, he was at a loss at how to marry her off anyway. It was obvious. People seem to not like him as far as I can glean from the crowd. Nobody wants to marry in on insufferable company.

I can identify with not liking extended family.

Also, despite all that money he obviously has he has no idea how to use it. That blue silk he's wrapped head to toe in is about a billion cenz per yard and he just makes full on robes with it. Tasteful would have been an under robe peeking out of the collar. Who uses that kind of flash for a whole piece? Someone used to flaunting cash with no style. What an affront.

Greed tossed his head in disgust.

Ling refused to comment on how they were dressed at that moment.

He was just hung up over the clan thing. Which you are trying to fix, right? Put all the bullshit on the table, that’s my motto.

But the beautification seizure clauses are older than dirt, how did you know?

Two hundred.

Ling nodded in understanding, that was how old he was. Ah. Yeah. Wait okay—why do you know Xingese law?

Laws make it so you can take and nobody can do anything to get it back. Nobody is greedier than lawmakers, boy. I keep my ears out for good ones.

Ling hated to admit it but Greed had brazenly cleared up a problem they had been dealing with on and off for days by verbally bashing everyone into submission.

“What do you mean two days?!” Lan fan shouted at Greed who was squatting and rifling through a drawer of jewelry on the ground, checking the cut of the gemstones with a jeweler's loop.

“You heard Ling— I get... roughly speaking, two days to myself a week. One for business one for pleasure,” looking up at her with a lurid grin he held up a large ring with a blood red stone to the light for better viewing.

“Should get more but I realize an Emperor’s work is never done. This will work for now until we get a better timetable hammered out. I’m serious about my half.” He tried the ring on an index finger and held his hand up, it looked like it matched well with his mark. He grabbed a few other red ones in the drawer to heighten the effect. 

“Half of what?”

“Little bit of this and that,” he said, noncommittal and a little cheeky. He took the rings off and cupped his favorites in his hands, jingling them against his fingers. He raised one of the plainer ones to his mouth, meaning to bite it and check the gold content.

“Ling. Now.” she grated in his direction. Greed looked up at her and winked but passed the baton over to Ling without a fight.

“Yes, Lan Fan?” Ling stood up and put the couple of rings he was still holding down.

“Why did you agree to this?”

“It is only fair, Lan Fan. He has been putting in the work.”

Greed shockingly /had/ been putting in the work the last week or so, not only defusing a few more difficult clan disputes (although they weren't as bombastic as the first— but still just as petty) but actually working the room well enough at a recent party that relations between still other clan match ups had come out the far side smooth as silk. It also helped that Ling wasn't sloshed any more for the latter half of the events. Inroads were truly being made to the ire of still other clans that were trying to hold up the process as much as possible.

Lan Fan hated to admit it but Greed knew what made people tick. It just so happened that these people were exorbitantly /greedy/ and who knew greed better than Greed? He, to her eternal woe, was in his element. 

Ling had reluctantly outlined to her a basic premise that Greed would indeed get at least one day as Emperor a week to be chosen weekly at a trial run. It depended on what they had going in the week and what Greed would be most apt at handling. Greed had groused at ‘getting cheated’ but also commented that being Emperor was ‘a lot of boring shit’ and he ‘couldn’t be expected to give a shit one hundred percent of the time.’

“That’s why I keep the brat around,” he nudged Al with an elbow after Ling explained the outline to them both over another dinner.

“I was not aware I was being ‘kept around’ Greed, in fact it seems sort of like you’re enjoying my hospitality!” Ling shot back. 

“I’m not enjoying being mouthed off to.”

In exchange for not berating Ling (too much) he would also get at least half a day (night time probably), but hopefully a full one to do his own thing. Depending on how full the week was. Ling was secretly thankful for the second clause because it indirectly gave him a break at being Emperor. He didn't inform Lan Fan about the last part but Greed understood immediately when Ling had agreed no problem, holding it over Ling’s head as leverage.

They hadn't been out since their joint first escape the night Greed had returned and Greed had been whining non stop about being cooped up. Ling had to agree and was silently working on a plan of egress, choosing activities that he had secretly wanted to do and knew he could convince Greed were fun enough to blow his free day on. Greed also had been getting better at dampening his own chi, needing Ling's influence less and less as the days turned to a week.

As it was, Lan Fan would have preferred exactly -no- days where Ling went off gallivanting with the monster to who-knows-where doing god-knows-what. She was also horrified at Greed being able to make any decisions in running the country at all. She voiced that concern to Ling, loudly. Ling replied that he /was/ there the whole time, nothing was happening that he wasn’t privy to, remember? He was chaperoning!

He retained an inherent right to veto Greed's more terrible ideas. Greed smoothing things out had cleared considerable time in his busy schedule so Ling tried to rationalize it to Lan Fan that he was just kicking time back to Greed that he wouldn't have had without him. She didn't see it that way.  

On top of the full days that he was getting they also switched off during the day at random intervals. Greed showed a special interest in a training room full of weapons in the mornings. He was apparently still displeased at Ling’s physical condition on their escape last week and had been putting in the time on getting muscle tone back. Ling also didn't mind that at all as a little exercise was good and more importantly Greed burned off steam. It kept him out of trouble. They additionally were doing better at seamless switching, realizing that they did not need to tip off anyone in the palace that anything was different about Ling.

Greed worked on his Ling impression but it wasn't great. Lan Fan and Alphonse always knew it was him after a moment or two. It was sufficient for the staff, or sufficient enough when he remembered to use it.

Greed had already frightened a few maids he nearly tripped over while roaming the palace at odd hours, swearing powerfully in surprise. They just about fainted when they saw it was the Emperor they had nearly caused to fall on the floor, bowing and scraping an apology. Greed had yanked them both up by their napes of their robes and sat with them until they calmed down, telling dirty jokes. They sat there in bewilderment as he jumped up mid joke with a scream that he was late for 'those farm assholes and their wheat problems' and ran off. That incident of course was palace-wide gossip fodder within the hour. Al heard it in about twenty minutes.

Fights between the two were supposed to be only in secret and very quick if they fought publicly. Many a palace regular would hear muffled yelling from multiple voices coming from the Emperor's rooms despite him being supposedly alone, especially in the evenings. Smashing furniture and bangs were audible from the floors below, but anyone sent to investigate was met with a placid smile and gentle assurance that 'everything was fiiiine' from their Emperor. The tableau of him being ringed with upset furniture, smashed plates, and strewn papers everywhere notwithstanding.

Even in a public setting they still did fight like animals as quietly as they could. Ling would go oddly distant mid meeting or when commuting to a new venue. His face would pinch inward in dislocation to what was going on around him. Sharp onlookers would see the Emperor's usual fixed smile change a lot in the recent days, going from joy filled grins to something bordering on rage or annoyance at the drop of a hat at seemingly nothing. Given Ling's odd behavior over the last year his staff thought that he was just entering a new phase of weird and remarked that they weren't being paid a sight better than their old salaries to question it. 

One night later in the week Lan Fan found Ling nearly buried in papers with an abacus on his lap, muttering to himself and jotting things down in a positively gigantic ledger. He had tied his hair up in a high ponytail and pulled the sleeves of his robe up to his shoulders, securing them to his arms with cord. He looked like he was going to clean house and not pour over important documents. She snickered at the mental image of Ling cleaning anything. He turned around at the noise. It was Greed.

Her smile evaporated.

“What are you doing, homunculus?”

“Well, human,” Greed leveled back, “if you /must/ know it pertains to these accounts. I have got to protect my interests here so I’m balancing them up through the last year. Can’t let a red cenz out of my sight in this place, they grow legs. I like and respect the greed going on but I don’t like when it concerns my money lining other people’s pockets.”

“It is not your money. I was not aware you knew math.”

“Oh real cute, everything is mine, get used to it. I am over two hundred years old, remember, I picked up math along the way. This isn’t math in any case, math is about measuring how much water is in a cup. This is MONEY. Greed /knows/ money. Instinct like.” He looked back at her with a smirk.

Lan Fan knew that balancing the accounts was something that Ling had been bemoaning all day at having to recheck in the morning because of not being able to trust such large sums to only clerical workers. The threat of money going where it shouldn't was too strong. Lan Fan and Ling both were okay with math but it was not something that they could sit for hours and do like the books demanded. They were both guilty of putting it off and nearly to the point of asking Alphonse to do something. 

Greed, as evident by a stack of dishes at his side and the books looking to be more than halfway finished in their /entirety/ had indeed been sitting there for hours.

“Ling, you should go to bed,” she said, looking past Greed.

“He’s been asleep since before I even started these,” Greed motioned to the books and knocked on his forehead a few times with a knuckle.

“How can he be asleep but you are awake?” Lan Fan caught herself asking a genuine question. She mentally kicked herself.  

“It's not as good as actually laying down and catching a few for real but we only need about four to six a night if we trade off. Mind and body are different. A catnap is better than no sleep. I was practically comatose during the meetings today so I can't sleep now even if I didn't have important shit to do,” he said distractedly, flicking beads back and forth and chewing on a cracker. He turned back to work with a shrug when she didn't reply, too busy to antagonize her. She took off soon after that, lost on how to proceed after that display.

---

Later the next morning after Ling had listened to accounts of important news updates he went on the move as he surreptitiously gave Greed a fuller tour of the palace. Greed had woken him up when he got lost trying to find his way back from a kitchen trip for snacks late last night and had subsequently demanded the full tour to look at his ‘acquisitions and assets’ in the morning.

Or, as Ling didn't need to suspect, he needed a working map of the confines of the palace and was being proud about it.

Ling had then found the ledger of the last year's accounts nearly completed (what was to have been his task for the morning and probably all afternoon as well) and agreed enthusiastically. Last he remembered he was just starting going through it very late last night. The handwriting was slightly shaky with bold pen pressure, it was nothing like the elegant numbers of his various workers, Lan Fan's round letters, or his own chicken scratch.

Greed was very quiet.

Ling clapped his hands with a laugh when he figured it out. Immediately he took to setting in and needling Greed after setting the task for the morning, not directly implicating Greed in doing something nice for someone else but implying it heavily as they got ready. Lan Fan later found Ling in a headlock by way of his own arms and trying his best to choke out the word ‘uncle’ on the floor before passing out.

She broke them up with a few swift kicks and then joined them as Ling made his way through the floors and hallways. Greed was out and about for most of the trip, vocalizing his various comments because he knew it set Lan Fan on edge as a thank you for being kicked. He had demanded immediately that a few bed chambers to be redone ‘properly’ to fit his aesthetics.

“Can't stand this sleepin’ on the floor shit, I want a proper bed! Also I can't abide all these twiddly little flowers and birds laying around. Fancy junk everywhere. I'm drafting some designs…”

Alphonse sleepily poked his head out into the hallway at the familiar outburst and went with them as they proceeded with the tour. He pointed out a few rooms that he thought Greed would like to poke his head into at some point. One was a treasure trove of knickknacks that Important People had given to Ling that were too ugly to display but from important enough people that they couldn't just sell or re-gift them. Another place of interest were his own rooms, which he showed off bashfully as they had fully morphed into a library that happened to house a bed. 

They later met Mei in what was the third or fourth walled garden they had walked through that hour. She was knee deep in a pond looking in wonder at the various jewel-colored fish. The pond was situated under a low branched tree with benches ringing the sides, Mei's shoes were on one such bench nearby. 

“Hey Mei I just wanted to thank you so much for your help the other day—” Ling started to say while striding over.

“Hi Greed!” she chirped without taking her eyes off the fish. Ling's smile grew a lot of teeth.

“Oh she’s good.” Greed pointed at Mei in admiration. “I was doing a pretty good job, blocked my chi and everything. What tipped you off?”

“You walk on your toes, like a kitty,” she grinned up at him, “Ling uses the sides of his feet.”

“Hmm. Noted. You ever need a favor, you give me a call.” He offered a hand and she took it in her own smaller one without hesitation. He pulled her out of the pond and shook it a few times.

“Got it,” she said, eyes steely.

Al’s shoulders shook in laughter and Lan Fan berated herself for not figuring out the gait thing sooner.

They left Mei where she was and made their egress to Ling's appointments for the day.

---

“I told you, Brother never got back to me after the day we… you know,” Al said, looking around to see if anyone was listening as he lounged on, and Lan Fan stood next to, a couch on the far side of a large hall. The hall had high ceilings, little to no furniture, and few hangings on the walls. It was stark. The sole purpose of the hall was for the Emperor to receive miscellaneous small groups.

The lack of furniture meant that people needed to stand if they wanted to talk, it was a gentle reminder that their time was limited. There was a process to even get permission to apply to see the Emperor and many of these people had stubbornly waited days if not weeks for an audience. These limited audiences ranged from disputes and entitlement claims to appeals concerning applications for investments from the treasury.

“I called him the next day to say we did well and they said he had already checked out. I sent him a postcard to the next hotel he should arrive at but it's been some time since I've heard from him.”

Ling or possibly Greed had just finished with the last group when someone in clerical robes came and whispered in his ear. He replied with a reserved "clear the rest for the day and send him in."

The secretary left with a deep bow and Al as well as Lan Fan looked on in puzzlement as Ling? started to take his rings off and leave them on his seat. They heard stomping echoing outside the hall and doors slamming loudly; a hurried voice telling someone "they cannot just run in there". The emperor removed his headpiece and quickly tied his hair back into his more characteristic style.

The final door slammed open from a kick to reveal Edward Elric, bedraggled and sunburned, breathing like he had run the entire way to Xing. He was filthy on top of everything else, his coat about eight different shades of brown. 

“Brother!!” exclaimed Alphonse, scrambling to get up, “You weren't due to come here for months! What happened!?”

“WHAT is UP!” Ed gasped for breath and pointed straight at Ling, “Ya dumb bitch.”

Ling leapt off the dais of the throne. He ran over and hugged Ed tightly, clapping him on the back. A couple of dust clouds issued out from the slaps.

“Good to see you, half pint. Give me the rundown on why you're in my country without my permission.”

“Yeah alright Cling, nice to see you too— now get off me,” said Ed, pushing at Ling's arm that was locked over his shoulder rather hard. Ling didn't budge. Al jogged over and stopped short in front the two. “Brother I tried to call and tell you that you were right about what—”

“Ling!!! So! I was travelling and I was thinking, oh, I remember when I put my good ‘friends’ Greedling up at my house for the full treatment when we were on the run from the law; room, board, et cetera! Then he ate me out of house and home? Then after we killed a demigod, he went off to be emperor of a country and also fucked off and died? And stuck me with the bill? Hey, so, what have you got to say about me returning the favor, huh?” Ed steamrolled over Al's statement, looking at Ling manically.

Ling smiled indulgently at Ed. “Oh Edward, you know what they say, 'what's yours is mine'...” He trailed off without finishing the thought.

Ed opened his mouth to berate him for messing up the second half of the stereotypical phrase and ask if he was conveniently ‘forgetting’ Amestrian again but became more concerned with Ling’s closeness, which was getting more overbearing than usual.

“Ling get off!” he barked, batting at the arm looping to settle around his neck in less a gesture of camaraderie and more a choke hold. ‘Ling’, smiled wider, sharper.

“Yyyyou.” Ed took a real look at Ling's face and said through his teeth, venom present in his voice.

“Me,” Greed hissed delightedly, dropping all pretense of Ling. “Hellooo shortstuff, speaking of things that are mine I told you I'd get back to you eventually on that rain-check on giving you that ass kicking. Said demigod got in the way. Dying didn't help. I've come to collect." Ed aimed a kick at Greed, choosing not to reply and lashing out instead. Greed dodged lazily and backed off. They began to circle each other.

“Well, well, well." Ed sneered, eyes shining in malice. "So, Al, I guess your experiment to combine two halfwits to make a wholewit was a success! Glad it worked out and you didn't murder him by accident! Super glad and not disappointed! Hello Greedling, thought you died!”

“I got better!” “Yeah, he got better!” Greed followed by Ling retorted, still circling Ed and dropping down into a stance.

Greed sized him up, “Told you the name's Greed, boy, don't tell me you've forgotten our deep friendship already! I'm so upset that I might have to issue an executive order to have you jailed on sight the second I boot you out of my house by force!”

Lan Fan sat down on the couch and used her automail to pick at her cuticles. “Ling please put a stop to these two,” she sighed. She suddenly didn't have the energy to care enough to do it herself, or to treat the emperor with her usual level of respect for that matter. She sensed that it was not worth her time. Al sighed as well and went to go lock the door down at the front of the room. He was two steps ahead of the two (and possibly a half) that were beginning to square off.

Ling broke through for a moment, “Edward Elric I'm so glad to see that you got taller! The operation was a success, then? Winry installed those shin enlargers for you? Too bad about the apparent complications, how much brain activity did you end up losing?”

Lan Fan sucked her teeth in annoyance. Ling was in on it. Great. Ed took off his coat and threw it to the side where it landed by Lan Fan on the couch. She pushed it onto the floor with a foot when she saw how dirty it was.

“Funny about the brain activity comment! Xing being a monarchy– I'm happy that we don't need to question the sanity of the residents like we would in a democracy. If letting you run the place was a result of an election I would doubt the collective smarts of an entire population!" Ed cracked his knuckles.

"I was surprised on my way here that with you two being in charge the entire country wasn't going down in flames! Speaking of flames— Did you know? I sent a postcard to Mustang, told him to wait two years and then swoop in to pick up the pieces after Ling destroys the place. A real feather in his cap. Guess I'll have to send him another and tell him to speed up that timeline now that Dumber is around and in charge, too.” Ed kicked off his shoes and braided his hair, never stopping the slow circle he was tracking.

“So we brawlin’? Is this a true brawl right now? Don't go welching on me! First one since coming back, I've been /itching/! Brat here won't let me hit anyone in court even though /some people/ deserve a bashing," Greed gestured to himself in annoyance, referencing Ling's 'stifling' restrictions. A pause hit him.

-

"Yes they do! Oh, 'violence wont always fix our problems'! Buuuullshit. Don't act all high and mighty, you hypocrite! —Well duh! It'll make me feel better at least. Yes, that's absolutely a priority!" Greed meandered away from Ed, turning his back to argue. Ed jabbed a thumb at him with an unsaid question and looked at Alphonse. Al just shrugged.

-

"Yeah, whatever! Whatever! We will talk /later/. Back to the task at hand— you can bitch to me over dinner! Oh don't give me that- ANYWAY-," he turned his attentions back to Ed.

"Thanks for getting me a great souvenir! Beating you half to death has been on my ‘do when I'm alive’ list for a while!” grinned Greed, clapping his hands in mockery and walking back to stand closer to Ed who backed up accordingly.

He dropped his robes and kicked them aside. Underneath was a yellow long sleeved shirt and simple white pants. He ripped the sleeves off the shirt.

“Aww man Greed that was in my favorite color…” Ling groaned out loud and slumped dejectedly.

Greed ignored Ling and threw the sleeves at Ed, lunging into an attack from Ling's slump of defeat without warning.

“No, Brother. Greed. Ling. Stop. Don't.” Al deadpanned. He sat on Ling’s throne and fished some peanuts out of a jacket pocket, all smiles.

Ed narrowly dodged Greed’s first attack and went for his lower torso where it was soft with a fist, Greed circled round and threw down an arm, blocking the shot at the kidneys.

“Too bad about the leg there, beansprout. So I guess you only got half your shit back? What a shitty deal. Makes it easier for me to rip it off at least. I'll feel a twinge of sadness every time I look at it mounted on my wall after I finish mauling you,” Greed heckled.

He had gotten a rough account of events directly after his ‘death’ from Ling, it helped he saw Ed's still metal foot peeking out of his pant leg.

Ed kicked out at Greed's shins and was stopped by Ling rolling forward to grab his shirt front and toss him to the side. Ed took the fall and dipped lower on recovery, going for the back of Ling's knees.

“Least I own my two outright, how is the renter's agreement going? Hate to tell ya' about your landlord there, but he's a child in all but age. I don't have to tell you how fucking annoying he can be, I'm 'sorry' you gotta deal with him!" Ed grinned malevolently.

He blocked a couple of Greed’s strikes and landed a good one right under his rib cage. Greed's face that had been smiling in a depraved way folded into a pert frown at Ed scoring not only a hit but a point in his favor.

Ed pressed his two advantages, “Hey Ling! I figure if you want we could try sticking Greed into a flask like his Pop, then you can toss him in a lake.” Ling rounded on Ed and made to reply but Greed slapped at Ed’s flesh leg and aimed a couple of strikes at his chest and face before he could, punching down.

“Oh I like being ambulatory much too much to let my ride take you up on that offer, smalls,” Greed said, deftly blocking an elbow and then a headbutt from Ed, “This body comes with a real set of perks! One real good one is being able to see the top of your head when you're standing straight up!” Ed screamed in rage and Greed bailed to let Ling scuttle back as the newly agitated ball of fists and legs barreled at him.

Al watched them go at it. Greed and Ling traded off fluidly much like they had at dinner. Unified in the purpose of trying to kick Ed's ass they were a force to be reckoned with. Ling was clearly more present in the legs, pulling movements that used a lot of Ed’s energy against him. Wide sweep kicks, jumps, and blocks. Greed was in his arms, slashes and blunt movements, battering Ed with his shoulders and elbows. Greed jumped up and almost landed a double arm blow on the back of Ed’s neck. Ed ducked and rolled, scrambling away, all unconventional style.

Ed fought with what worked at the time and much of his style sprung up on just trying to land something on Alphonse all those times they play fought. Memories of those times suddenly made Al itch to join in the fray. He realized that he hadn’t gotten into a proper physical brawl since getting to Xing. His only exercise came from sparring (much different than the kind of fighting he was watching now) with Mei or walks/jogs in the gardens.  He took his coat off and stood up, cracking his knuckles. He jumped in just as Ed was going to get his noggin caved in by an open palmed slice from Greed. Greed promptly backed off at the new threat. Al waved at the others.

“Doesn't seem fair, two-ish against one, need a hand, Brother?”

“Did, got that back, working on a leg to stand on these days” Ed backed up and stood parallel to Al. They mirrored each other in how they placed themselves.

“Betrayal, Al? What a proper Xingese thing to do, we've been teaching you so much!” Ling called, stretching and flexing his arms, waiting to see what they'd do next. Greed flitted in and dropped low again.

“Terms, kid. I'll take the older, we got a score to settle, mind taking the younger?” he negotiated to Ling audibly so the brothers would overhear.

“Oh! Fun!” Ling beamed and flashed forward at a jump to Al, aiming a kick at his middle. Al threw up his arms in a block and planted his feet to endure the strike. Ling replied by muscling in and trying to bore down on Al's defense with punches to his head. Ed took the opportunity to get behind them and lash out but Greed leaned back on Ling's planted feet and caught the blow, flipping Ed across the room with a twist.

Using Greed's momentum, Ling flipped into a backwards handstand and aimed a few more strikes at Al with his feet, putting Al on the defensive again. Greed broke off after Al backed off and flipped forward, lunging after Ed who was recovering from the throw. Al chased after them.

Lan Fan groaned on the couch as the scuffle got heated. Boys. And homunculi. She watched as Ling's smile grew bigger and bigger as he got a few good hits in on Al.

Maybe he did need to joke around with boys his own age… She realized that before Alphonse had shown up the only people Ling could be himself around were herself and Mei, and then only carefully. She also had to admit that while Greed was not the same age as Ling by a long shot the maturity level was similar. She hadn't seen Ling have this much fun in a long time.  

Ling's goofy laughter echoed around the hall, getting replaced by a harder caustic version from Greed a few times. They all clashed twice more but after the second bout were starting to back Ling into a corner. Ling responded by climbing a tapestry on the wall behind him and hanging off of it, several feet above the ground.

Al ran up to the wall and dropped down on a knee putting his hands together. Ed stepped in to his open hands at a run and was flung into the air. Greed disengaged from the wall and used the push off to dodge Ed, Ed scrambled to find purchase on his descent. Al was ready for him below. He had ripped another tapestry off the wall and stretched it out. Ed fell into it and it did soften the landing but Al had to drop it prematurely when Ling came for him.

Ed thumped on the ground with an ‘ow!’ but quickly unlooped himself from the fabric. Getting an idea, he re-looped it around only his hands and snuck up behind Ling.

Alphonse poured it on, seeing Ed’s approach from his vantage point and looked to distract Ling as much as he could. Ed tossed Al an end of the tapestry and they both tried to loop it around Ling but instead of falling for it Greed fell into it, using his body weight to drag the two forward as they still held on to both ends. They dodged each other narrowly, in synch. They may have not fought together in months but they still had their wordless rapport.

In the second Greed needed to duck the fabric Ed jumped on his back and put him in a arm hold. Nearly simultaneously Al grabbed Ling’s legs and put him in a proper leg lock. They all fell to the floor in a writhing pile. Ling as well as Greed struggled and bucked in the brother's combined grip, Greed swearing up a storm. After a minute more of that nonsense Greed finally gave up.

“Alright, Fuck! I give!” he shouted. Ed squeezed Ling’s head harder and then went to let him up. Al held up a hand from his position on the floor.

“Wait, Brother, Ling didn't give.”

“Petty, Alphonse, petty but smart. I indeed didn't give and I was two milliseconds from smashing Edward’s face the moment he let go. It's your win, Al,” Ling half choked from Ed’s grip on his arm and neck.

“I ought to break your neck!” Ed yelled.

“Break my neck and who exactly is going to foot the bill tonight?” Ling asked slyly.

“Bill?” asked the two brothers.

“We have jointly realized that we still need to party down because Al recently acquired a body. Tiny can come too, I GUESS,” Greed explained.

“Oh thanks SO MUCH for the invite! Shall I kiss the rings on your hands?!” Ed remarked, but he did let Ling go.

“I as the emperor have found my busy schedule cleared for the day but as your friend our night is just beginning!” said Ling, getting up and dusting himself off. He checked a couple of the abrasions that the Elrics had landed on him. Not finding anything too in need of medical attention he looked at them both.

“It's a rare thing that I offer to pay for anything but you need people for a party and I never turn down a party. Better jump on this before I change my mind…” Greed cut in and shrugged, sauntering over to Lan Fan who was still on the couch.

“Also. You. Are coming.” he said, pointing at Lan Fan. “Brat says that's an 'order,'” he added after a second.

“I am not! I do not have time to fraternize with you and neither does Ling!” she admonished. Ed and Al immediately started to moan;

“Lan Fan please, please Lan Fan come on it's gonna be fun, free stuff Lan Fan, stop being a stick in the mud!—Lan Fan PLEASE.” Ed, Al, as well as Ling all begged. Greed held a hand out to her in between Ling's entreaties, analyzing her. She knew she would be losing ground to him if she accepted. This felt like a deal with the devil. She raised a hand to slap Greed’s away.

She paused.

Ling was happier than she'd seen him in more than a year. She deliberated a second more. Al and Ed who were still situated on the floor reached a fever pitch in begging her. She knew Ling would cancel the entire thing in a tantrum if she said no. She was boxed in. She took Greed’s hand and used it to rise off the couch with a sour expression. Everybody cheered wildly except Greed. Greed's smile just widened.

----------

They got ready in Ling's favorite chambers, a place that was quickly becoming a meeting haunt for the group. Al borrowed some traditional Xingese clothes from Ling and was admiring the image change in the mirror. Ed had taken a quick shower (he was still dusty from his arrival not even hours ago) and was wearing a change of clothes he had packed.

He borrowed a half coat from Ling’s closet that was in an eye-smarting shade of red with golden embroidery flashing boldly all over it, he also privately vowed to leave Xing with the coat. Without asking. Lan Fan had gotten changed into something resembling pedestrian wear (though she still wore a modicum of armor under her coat and her bag was half full with her special tools of the trade) but she had put her hair up with a comb. She was trying to make an effort.

The other two were still getting ready, Ed knocked loudly on the closet wall with a fist.

“Come on you peacocks, let's go! I'm starved!”

“Hold your fucking horses!” the muffled reply from Greed rang out from deep inside.

They had once again placed a cadre of Lan Fan’s hand picked guards outside Ling’s chambers. Lan Fan was going to have to grease a few palms and fluff a couple of egos to ensure their continual gossip-free service at this rate. As an afterthought to the subterfuge they had also ordered a small platter of food brought up, but it was going to remain uneaten. Mostly. Ling had dipped into it a bit. They instructed the guards to tell others that the Emperor was entertaining his esteemed guests and did not want to be disturbed for the evening. Not... untrue. They were going to leave out the window ‘exit’ in order to not inform the entire palace that their leader had gone out to party.

Ling finally stepped out and Ed burst out laughing immediately. His outfit selection was very familiar. Ling scratched the back of his head sheepishly, Greed flipped his collar up and turned to the mirror to give some last minute adjustments with zero shame.

They were wearing leather pants and a black tank top, topped by a vest jacket with a ruff of white fur around the collar. To complete the ensemble there were small black glasses perched on Ling's nose and shoes that looked like black nightmares, all angles and shiny points with more than a bit of heel to them. Al recognized the outfit as well and pinched the bridge of his nose, snorting.

Lan Fan looked at the display quizzically. Greed obviously was going to be a while more so Al grabbed more clothes to try on and Ed took her aside to fill her in on their first joint meeting with the original homunculus.

Greed what is this, what am I wearing?

Little custom job I had made. Xing has some very good tailors, the guy took one look at my sketch and had it ready for me next day. Oh the memories. Loved this outfit back in the day. The effect is dampened a bit by what I have to work with now, lamentably.

Greed gave a pointed look into the mirror with his last statement, blaming Ling for his appearance and smoothing down an eyebrow while he was close to the glass. Simultaneously and unbidden, a few images of a man with a hooked nose and a high hairline made their way to Ling’s mind. He looked familiar somehow. The man in the image he had was preening in the mirror just like Greed was doing now and he also had an outfit suspiciously like Greed’s. Ling set aside that he didn’t remember meeting any tailor lately. He would have to find out more about that later. Possibly ask Lan Fan to handcuff him to something heavy when he slept, maybe.

Is that you? From before?

Yeah, said Greed neutrally.

Oh, you look kind of how I thought you would?

Yeah? Well that was the original model, kid. I miss it.

I'm… sorry about that.

Greed experimented with slicking Ling’s hair straight back but shook his head firmly at the result. He brushed Ling's bangs back down into his face. His closed expression turned saucy in front of Ling's eyes.

Yeah it's a shame about that body, I had such a sweet ass.

You are. Insufferable. Ling held his hands over his mental forms face and grated the reply through his fingers. He deliberated for a breath then changed gears.

In exchange for that bullshit you have to tell me how they got you. You were basically immortal at that point. How'd they end up getting you? I never asked and now I have to know.  

Oh, like how I died that first time?

Yes.

Vat of molten gold, I went out cursing my enemies and basically waving a big 'fuck you' to Dad.

Wow! Dramatic! Ling laughed appreciatively.

Now you understand why I had to one up myself for that encore performance.

I didn't appreciate it at the time…

Greed let that one slide without any verbal apology at least. 

Yeah anyways the first one hurt like a rat bastard, let me tell you. At least for a while. Then it was nothing for however long I think...

Next thing I knew I was in some new body and looking down at a Xingese brat that was weirdly fine with me moving on in.

Yes, yes, cherished memories, Ling exclaimed with a helping of sarcasm.

My turn. Got a question. It had kind of bothered Greed when he thought about it but there had been a lot going on at the time. When you put me up in ‘chateau de Ling’ what was the initial plan? You wanted a stone, yeah?

Ling took the question in stride, it was a pretty good one. Plan… Really didn't have much of one. Stone in the body was worth more than in the Father? To butcher an old saying. Didn't know that it came with an extra asshole thrown in. After fighting in that basement I was just trying not to be swept away in the stone. Then you served Father like an asshole for a bit. I was busy just trying to figure out everything. When I got more used to it I figured sooner or later Lan Fan would catch you and drag us back to Xing.

Of course, why had he been surprised? Wow. Great job thinking that one through. How were you gonna get me out of you after that? If you didn’t die even taking me in in the first place I might add?

I had been eaten alive and transmuted out of your late brother a half an hour before and I was running on however much nutrition a boot gives you! Also, a few of my bones were broken by way of your other shitty sibling /and/ I was pretty sure I had internal bleeding! I thought it was a good idea at the time! Ling did not approve of his sudden move to the chopping block, he hadn't had a lot of options!

Man even I can see that it wasn't that good of a good idea at the time, you really are a reckless bastard, you know that? 

Ling snickered. Takes one to know one, idiot. 

Eh, it all shook out in the end. Hate having to share but it's better than nothing. This arrangement has its perks, gotta admit. Wearing the Emperor's face lets me get away with a lot of crazy shit. People make the mistake of trusting you and even better underestimating you. I can use that to my advantage any day of the week. Greed tied Ling's hair back into a slightly higher tail than the one that usually hung at the nape of his neck with a bit of red ribbon. He had gotten good at dealing with Ling's mane after a little while of not knowing what the hell to do with it when it got ratty.

Early on he had made to try cutting it off after it had started to tangle but Ling freaked out and almost overpowered him based on that alone so he left it be. The claws he had grown to cut it off became an impromptu brush to tease the knots out of it instead. 

If it was just me coming here on my lonesome since you certainly wouldn't abdicate any time soon I’d have had to kick you off the throne.  Ling privately let it go that Greed thought it'd be as easy as that. Then when I did I’d have had to be emperor /all the time/. That’s, to quote my other other brother, ‘too much work’. I like ruling the roost when it’s convenient. Then I can pass all the bullshit I don’t wanna deal with to you! Besides, if we’re like this one of these days I’ll be around to save your ass when you catch another arrow or someone gets the great idea to poison you. As it is, you weren't doing that great a job. I hate to say it but you need me. I'm happy to offer my particular set of skills. For a price of course.

Gee thanks! A price Greed called it, like it wasn't a whole contractual ordeal. Sure. Ling road out the barbs of not being able to tale care of himself, his job, and his affairs. Greed had saved his bacon enough that Ling knew not to even start. 

You’re /Welcome/. I’m glad we could come to an understanding! Quid pro Quo and all that. I do it all for nights like these where I get some real walking around money and get to have a good time.

Happy to be able to facilitate /you/ having fun, Ling mocked, I also live to serve!.

Greed flashed his teeth with his version of a winsome expression and drifted off from the mirror, grabbing a few small bags from a stash and sticking one in an inside pocket in his vest. The funds for the evening. Small coin but a good amount of it in each. He tossed each one to the others who were still waiting around for them to finish.

“Big bills spent liberal from one guy brings more trouble than it's worth, we lay low and do it up nice,” he commented to the room to explain the gifts.

He grabbed a rope ladder he had stashed in his closet and tossed it out the window for Ed and Al's benefit. They were more versed in vacating the premises in dubious ways than the standard young men but climbing a sheer wall was a little much.

“I go first and watch what I do with the traps, I disabled most of them,” Greed whispered from halfway out the window.

-

They soon found themselves in the same open air market Greed went to on his first outing. It was less business focused with the coming of evening. There was still haggling and products being bought and sold but with less of a driving purpose behind it. Music and lanterns were everywhere. There was a pall of smoke over the area from a combination of the lighting and the food stalls. They fell upon the various stalls first and ate their fill of hand food. Ling had his face buried in a spun sugar confection within seconds, his left hand had meat on a skewer between each finger jutting out like claws.

Ed had stepped into a covered stall that held jewelry and came out with a box.

“What you got there, Brother?” Al asked. Ed opened the box and showed Al the set of impossibly tiny jeweler’s tools, thin as humming bird claws.

“I asked him to sell me his spares when I saw how delicate everything he was making looked,” he said sheepishly. Al didn't need to ask who those were for. He himself had bought a few animals carved in semi precious stone. Quartz, amethyst, jade, they were all cats in various poses.

Greed and Ling as well as Lan Fan checked out clothing after Ling had eaten a disgusting amount of candy and fried food. Ling held up a very nice sleeveless dress that she liked the look of, sleeves ended up getting in the way because of her automail. She shook it out to get a look at the designs on the bottom and saw the slit on the leg area would start at her hip line. Greed looked about as innocent as he could look, which was not at all. He got a punch in the arm for his trouble but took it himself instead of booting Ling to take it last second like she thought he would try. She was sad she had only used her flesh arm.

Al was following Ed around the stalls when he heard meowing coming from close by down an adjacent alleyway. He shouted to Ed that he was going to just be a second but he didn't think he heard him over the din of the combined musics and conversations leaking out over the area. Sure enough there were cats fighting over a haunch of spoiled something or other. He quickly broke up his last fried packet of beef he had stashed in a bag to munch on and gave it to the smallest one, leaving the meat to the other. He turned his back on the entrance of the alley and crouched down to make himself less imposing (a habit from when he used to be a lot bigger) and watched them eat.

After they ate and left he got up to head back finding upon turning to go the way he had come his pathway out was blocked. The blockage took the form of strange men in masks. Al opened his mouth to ascertain their M.O. but they didn't give him the chance. They advanced on him quietly and with organization, professional. Al started to drop down to perform a transmutation seeing that talking was not going to be an option but didn't get the chance to do that either. More men materialized from the shadows of the alleyway behind him and grabbed his arms. One put a cloth of something over his face. Al cursed the fact he was clearly getting kidnapped AGAIN and that it was easier for his assailants this time because he had lungs.

He felt himself passing out, but managed to struggle enough to knock one or two of the stone cats out of his pockets where they fell among the rubbish of the alleyway. There. That would have to be enough for brother and the others. He slumped in the men's arms, dragging his legs in the trash for a few seconds as they took off.

Alphonse was late. They had agreed to meet a half hour ago in front of what Ed called 'bar none, the best shop in the market'. Lan Fan thought privately of it as the tackiest assortment of clothing she had ever laid eyes on. Ed held out pants with designs of snarling beasts picked in sparkling buttons on the sides and slapped money down on the counter, not even haggling. Ling groaned in jealousy but Greed cut in and commented with a smirk in Ed’s direction that they'd be floods on him anyway. Ed fumed but distracted himself by continuing to dig in the piles for more ‘treasures’.

Shortly after buying more trash they all didn't need they went to look for him.

“Oh it's not the needing it's the wanting that's key, what kind of Greed would I be if I didn't want this wonderful trash?” Greed said in response to Lan Fan calling it trash, arms weighed down by bags.

“I remember seeing him somewhere 'round here?” Ed commented, pointing at an alleyway that banked off and to the side.

“Maybe he had to take a leak?” asked Greed helpfully.

They went into the alley and didn't see anyone. There wasn't much to see, besides some cats that scattered at their approach. They were just about to turn around and leave when Lan Fan spied a twinkle of something among the garbage that littered the ground. It was a jade cat. Ed looked around and found a little lapis one farther away.

The mood— which had still been party-centric, soured.

“He wouldn't have lost these like that. Look at how far this one was away from the other one. It was thrown,” Ed commented, pensive.

“Look at this, it is like something was dragged a little,” replied Lan Fan, pointing at the arrangement of litter and the signs of dragging marks. Barring those two clues there was little else to indicate a struggle but it was enough. Ling frowned deeply as they all came to the conclusion that Al had been taken somewhere against his will. He wouldn't just leave, that was Ling's job.

They heavily surmised he had been taken alive and relatively unharmed from the lack of any greater struggle and importantly the complete lack of any more... gristly evidence.

Ed threw up his hands and took a couple of steps away from the group. “He has GOT to stop making a habit out of getting ‘napped!” His face was serious through the bluster though as both him and Lan Fan spared a glance back at Ling who was still quiet.

Ling stood off to the side, tremors running up and down his arms. His face was pinched like he was enduring something.

“You alright there, Ling?” Ed asked.

“Greed is… upset,” he answered, seemingly under duress from Greed's internal pressures.

“I seem to remember Greed also kidnapping my brother. Why's he all torn up about it?” Ed snapped. Ling didn't react to the jibe and apparently wasn't listening.

“Give me a moment, please,” he said distractedly after a few beats of silence. He held up a hand in a gesture to indicate they hold on a second to Lan Fan and Ed and then walked over to the wall. He rested his back against it and his head went forward a little, like he was dozing off.

“Must be bad if he needs to hash it out like that,” Ed commented with a whistle, “-seen Greed do that a few times when he thought I wasn't lookin' after Ling said something particularly objectionable. Of course I couldn't hear it but if you saw his face at the time then you'd be able to guess.”

Lan Fan took the comb out of her hair, folding it up into a handkerchief to put into a pocket. She busied her fingers with tying it back in her work bun while Ed spoke. She fished a mask and some accessories out of her pack and put some of their smaller more expensive purchases away in the same bag. She was angry with herself for not having the group stay together. She surmised that this was a professional hit but she didn't allow herself to make excuses. She was thankful that she had brought the bare minimum of her standard supplies on this outing and resolved to not leave the palace without grenades again.

Ed trotted out of the alleyway and went to go drop the bigger things (and his stolen jacket) off at the stall they had bought them from, leaving some coin and a promise to pick them back up in a bit. When he came back Lan Fan was sharpening a blade. She held the blade out to Ed, offering him the handle. Ed held up a hand in polite rejection.

“Got my own. This is like the only time I miss the old model,” he said, slapping his arm affectionately.

He dropped down to the ground and started to roll up his pant leg, exposing his automail up to the knee. He flicked a catch on the side and his shin popped open about a half inch with a ‘snkck’.  A piece of metal popped out with the sound. Jutting out of the opening was a little blade, it looked like a spearhead, wickedly sharp. Ed pulled it carefully out of the crevasse and held the blunter end in one hand while he fished around in another pocket.

“Winry special, I still need to defend myself sometimes on the open road. Fists are fine for playing around but sometimes you need a little something extra. She says you should come over and she’ll outfit you with a whole new arm, friend price!” Ed neglected to mention that the 'friend price' for someone that they would be billing the emperor for would be about five times normal rates. Winry was a good girl but not above a little money grubbing. Call it artisanal pride.

Ed fished a grieve made out of more metal and a bit of leather out of a pocket, affixed it to his wrist, and slid the blade into it where it clicked into place and fit like a glove. He now had a little knife gauntlet that reminded Lan Fan of what he used to make with alchemy. It was still his preferred weapon of choice, apparently. He looked up at Lan Fan who was waiting, ready for orders, then over at Ling who was still quiet. Ed leaned against the other wall and directed his attention back to Lan Fan.

“Can you sense him?” Ed asked, referring to Al.

She nodded silently, eyes glinting out of her mask.

Meanwhile, Ling had gone internal to deal with Greed's tirade directly. Sometimes, many times, Greed needed someone to yell directly into his face before he could get it. Ling found when he got to the place that they normally met up that it wasn't a giant face waiting for him but another man. He recognized him because it /was/ him. Greed him.

“Greed,” he called as he made his way over to the man pacing back and forth like a tiger, “Greed listen—”

Greed looked up explosively and continued to pace.

“Somebody. Took my shit. Ling.”

“We don't refer to our friends as property,” Ling chastised.

“MINE. MY SHIT.” Greed raged, not listening. Ling went over and stood in front of him.

“Greed! He's my friend too, stupid!” Ling yelled with a laugh. Greed still wasn't paying attention, he banked to the left to avoid running into Ling and continued to rage. Ling stepped in front of him again and grinned, throwing his hands out to the sides to create a bigger obstacle.

“Greed listen. We're...what did you call us again, back at the end there? Before all this? Friends of the soul? I feel you!” He gasped out amidst laughter.

Ling /knew/ that corny line had to be a tender spot in Greed's armor. The things you ended up saying on your deathbed... Ling had been waiting to tease him mercilessly for it seconds after being mocked about crying at his funeral and this seemed to be a good time as any to bust it out. 

It had the desired effect. Greed stopped short mid yell and practically combusted in embarrassed fury. He lunged at Ling with a bellow, previous anger forgotten for a second in exchange for this new one, but Ling danced away.

He held hands open, supplicating even as he dodged Greed's strikes. “Greed I /know/ you, remember?! Soul buddies!  And I know you're very mad about Alphonse! I am also very angry!" Ling wasn't kidding, if he was on his own he would have be boiling with a level of hate that most would describe as 'seething'. "But, we need to be calm if we're gonna do this right! Ed says you also kidnapped Al at one point, remember? So /chill out/!” Ling shouted. He was indeed feeling that hate but was just better at directing it in a proactive way. He was always good at hiding his feelings but that didn't mean he didn't feel them acutely, very much the opposite. Rather than let them tear him up he tended to tear other things up instead.

Greed stopped cold and narrowed his eyes at Ling. He opened his mouth to argue and then shut it again. Ling was technically correct.

Ling pressed his advantage. “Mind telling me why I'm looking at myself instead of a big face?”

“So I can do this!” Greed flipped him a double bird with pride. Ling crossed his arms and waited. He eyeballed him.

“Yeah and I also kidnapped tin man before I got to know him,” Greed also crossed his arms and almost pouted.

“Okay Greed, whatever helps you sleep at night. Are we done? We need to figure out a game plan,” Ling griped.

“Ohoho I know exactly what I wanna do. Murder. Lots of it,” Greed said with a maniacal laugh. He started in on the new topic and grabbed Ling's arms. Ling hit him away.

“NO MURDER.”

“AW. Man! Why?” Heartbroken, Greed looked stricken.

“I can't indiscriminately murder all my enemies, Greed!”

“/You/ won't be murdering anyone!”

He had a point... No. Ling had to direct the boiling mass productively, not selfishly. Though it pained him. “Semantics! I'm complacent… or an accessory at least!”

“Fine!” Greed about faced. 

Ling knew it wasn't fine.

“What if you murder the one that knows all the good information on the reasoning behind Alphonse getting spirited away? There has to be one, he was targeted for a reason! Nobody recognized us tonight how we were dressed. Ed is new. Alphonse however is a known diplomat. A friend of the emperor. I have my suspicions as to why they took him without questioning any assailants. I just need to know who the chain of command is as well as how many are involved, what is their main goal. I need to see how ingrained this is in my court. It is the court. I know this for sure,” said Ling thoughtfully in explanation.

Greed turned halfway back around from his snub. “Alright already. I can't argue with that logic. People don't like my policies, I can smell that sure enough. I'm also sure you were pissing people off long before I came back," Greed nodded in acknowledgement of Ling's justifications and changed the subject. He knew Ling won the argument and dropped the topic with disinterest now that he had been cornered.

"You can sense where he is?” Greed asked, belatedly remembering Ling's extrasensory talents. Greed had made headway at masking chi but he was still garbage at anything else involving the dragon pulse thing.

Ling paused to use his senses. “In a general area, yes. Maybe a few blocks? Lan Fan and I will be able to triangulate him easily together so let me take the lead until we get there. You don't get to go until I say. Light maiming /only/. I want a promise, Greed. Cool your shit.”

Greed didn't waste time by 'thinking it over' they had ran the clock enough. “Fine. God. Pinkie swear, ya' happy?”

Ling went to leave, satisfied, but stopped short, looking back at Greed. “Hey, turn around real quick?” he asked. Greed stared at him, confused, but complied.

“Neat. Always wanted to see the back of my own head.”

Greed’s laugher followed him out.

-

Ling raised his head and looked over at the others. Lan Fan had lent Ed her coat, it had a hood to cover his hair. Not too many blonds in Xing. They weren't sure who they were up against yet so it paid to be secretive. He also wore a red mask of a grimacing demon he had purchased from a nearby stall. Lan Fan was ready with her standard mask and weapons. Their assailants seeing a guard of the Emperor at the crime scene they absolutely were going to make was fine no matter how they were going to spin the story later. However, Ling being there was not. She went to hand Ling a knife and another mask Ed had bought.

Greed put up his index finger and clucked his tongue at her. She made to put the disguise and weapons away, readying an argument along the lines of 'what if someone recognizes you?'.

She stopped mid breath to stare at the red energy that began to crackle around Ling's body. Starting from the finger he held in front of her his hand, then his arms and further, turned black in a wave of energy and scales of alchemical reconstruction. The shield worked its way up his shoulders and his neck, all the way to his face which was resting in a slash of a smile and up over his head. His hair dissipated and his eyes became pure white. He opened his tooth ringed mouth and steam leaked out, heat runoff from the excess energy of the transformation. In the darkness of the alleyway he looked truly monstrous. His eyes even gave off a faint glow.  

Ling ruined the menacing illusion a second later by smacking his bald head hard.

“I better grow my hair back after this! I'm an egg! And these teeth!” he poked at his eyeteeth that jutted up out of his face with both hands, locking eyes with his new self in a puddle of muddy water, “I look like a lion dog! We look /gross/!” Ed cackled like a harpy behind him.

“It grew back fine before! Now you know why I hate using it!” Greed yelled back, stopping Ling from slapping at him by taking over. He took off his vest and his shoes, his feet had also turned to claws. He picked up the clothes and folded the vest neatly over the shoes, handing them to Lan Fan.

“Put these in your backpack. Don't need to ruin my party clothes, they're custom.” She had designs to drop them in the dirt but Greed stopped her with a meaningful stare. She sullenly opened her pack, unused to taking orders from someone she regarded as an enemy. In the interest of time constraints she didn't argue.

Ed snickered at how the juxtaposition of Greed fastidiously picking at his things while looking like that came off as Lan Fan closed her pack back up.

Ling came back after she was done. “Alright Lan Fan let's run a general sweep, you can sense him too, right?!” he smiled with his eyes (his mouth region was a little stiff at the moment) and looked more than a little creepy while doing it. Lan Fan nodded.

Ed cracked his knuckles and looked at the motley group. “Love ending a night on some general mayhem. These guys that took Al? Whoever they are? /Real/ fucking stupid.”

----------

Al had learned a lot in the ten minutes or so he had been awake. He was somewhere cool and dark but he knew he was still pretty close to the market. If he strained he could still hear music very faintly. He was nauseous from the chemicals they had used to knock him out and trying very hard not to throw up on the bags of rice or possibly flour he had been tossed on. The basement where they probably were holding him was pretty spacious, and mostly in shadow, lit only by a few hand lamps.

They had underestimated Al’s ability to recover from a beating, and drugs apparently as he now learned, from the rigorous training he had put himself through this last year or so to get his body back up to snuff. His hands and feet were bound (regrettably) but he was relatively unharmed. Just knocked around a bit. 

He didn't want to throw up not only from a cleanliness perspective but also he was playing at still being conked out– learning a lot for his trouble. His assailants were a fringe group of radical traditionalists that didn't care for the new emperor and his crazy policies like ‘no more killing each other’ and ‘no child marriage’. Most were hired hands but a few were low rank and files from some of the crappier clans, he recognized them from the palace. Because of the relative darkness of the basement he was able to open his eyes slightly to peek at the men as they milled around. Without the use his eyes he recognized more than a few voices. 

They were going to use Al to lean on the emperor and supposedly get him to do what they wanted from the shadows. Standard blackmail. The ones who actually kidnapped him were in the employ of a few notable names. (One being Cheung from the public dressing down the other day.) Since assassination attempts were a joke to the emperor his opposition had turned their eyes to his companions instead. If Ling didn't comply with their demands they would simply start sending him body parts. Al was very upset at learning that particular bit of news as he just got all his parts back and didn't feel like losing any of them again!

The reason he was able to glean all this info was thanks to Al’s earlier pettiness coming back to help him out in a big way. The leaders all had met and spoken with Al at points in his few months he'd been in Xing. They had had the gall to insult him behind his back at first and then as time went on they had mocked him right in front of him. In Xingese. No matter how brazen they got Al had never let anyone besides his friends know he spoke the language. He would just smile beatifically and let them insult him.

They had just interpreted the act as the stupid foreigner was too proud to learn their mother tongue. Al meanwhile knew that tongues always wagged when people thought you didn't know what they were saying and kept his mouth shut. Maybe he was less of a diplomat and more of a spy for Ling now that he thought about it in that new context. 

The hired hands had talked openly about their plans as they waited for the next phase. They were only holding Alphonse here in what was the basement of one of the ruling clan's houses until their contact came and they could get him out of the city to a more secure area. Their contact was due very soon.

Alphonse didn't know how long he had been unconscious but he prayed that someone had noticed he was gone by now. He knew that they would all be blaming themselves for his capture but he also knew that these assholes had marked him for a while. Sooner or later he would have been alone enough. Barring that they would have stolen him right out of the palace. He was upset that it had to have happened tonight, he'd been having a great time!

One of the men came over to check on him and dumped a flask of something foul on his head. Al supposed this was as good a time as any to ‘wake up’. He didn't have to fake the coughing fit or the disorientation.

“Wake up foreign dog, play nice and we'll start cutting off fingers on the hand you do not write with first!” the man who had dumped the liquid on his head cried in Xingese to the laughter of the others in the room.

“You are all very very stupid, do you know that?” Al replied back coolly while he shuffled himself into a seated position. He was mortified for a second over his accent which was clumsy from disuse. The men interpreted his look of mortification as fear.

“Look, the dog can bark like us! Did you hear what we said?  We're going to send you back to the emperor in little pieces!” the men laughed again. Al joined in, laughing up a storm. The men stopped.

Flask (Al thought of him now as such) went over and grabbed Al by the collar.

“Why do you laugh? Has fear broken you already? Weak Amestrian,” he said in derision. Al continued to giggle under his breath. He was genuinely tickled. He had a wicked idea. He laughed harder.

“Do you have /any/ idea of what you've done? Emperor Yao has a special man that deals with the likes of you. You've really done yourselves in now, what idiots!” he chuckled. Some of the men behind Flask looked a slight bit nervous.

Flask saw them shift hesitantly and rebuked them. “Do not listen to him!” He turned back to Al and slapped him hard, backhanding him. It was a decent hit. Nothing like Izumi’s, but it rung his ears. Al took the slap harder, playing it up. He summoned some tears.

“Please… please let me go. You don’t know this man. He's barely a man. He's a monster. He doesn’t discriminate between friend or foe! The Emperor uses him to clean up unsightly messes behind the scenes! Why do you think the clan situation is getting better? He gets sent out for things that displease Yao. Like a favored diplomat getting kidnapped!” tears leaked from his eyes. He nearly lost it a few times.

“They found him in a lab in Amestris, he didn’t have a name, he's worse than an animal! They only know him as ‘The Beast’. Yao bought him and brought him back in chains where he languishes in the dungeons until Yao needs him! He sets him loose and lets him kill! Then when he’s sated Yao sends special guards in to capture him and jail him until the next time! P-please! I don’t wanna die!” Al let his lip quiver. (It was a quiver of barely contained laughter and not fear based like the group thought.) He had a feeling what Greed and/or Ling would look like when they came to get him so he took the liberty of painting a picture. He remembered Greed using his powers as a bottle opener so it stood to reason he could do the whole thing for more important stuff. 

“Shut up!” Flask went to hit him again and that was exactly when the screaming began. In the main house a few floors above they all heard the crunch of architecture falling in on itself punctuated by yells and running from the occupants and guards. There were crashes and booms. The men scrambled for weapons, dropping a few and fighting over others. They were much less professional than when they had grabbed Al. He had done his damage well.

The screams got closer as the unknown threat advanced, the men were blocked in, the basement only had one way out and it was up /there/. Nobody wanted to go up the stairs. The men were trying not to cower openly in front of Flask. Al’s shoulders shook, he curled away from the men to hide his face.

Flask roared a command. The men lined up and brandished their weapons. The basement door promptly slammed straight off its hinges and fell down the stairs with a crash. A true monster traipsed into the resulting opening. He was dragging something, or maybe someone by the size of the mass he had. Al surmised that it must be their contact the men were waiting for. Greed dropped him outside of the opening in a pile of limbs and stepped onto the stairs. One of the men screamed. Al screamed too, getting Greed’s attention.

“Please don’t kill me, Beast! Please, guards, guards catch him before he kills me!” Al laid it on just a tad thick.

Greed looked over at Al and cocked his head ever so slightly. The men were frozen. All eyes were trained on the monster standing at the top of the stairs. There was still banging and shrieks issuing from the upper floors, Al smelled smoke. Brother and Lan Fan were busy!  

Al gave a quick wink while everyone was distracted. Greed’s eyes narrowed into what only Al knew was a smile. He saw Greed stop for a second and listen for a nonverbal command. Ling must have been keeping him on a leash. He apparently got what he wanted and opened his mouth, a shriek of raw animalistic power blasting out of it. One of the braver men yelled a challenge and stabbed at Greed's chest with a long spear. It snapped off like a toothpick. The man didn't have any time to react before Greed lunged forward, grabbing his entire face with a single hand and flinging him down the stairs. Blockage out of the way Greed walked forward, claws hung out and to the sides.

Al could practically smell the terror radiating off the rest of the men. He wiggled his form behind some of the flour bags, not wanting to get stepped on. Flask called for an attack, demanding the men listen to him. Greed ripped through their ranks like they were gauze, going for the leader (because he opened his stupid mouth), first and mauling him. Al noted that while there was blood it didn’t seem to be very much per person. Ling must have banned murder for the evening. Al was glad, these guys were just dumb and he was unhurt for the most part. He felt uncomfortable when it came to outright murder.

Greed dropped the leader in what had to be seconds and moved on to a few others that were trying to scrabble over each other to get away.

At the top of the stairs two more people appeared. One was Lan Fan in her standard mask, the other must have been Ed disguised in a demon’s mask and hood. Very Ed. It was all very theatrical. Flickering red light lit their forms from behind, someone must have set some fires. They jumped down and gave Greed a hand. Not like he really needed it.

It was a mess of fists, claws, and screaming. The flash of a knife or two winking in the gloom. Their leader very bloody and very on the ground in a flash made the rest of the mercenaries and clan men scatter. Men scrambled to try and leave up the stairs but Greed would jump out of the fray to capture and drag back every single one for a personal thrashing. Alphonse was actually unsure if it was Greed 100% of the time, it was hard to tell. A few mannerisms looked suspiciously like Ling airing out some personal grievances on faces he recognized.

With the last man getting his kidneys worked by Ed the group looked up in unison at a new noise coming from outside. The fire had gotten big enough to summon the brigade, Al could hear the sirens. They took fire seriously in a city that was made up of so much wood.

It was time to wrap it up; authorities were good and bad at this juncture. They needed to leave. The others of the group came to the same conclusion. Ed dropped an unconscious man in a heap on the ground and went over to aim a few goodbye kicks to the prone body of the leader laying in the middle of the room when he saw the state of Al's face. Lan Fan sheathed her blade and took the lead on clean up. Everyone was knocked out or knocked around hard enough to not pose a threat at this point anyway. Ed held a blade to Greed’s throat, taking from Al’s earlier yells that he had overheard that Greed was ‘unstable’ and in need of ‘restraint’. They found extra rope and bound the conscious men, leaving anyone knocked out where they lay. Lan Fan communicated to Ed and by proximity Greed and Ling that she would stay behind to explain the mess to the authorities.

She cut Al’s bonds and Al ran up the stairs screaming, playing to those that were still conscious. Ed backed Greed out of the basement with the knife. Al marveled at the destruction they had caused in such a short time as he picked his way up and out of the ruins of the house through a large hole busted conveniently in the side of it.

When they were out in the streets distancing themselves out of the area that was swarming with authorities, onlookers, and firemen Al explained what he had done and what had happened since they split up.

Ling doubled over laughing.

“It would do for you to have a shadow enforcer! Put the fear into your enemies a little, you're too nice to them, Ling. Sometimes people need to be knocked around before they start listening! Great thinking, Al. After this gets out all of Xing is gonna be talking about the emperor’s pet monster. Would you look at that, Greed is super useful for something!” Ed laughed and clapped Ling on the back, pointing a finger at Al. “Hey do you mind nixing the monster mode now, you’re freaking me out,” he directed at Ling.

Ling shifted from foot to foot. “If I let it go now I’m no shit gonna collapse. Let’s get to the palace.” Ling went to get going but stopped suddenly.

“You okay, Al?” Greed asked.

Al looked at Greed and smiled wide. “Yeah! Barely got knocked around, actually. Thanks for coming to get me! Sorry for ruining the party at the end, there!”

Greed balled a fist and knocked Al on the arm 'lightly'. Al rubbed his arm. “Good to hear, kid. Don’t expect me to swoop in and save your bacon every time!" He half turned to Ed, rounding on him, "Hear that Ed? My services are not free. Now that this party is ruined we’re gonna have to plan another one. Soon! I demand party compensation!”

Al knocked Greed’s arm back reciprocally and then shook out his hand, it was like punching a brick. Ed clapped him on the other arm. “Okay you bastard, we can make that work,” he said amiably.

Ling barely made it back to the palace, Al and Ed had to half carry him up the ladder and into the room. He fell on top of his bedding, the shield cracking away from his skin before he hit the covers. “Tell Lan Fan to let us sleep,” he mumbled directly into the floor. The brothers left them there to change out of their soot stained clothes and get some sleep themselves.   

----------

Morning came and left, afternoon also made an appearance. Finally, just to check that he hadn’t died, Lan Fan (who had finally made it back an hour or two after they did) cracked open Ling’s door.

“Ling-? Young lord— are you alive?” she hissed into the dark. All the curtains were closed and there wasn't any light filtering into the room but from where she had the door open. There wasn’t a response from the sleeper. She could see he was breathing from the mass of pillows and blankets draped over him moving up and down slightly. She paused for a second.

“.... Greed?”

A reluctant groan issued out from under the pillow that was on top of his head as the blankets shifted.

“Lan Fan, you can come in but please just stay quiet. I’ve somehow got two entirely separate headaches going on at once and I’m fucking spent,” Greed croaked, turning his head slightly so he was able to talk from under the pillow and not into the floor. Lan Fan gaped. Greed saying please?

She came in and knelt down, putting down water and something for headaches next to him. He made no move to grab it.

“Are you... both… doing okay?” she asked quietly after watching him lay there for a while.

“Basically. Not dying or anything if that's your question. Ling’s here too he’s just too wiped to even talk so I took one for the team, like /always/,” he rasped. The last part was directed at Ling. 

“Besides the headache is everything else... alright?” she asked, it was dark and 95% of Ling's body was still under the covers. Greed blew air out of his nose in a sigh and flopped an arm out of his nest and in her direction. It was red like they had gotten a lot of sunburn or more like some kind of rash given that it was on the underside too. Greed made to keep talking then stopped. Lan Fan guessed Ling was probably talking to him.

“Ling says: Remember when those girls painted their bodies with that paint all over and danced? And then one passed out midway through?” Greed relayed the story haltingly.

Lan Fan did remember. They had looked very pretty with dragons done all over their backs, the dance was soured midway through by one of the girls dropping like a downed animal. When you covered your skin in non breathable material like that all over something went wrong with your body. It was something with the sweat glands or the skin.

“When I make the shield that happens too, but I also turn the fucking top part of my skin into carbon. Diamond basically. It’s the dead part but it’s still not good for me. I feel like I ripped a couple of layers off me when I let it go, hurts like a son of a bitch,” he slowly explained. That explained the redness.

“Healing is slow but we’ll get up in an hour or two, I'm almost done. Back when I had the stone powering me I would just heal the effects immediately. Now I gotta do this the old fashioned way. It sucks!” He put an arm on top of his head and hissed in pain, the slight outburst making his head throb.

Lan Fan realized that Greed probably used a combined form of alchemy or alkahestry in his transformations. He was able to do this without a circle but then again all homunculi had traits that set them apart. Meanwhile, for Greed's ears only, Ling was annoyingly emitting a constant unending low moan even though he was more removed from the pain.

“What time is it?”, Greed asked, peeking an eye out from under the pillow. It narrowed in even the dim light that was in the room. It was ringed with bags and glittered red.

“Three,” she said. “Go back to sleep, I explained that your 'cold' you had the other day relapsed and turned into a fever. We are all taking it easy today.” He grunted in reply, accepting the white lie on his behalf and buried his head back into the pillow, face down. Lan Fan got up but stopped short at the doorway.

“Thank you, Greed. Not just for last night.” She hurried from the room. Greed rose from the bed with a start and hollered in pain, holding his head. He grabbed at the water and medicine, downing both.

----------

Al was killing time in his rooms waiting for Greed and Ling to make an appearance (and maybe start planning that party they owed them) by starting to teach Ed Xingese. His face had a nice lump from the one backhand he had caught in the otherwise complete victory of a rescue half a day before. Ed stated he was going to be hanging around for a while and didn’t feel like playing the dumb foreigner. Al was happy to help because it let him work on his accent; he was still embarrassed over last night.

He was starting with some insults, the things Ed had demanded to be taught first after some basic greetings he already knew when Greed dragged himself into the room and plopped down at the communal table, laying his forehead on top of it.

Ed smiled. “Welcome back Wanting (greed) You are a moron and I hate,” he said in broken Xingese.

“Hey short baby. You got eyes the color of piss,” said Greed pretty passably from his position of still laying on the table. Al stared at him. Ed knew enough to be insulted.

“Greed when did you learn—?”

“Think I’m just sitting there bored out of our mind sitting on my hands when sunshine-boy here is yammering on in meetings that I'm going to need summaries on afterward every day?” he jabbed a thumb at the back of his own head.

“If it makes you feel better I didn’t even know until just now, he never tells me nothing,” added Ling, finally crawling back out to talk himself. He greeted Ed and Al with a jaunty wave but didn't take his face off the table which was pleasantly cool. 

Al filled the two in on what happened after they slept half the day away. It was pretty uneventful after Lan Fan came home, the palace went to ground after the break up of what was a few major houses in collusion with each other. There was also the as of yet unrelated but very suspicious burning of one of those houses.

"I went for a walk all throughout the palace earlier this morning and made notes on who was surprised to see me walking around un–kidnapped," Al smirked, "pretty much the suspects I thought there would be. We'll have to talk later on what we should do with everyone."

"Yeah alright, but let's do it tomorrow, I don't feel like exacting revenge today, we're tired. And hungry actually," Greed said and Ling finished, remaining slumped on the table.

Lan Fan made an appearance, carrying trays of food into the room. Ling was secretly thankful, he knew he still looked like hell and didn't want the servants to see and spread it around. A cold was one thing, at best he looked like he'd fallen asleep sunbathing. 

They cheered at her arrival, Ling held his head at the noise and moaned but grabbed randomly at the food she had put down and started to eat. Al moved papers and writing implements out of the way but kept one in hand. He handed Greed the brush as Lan Fan moved about the table and set more stuff down, sitting down herself after she was done. She picked up the tea and asked Greed with a curt gesture if he wanted some. Greed gave her a nod and she poured for him.

"Do you know how to write anything yet?" Al asked. Greed grunted that he hadn't had the chance to try that out. 

“Let’s try it, why not, I'm teaching Ed anyway. Sit in with us, what do you wanna try first?” asked Al, always eager to help out. Ed meanwhile was trying to gently push his very shitty attempts at writing out of Greed's sight line. 

Greed shot him a look. Al smiled ruefully and started sketching out the radicals that comprised the symbols for Greed.