soul_campaign | 02 { feb 13: late afternoon } { video[s] }

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02 { feb 13: late afternoon } { video[s] }

[The network was spammed with a flood of messages in the span of a few minutes. Instead of posting each separately, it compiles them into a single post since there are so many. Each block is a separate message.

He posts all of them publicly since there is nothing remotely private about them. They're all addressed to Roy though. Who cares about saving Roy's face? It's not like Roy's in charge of a bunch of people, right?]

Roooooooooooooooooy, I'm BORED. Hey, you should come over.

Roy. Roy. Hey, Roy. I'll bet you'll never guess what Elicia did a few nights ago. It was the most adorable thing ever! I had just got home, and I was really tired bu— [The video cuts off suddenly.]

ROY, MY APARTMENT'S ON FIRE. [He looks frantic, but there is no evidence of a fire in the background behind him.]

Hey, stop working and get your ass over here, Mustang. I'm dying of boredom, over here!

There's nothing to do, Roy. You should come over and share some of that paperwork with me! And by share, I mean, give it to me and don't do any of it at all.

Hey, didja' know that Falman has impeccable memory? I tried moving the chess pieces once when he wasn't looking, and he figured it out as soon as he looked at the board again. Yeesh! How about we play a round, Roy?

Roy, have you ever seen a toilet paper roll be flushed down the toilet? Not the whole thing, but if you pull the paper over from the holder, put it in the water, and then flush it? It's pretty funny. It's probably a waste of paper though.

...okay, so I ran out of toilet paper. That wasn't a really good idea. Roy, could you get some toilet paper for me? I'm out. Please? Pleeeease? [In the background, anyone can see that he still has toilet paper though...]

Seriously, Roy, you should stop working and come over here. Don't leave me hanging!

Alright. You know what? Since you probably think my place is complete boring, and there's no reason to come by, how about I show you something you can't resist?
[The video moves and focuses in on Amaterasu, who's sleeping on Hughes' bed. After a few seconds, it shifts back to Hughes, who is smirking.]
What was that? I couldn't hear what you said over your sheer jealousy.

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Hughes...

[He purses his lips. He really, really doesn't want to have to say it.]

Roy...
Please. There's nothing I can hold against you, even if you are from a different timeline.

[He really meant that. Roy meant too much to him. Regardless of how different Roy might think his is from the Roy Hughes is supposed to know, everything about him is exactly the same: it's impossible to look over this fact.]

Just tell me how you know. I won't get upset.

[Really, the only thing that would be upsetting is if Roy tried to bring him back from the dead, but even Hughes knew that Roy knew better than that.]

[He doesn't answer, not for a long time. When he does, it's with a level of hesitance that is usually unheard in a man like him.]

Back during the Academy, and in Ishval... you and I. Did we ever...?

[Goddamn.]

[...well, he had not expected the conversation to suddenly steer in that direction, but at least Roy said something. He finds it a bit disconcerting that he knows exactly what Roy is trying to ask though.]

...no. We didn't.

[He does not really know what to say after that.

He sighs and takes another drink.]

...

He still got married after that...didn't he.

[He says it like it is a fact. If that Hughes is anything like he is, he knows he would have. The plan had always been about having a family.]

Yes.

[Wow, this was uncomfortable. See why he hadn't wanted to tell you?]

So there you have it. You're different.

Edited 2012-05-01 07:52 (UTC)

No.

[It is not like Roy would know. After all, it is something Hughes felt should go unsaid, but maybe that was a problem in itself.]

I'm not as different as you might think.

[He hesitates. Is he really going to tell this Roy?

Shit. He used to always think he could just carry it to the grave and never speak of it, but... After what this Roy has gone through, he feels really guilty, even if it is not his actual fault. It makes him wonder if his own Roy had the same troubled feelings, and the fact that he is probably dead becomes even more dreadful to him.

He takes a deep breath and decides to continue.]

...there's something I should say. About...that.
I won't say it unless you're willing to hear me out, though. I can understand if you think I have no place to say anything, since I'm not...your Hughes, but...from what I can tell, even if things played out differently in our timelines, we're still the same person. If that makes sense... We just made different choices.

[Could he take it? With everything that had been happening lately, he wasn't so sure.

Yet he knew that maybe he needed to hear whatever Hughes had to say. He was certain, at least, that if he cut the other man off, he'd regret it.

He was tired of having something to regret.]

I'm listening.

[He nods, feeling a bit glad that Roy is willing to listen, but he hesitates again. It might be harder to say than he had thought.

No. Stop. Take a deep breath. All the cards on the table.]

...you know how much you mean to me, right? I'm— No— Shit— Screw the easy route. Roy, I love you. You're my best friend. I can't not feel really attached to you. As much as I love Gracia and Elicia, you were...are always different. I love those two more than anything, but they don't know what we've seen or been through or been forced to feel. No matter how much I love them, they don't know me like you do, and that makes you mean so much more to me than you could ever possibly imagine.

[He pauses and tries to sort out his thoughts so that he does not make a huge mess of this.]

I'd be lying if I said I never thought about it. Shit, I'm male, and it's not like I can help it. It doesn't help either when we're stuck out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to...well...fuck. [He is getting a bit too on edge... Don't fuck this up, idiot. Deep breaths.] ...and you know how attractive you are. It's something I can't exactly ignore when I'm around you all the time.

I couldn't do it though. I didn't...want to damage the understanding we had. You mean a lot to me Roy, but... I know I can't be that person for you. From the start, I knew it would only fuck things up. But—shit—it was really difficult to withstand that temptation. I can't claim to know why the Hughes you knew did what he did, but, hell, it wasn't exactly easy for me to avoid either, even though I didn't do it.

But...especially because I care for you, I had to make sure it never happened. I didn't want our friendship to turn into something we couldn't control, and it would have. It would have been too easy. After the shit that happens in the day, all you want to think about is anything else, and, hell, if you're going to get a good lay, then it's a helluva lot better than sulking in your cot and wishing you didn't have to do what you were doing to innocent people. And knowing someone—having your best friend there with you—it would have been so easy for us to fill up that emptiness we wish we didn't have to feel. But if I let that happen...that's all our friendship would turn into. We would turn it into a replacement for that peace of mind that we crave but can never really have again, and it would only hurt us when we got back to the real world.

[He pauses again. There is a little more he wants to say, but he does not want to intermittently scare Roy away by being too brutally honest about what he had felt. Ultimately, that was why he had never wanted to actually tell Roy any of this before. He tries to gauge if he should continue or not.]

[...Yeah.

Yeah, all of that? Definitely hard to hear.]

[It was strange yet ultimately unsurprising, hearing Hughes' explanation. It brought him back to how he and his own Hughes had ended up together. How, at the end of it, he had been the one pushing, the one leaning too hard in order to run away from the rigors of duty, the horror of war. Sometimes, he still felt as though he had had forced the other into an impossible position.

At the end of it, it had been the reason that he had cut things off between them: to let Hughes go, even if he might have made it difficult for he himself to deal properly, or sort out his own feelings. He had figured, of course, that he'd be fine. That he'd always find a way.

It had not worked out as well as planned, but it had worked.]

[But there was more to this story, and more that Hughes wanted to say. He could tell; he had made it his business, for a good long time, to be able to read Hughes like a book, and react accordingly.

One needed to stay a few steps ahead, after all, in order to hide well.]

...It's okay. Go on.

[...except Roy was not actually that good at hiding from Hughes at all. He just thought he was because Hughes was better at hiding the fact that he could read Roy just as well.

Regardless, he would continue.]

You still mean a lot to me. You probably always will. And because of that, it does affect some of the things I end up doing, whether rational or irrational. [Like charging forward without looking and dying for example.]

But you need someone else to fill that role for you, Roy. Since it can't be me. As much as I want to fill it—as much as I would love to—I can't. I'm not capable of it. I'm not enough, and I'm not what you need. All the things we want from that kind of relationship are far too different from what we are capable of giving to each other. Though...I guess, you probably already know that.

[He shakes his head. There was more he wanted to say, but he does not have the heart to say any of it anymore. Roy does not need to know those things. None of it really matters anymore anyway...]

I do.

[Now it was his turn to look straight at the other man.]

I wasn't looking for a second shot in that direction anyway. As it is, I think I'm perfectly content just to have you back for a while, as my friend.

[That time - their time - had been over for a while now. Things were different, and he had also grown.

This was painful, but it was going to pass. They had better things to look out for now.]

Heh. I didn't expect you to want to. But I felt like I should say my part... You're my best friend, and I don't want things like that to come between us. We might be from different timelines, but you're still Roy to me. You're still...you. And I still want to support you in every way I can.

[He grins his usual.]

Now, how about you sit down and eat some of these delicious dumplings with me, huh?

You're still Hughes to me too.

[No matter what. To that next statement, however, he smiled, and finally left his spot by the counter to sit down.]

Might as well, before you finish everything.

[He smiles and laughs faintly, thoroughly pleased.]

They really are very good. I haven't had them in so long, hehe.

But, anyway, tell me about your work or whatever. I heard that you're in charge of some sort of defense organization? What's that about?

[He doesn't answer immediately to that, choosing, instead, to pick at some of the food.]

It's called Death City's Office for General Security - DOGS, for short. The 'militant' arm of it is called the Watch. [Mm, food is good.] Death the Kid asked me to set it up last September, to bolster city defenses during sieges and help keep crime at a minimum. [Man, it felt like so long ago...] It's kind of grown since then.

DOGS? [He chuckles and shakes his head.] Where'd you come up with that one?

Hm...I see. Who's uh... Death the Kid?
You said you were pretty busy too, right? I'm guessing something happened recently?

[He watches Roy eat. Damn. The kid really needs to pay more attention to basic needs over work.]

Death the Kid is the son of Shinigami, the old master of Death City. He's the guy on top of everything here, in spite of his age.

[...But he isn't quite answering the other question yet. Food's good. Yep.]

...Yeah, a lot has happened on my end.

Oh. Is he really young? I missed out on the tour so I didn't really learn all that I was supposed to. [He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.]

...you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I've been through a lot myself the last few days, so I can only imagine you've got way more on your plate.

I'm here if you need me though.

I know.

[Another tiny smile, and then he's back to eating.]

I can answer any questions you might have about Death City, Shibusen and this war.

[Seeing Roy smile so much makes him so happy. He is glad the air has been cleared. Well, for the most part anyway.]

Hm. Well, I think I get plenty about the war stuff at this point. We get pulled here to help fight, yadda yadda. And another guy explained Weapons and Meisters in full to me—oh, I don't know what I am either, so I'm going to have to find out somehow too, haha.

I think most of my questions are just about this world: where we are, and what kind of people are also here.

We're in Death City, in a state called Nevada - it's a part of the United States of America. In general, the people we're dealing with are good people, guests and locals alike.

[Much the same as any other place, in Roy's opinion.]

Shibusen controls this place, and wields a lot of influence on this world due to the fact that their agents are the only people who can take kishin eggs and witches on.

Is the United States of America a country then? Hm.

How do they afford all of this? The provisions and such. It'd take a lot to provide the basics for this many people, anyway.

I've never really asked about that. I have a feeling it's because other countries pay them a lot to send their agents over to fix things and fight this war.

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/legit stared at this tag for an hour

Sorry... OTL

it was a good sort of pain. ;w;

OTL

ALL OUR FEELS

wall of text OTL

Hughes baby ;A; Also give me a bit: 1/something

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oh, there. done.

OTL

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