Through The Gate

Fic: Who Decides Which League is Minor or Major Anyway?

2009-01-11T12:03:07Z

Title: Who Decides Which League is Minor or Major Anyway?
Characters: Dick Grayson/Nightwing and Roy Harper/Speedy
Fandom: DCAU (specifically Teen Titans and Justice League Unlimited)
Summary: "You're the one that said it. 'You can't be a Boy Wonder forever,' right? Well maybe you can't be a Teen Titan forever either."
Warnings: Eh, language. I could warn for slashy subtext . . . but that's kinda their default setting in canon . . .
Disclaimer: Sorry, my initials are KC, not DC.

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"So . . . that's it?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"Just like that?"

"What, you wanted two weeks notice? They asked, I said yes, end of story. What's the problem, Dick?"

Roy had his back to him. He knew exactly what the problem was, but he wasn't about to let that stand in his way. Never had.

"I thought we were a team."

"You're right. We were a team."

Dick's footsteps as he tried to get closer. Trying to understand where this had all come from out of seemingly nowhere. "So what happened?"

Roy pulled away before he got too close but still refused to look at him. Because if he looked at him it would make him rethink everything. If he looked at him, he'd remember why it had been such a hard decision in the first place. If he looked at him, he'd be reminded of all the reasons he had to stay.

"You're the one that said it. 'You can't be a Boy Wonder forever,' right? Well maybe you can't be a Teen Titan forever either."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

God, he just didn't get it! "Well for one thing, Dick, I'm not exactly a teenager anymore. None of us are. How's anyone supposed to take a team of mostly twenty-somethings seriously when they're going around calling themselves the Teen Titans?"

He shouldn't have turned around. Not because it was making the decision harder, but apparently because the completely clueless look on Dick's face was just stoking his temper.

"So we change the name," he said, as if it was the most painfully obvious solution in the world. "Most people call us just The Titans these days anyway; the transition shouldn't be too hard."

"That's not the point!" Roy wanted to hit something. He wanted to hit Dick. But this whole situation had been his fault anyway, so he controlled himself. Or at least tried to, "It's not the name, Dick, it's the team."

And then Dick looked like he was having just as much trouble controlling himself.

"So what, you got a call from Superman and now all of a sudden you're too good for us? Is that what's going on here?"

"That's not what I said-"

"No? You sure? 'Cause that's sure what it sounded like to me. You were perfectly fine being a Teen Titan last week. But I guess we're just kid stuff now, huh? Once you get that special invitation into the League you don't have to worry about playing babysitter to us second-rate heroes. Hell, most of us are just sidekicks anyway, right? I know you don't like associating yourself with us. And it's not like we do anything important."

"That's not what I said!"

"Then what did you say?!"

"I just have to go, okay?!"

"Why?! We're your team! What do you need-"

"No, Dick, we're your team!"

The silence that fell then stretched on just long enough for Dick to try and work out every possible meaning that that statement could have had. And for Roy to see that whatever he'd come up with, he didn't like it.

"That's not tr-"

"Bull! It's always been your team! Titans West, Titans East, North, South! Yeah, sure, we all got our very own leaders, but when it comes down to it we all answer to you!"

"You never had a problem with it before!"

"I never had the choice before!"

Dick froze, visibly stung by the accusation. By the very thought and implication that a member of his team -- his family -- had only joined and stayed because they'd felt forced to. Especially one that had been so close to him both in and out of the mask. That all this time, one of his best friends had resented him for making him stay on a team that he hadn't wanted to be on. Or, at least, that he'd resented having to follow his orders.

Roy could read this all on his face, didn't need Dick to spell it out for him because he knew the jackass. And the fact that he could think that Roy would have stayed all those years just because of some misguided sense of obligation. If he'd had somewhere else worth going, he would have gone, and as far as he was concerned Dick should have known better than that because he knew Roy better than that. But time passed with no regard for anyone in its way and Roy wasn't about to let the chance of a lifetime go just because Dick had an over-inflated sense of responsibility that always led to that overbearing protectiveness-bordering-on-possessiveness that could give his old boss a run for his money and, to be real damn frank, was part of the reason Roy had decided to go. Clingy asshole.

Not that he ever planned on telling Dick that.

He'd had a whole speech prepared in head for this moment, though. About how this didn't have to be the end of their friendship. How he'd still be there if the Titans ever needed his help -- if Dick ever needed his help. It wasn't like he was moving to another planet or something, he was just switching teams. Because, come on, when the Justice League asks you to join their ranks, even as a third-string hero, you don't turn them down. Roy had thought that Dick, of all people, would have been able to understand that; appreciate it, even. After all, he'd worked with the Justice League as much as any of the other Leaguer sidekicks (former or otherwise), maybe even more. He'd looked up to them all, even after his falling out with Batman. The Teen Titans had even, on occasion, been called a Junior Justice League, for crying out loud!

But maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe somewhere along the lines Dick had gone from looking up to the League to thinking he was in some sort of rivalry with them. And losing a teammate to them . . .

Well Roy, for one, wasn't going to let him drag him into some stupid feud against their former mentors and freaking Superman.

"I'm going, Dick."

"Why?"

Roy stopped halfway out the door to Titans Tower, dufflebag in one hand, bow and quiver in the other, and thought of all of the reasons he'd come up with since Superman had first extended the invitation. All of the reasons he'd had to weigh against his reasons to stay. All of the reasons he'd thought of for when Dick inevitably asked him how he could just leave all of this behind, abandon his friends, his team, his family. But with all of those reasons swimming around his head, Roy finally realized that they all boiled down to one thing in the end. One thing that had driven every life-changing decision he'd ever made since convincing Green Arrow to take him on as his partner. And the only reason that Dick, even pissed off as he was, hurt and betrayed, would always be able to understand:

"Because I have to."

-End

Fic!

2008-12-30T11:08:25Z

Title: Ballad of the Former Sidekick
Fandom: DCAU (Batman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, and Teen Titans)
Characters: Dick Grayson/Nightwing and Roy Harper/Speedy
Summary: "So. You gonna tell me what ol' Bat-brain did this time?"
Warnings: Language
Notes: This is dedicated to arks who is the most awesome Roy Harper RP-er EVAR. Nevermind that I’ve never seen another Roy Harper RP-er, THAT IS IRRELEVANT. Also I know I can’t write Roy as awesome as she does, but I attempted anyway. |D

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Okay, so he'd quit. Left the suit, took his trust fund, and walked away. Hell, he'd even decked his mentor and guardian of eleven years on his way out.

And yeah, he'd disappeared for a year. No contact. He'd even seriously considered never returning to the city that had become his home; the city where his parents had died and his life had been changed forever; the city that he had, at times, felt he had a claim on, being one of its shadowy protectors.

But the truth was? Dick had always known, deep down, that he'd return to Gotham one day. Just not as Robin -- not this time. That era in his life was over.

Even so, to suddenly come home to find Bruce training some kid he'd never met, a kid that (he'd later found out) had stolen his old suit, and was going to be lurking around the shadows and back alleys of Gotham City with Batman as his new Robin . . . That was something that Dick just hadn't been prepared for. And maybe he'd gotten a little too touchy after that, but could they really blame him?

Of course they could. It was all over their faces when he sort of snapped at the kid for apparently clearing out his closet when he'd moved into Dick's old room. And Alfred sure didn't help him feel less like an ass when he oh-so-subtly informed him that he'd taken the opportunity to move Dick's things into one of the spare guest closets. That was around the point when he'd realized that maybe it had been a bad idea to just come straight back to good old Wayne Manor. Some things just you just had to ease yourself back into.

So when he found out that the Titans West were in relatively nearby Steel City working with Titans East on a case, Dick "borrowed" the Batwing and headed west. He needed to introduce his team to Nightwing anyway.

-------------------------------

The Titans were embroiled in battle by the time he got there and he was pretty sure that, given the year of radio silence, the new name, the new costume, and the new overall look and attitude, he could forgive the brief pause in fighting when he appeared on the scene. But these were some of the people that knew him better than anyone so all it took was a quick "Welcome back, Shortpants" and they were back to making quick order of Brother Blood.

Back at the Titans East Tower with a stack of traditional celebratory pizzas there was plenty of catching up on past year and simultaneously admiring and mocking the new super-identity, but mostly retelling of the more impressive parts of the final battle they'd just finished up. And it was just so normal, so everything he'd expected it to be, that Dick wished that he'd come to the Titans before making his official reappearance in Gotham.

Once the party started winding down, Dick stole up to the roof, not deliberately hiding from any of his friends but they were mostly caught up in other things and he just wasn't feeling the urge to pwn Beast Boy at Super Ninja Fury V just yet.

There was a cool breeze coming off of the lake that the Titans East Tower stood on the banks of and he closed his eyes against it until he heard Roy's voice behind him.

"So do the longpants mean I can't call you Shortpants anymore?"

Dick smirked without turning around, "Would that really stop you?"

"Nah, just wanted to know how much more it's gonna bug you, oh Former Boy Wonder."

The Former Boy Wonder snorted and listened to the footsteps (Roy's, of course) cross the roof and when the Former Partner of Green Arrow spoke up again he was right next to him. "So. You gonna tell me what ol' Bat-brain did this time?"

That actually got Dick to look at him and, when he did, Roy had a smug look of satisfaction on his face that just seemed to grow with Dick's quizzical, "What?"

Roy rolled his eyes with a silent Here We Go Again. "You've been moping since about halfway through your third slice of that ham and pineapple crap you claim is pizza and you've got that 'I wish I was never born a Bat' look on your face."

"I do not," he retorted. Roy apparently found that amusing and just looked at him, smirking and waiting. They both knew that Dick was going to tell him eventually anyway. It didn't take terribly long for him to cave.

"There's a new Robin."

The silence this time was very poignantly of the stunned variety and was eventually broken by a disbelieving but distinctly uncertain chuckle from Roy, "What?"

"You heard me."

Dick was back to not looking at him and that was proof enough for Roy that he was telling the truth.

"What do you mean there's a new Robin?"

"I mean there's a kid running around the streets of Gotham in my old costume calling himself Robin."

" . . . does Batman know about-" Roy was cut off by what was coming dangerously close to a glare and shrugged, "Okay, stupid question."

Dick leaned his arms on the roof wall and frowned down at the water while Roy just waited. "I can't believe he's doing it again," he said finally. "After everything he just up and recruits another kid for his damn War. And he's only fifteen. What the hell is he thinking?"

"Uh, Shortpants? " Roy asked, scratching his head to add to the overall confused look on his face. "Not to defend the interloper and your ex-boss or anything, but . . . So?"

That earned him another dirty look. "What do you mean 'So'?"

"You do remember how old we were when we started out, right?"

"That was different!"

" . . . "

"Gotham was a different city back then."

" . . . "

"What?"

Roy shrugged, Dick glared, and they stared each other down until Roy finally came out with it, "Just think it's not the kid's health you're worried about." Dick straightened up. He wasn't going to yell, but he was pissed enough that he was getting there, so Roy cut him off. "I'm not saying you don't care whether or not the kid gets hurt," the former Boy Wonder relaxed some, "I’m saying that that's not what's bugging you."

For being the real talker of the two of them, Dick was being awfully silent. Maybe that year hiatus had changed him more than Roy had thought; or maybe things between him and Batman really were that bad. The last time Roy had seen Dick had been just after his fight with his mentor -- he'd shown up on his doorstep like a lost puppy with nothing but a duffel bag, the most vague plan Roy had ever heard come from the mouth of the Greatest Detective in the World's sidekick, and the PIN number he needed to access the money in his trust fund. He'd been in bad shape then, the unequivocal loss of the identity he'd created and forged for over a decade having shaken him in a way that had just proven to Roy almost instantly that that really had been it.

So they'd ordered a pizza, shared a few beers, Dick to spilled his guts to Roy and together they were able to work at least some important things out. Then, in the morning, Dick had made breakfast and Roy had taken him to the bank and then dropped him off at the airport.

Now a year later and here they were again.

But Dick wasn't a lost puppy anymore. Somehow that year backpacking across Asia and wherever the hell else he'd ended up had matured him more than eleven years stalking the shadows in the back alleys of Gotham City alongside the Dark Knight. It was kind of sad . . . but inevitable if you thought about it too hard. Which Roy, of course, couldn't help.

"So, Dr. Freud?" Dick asked, "What's your professional opinion?"

Everything about him told Roy that he knew that they were both pretty well aware of exactly what was going on; Dick was just waiting for someone to actually say before he'd let himself acknowledge it.

Roy answered with a terribly fake German accent, "Zeempul," and then immediately dropped it, "you got sick of old Bats' bullshit -- or is that guan- ow! -- set off on your own like you should've done five years ago, and got pissed when you came back expecting a welcome home party and instead you found a brand new puppy chewing on your squeaky toys and living in your dog house."

" . . . puppy?"

"Not the point. The point is some kid you don't even know showed up while you were gone and took up where you left off and now you're getting territorial."

"Well wouldn't you?"

Roy shrugged. It was kind of hard to imagine Ollie getting a new sidekick and naming him Speedy. Besides, "There's kind of a big difference here."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"I'm still Speedy," he said and pulled on Dick's shoulder to get him to look at him. "You gave up being Robin. Remember? You quit. Molted your feathers and left ’em in the Cave. And now you've got this brand new name and costume. So what if some kid's running around calling himself Robin now?"

Obviously the wrong thing to say because Dick just pulled away from him and stalked across the roof. Well, if he'd wanted to be babied he wouldn't have come to Roy. Even if he hadn't technically come to him.

"That's not the point," Dick retorted, whirling back around. "I know I gave it up, I know I quit, but it was still my name! It's like . . . Wally and Bart. Barry retired and passed down the mantle of The Flash down to Wally. But when Bart came along he didn't become the new Kid Flash.”

"Dick . . . "

"What?"

Roy smirked, "You're not really comparing you and the rest of the Bats to the Speedsters, are you?"

"I just want to know why."

"Why it's stupid to compare you and Bats to Wally and Bart?"

"Why Robin?!"

Okay, obviously joking time was over. Roy leaned back against the wall of the roof, crossed his arms, and waited for Dick to let it out.

He paced a few times before he was finally able to get his mouth working, gesturing in a sort of wild grace that only he person could pull off, "I spent eleven years with him as Robin! It was my name as much as Dick Grayson is! And as soon as I'm out of the picture he goes and picks out another kid from the Chip On Their Shoulder Orphanage to give my old costume, my old name . . . There's plenty of other names out there! There's plenty of other costume designs! Why did he have to take mine? Even if he needed to keep with the winged theme, there's millions of species of birds in the world!"

"Yeah, but Batman and Bushtit doesn't have quite the same ring to it."

"Roy!"

"Okay, okay, geez. Look," he pushed away from the wall sauntered his way over to his friend who looked about ready to deck him, "I'm not saying it wasn't a dick move. Hell, I won't be saying that after you get over it -- and you will. You know you will. You always get over it. I'm just saying it's done, it's over, you gave up the name, the kid took it, I doubt he's gonna give it up and you've got a shiny new one to take its place anyway. So what's the point in getting your Shortpants in a twist?"

Dick still looked like he wanted to deck someone, but at least it didn't look like that someone was Roy anymore. Though considering who he was probably considering instead, maybe the change was a bad thing after all.

"Dick."

No answer.

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

Roy grabbed his shoulder to turn him back around so he could look him in the eye. "Don't go off here half-cocked back to Gotham and do something you're gonna regret and then come whining back to me about how bad you fucked up."

"Fuck you!" Dick snapped, shoving his hand away. "I didn't come here to get lectured, Roy!"

"Then what did you come here for? Didn't think the team could handle the pressure without our Fearless Leader to guide us by the hand?"

And that did it. Dick swung at him. Roy just barely dodged it and grabbed him. They grappled. They wrestled. They fought for dominance over a situation only the two of them really understood, but were so equally matched in, that it either took a slipup or a give up for one of them to take control. In the end they both had a few extra bruises, scrapes, and other marks, costumes rumpled beyond belief, and panting harder than after a typical patrol night.

Dick rolled off of Roy, fixing his suit and running a hand through his hair while the redhead just laid there eventually smirking up at him. "What?"

Which just made him grin. "Feel better?"

Which just got him smacked. But at least Dick was smirking, "Ass."

"Dipshit."

-The End

Fic

2008-08-28T21:00:40Z

Title: An Epilogue
Summary: It's normal for some to have regrets on their wedding day.
Pairings: Winry > Ed
Rating: G
Warnings: Unrequited love, but maybe not quite in the way you're thinking.
Notes: This fic was actually inspired after a long evening of playing Music Catch and hearing the song played in it, "Before Dawn" by Isaac Shepard, on repeat for several hours and trying to figure out just what the bunny it had spawned was trying to make me write. In the end, I came out with this. It's the first time I've written from Winry's perspective, and the first time I've tried to sync up a fic to a piece of music, for that matter. It can certainly stand on its own, of course, but I think the background music adds just a little something extra.

Or I could just be insane. Either way, it's a gorgeous piece ("Before Dawn" I mean), so I suggest you listen to it anyway.

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It's her wedding day.

She's about to marry the man of her dreams.

To be tied together forever to the only man who'd ever come close to her mechanical skills and could still take a wrench or two to the head.

She should be happy, the happiest she's ever been.

So then why can she only sit here at her workbench and stare at the pictures of days gone by and . . . try her hardest not to let the tears fall?

Her family and friends are all gathered for the celebration, ready to toast to the new couple, but that's not even as true as she wants it to be. As she looks at the pictures she sees the faces of the two missing members of the wedding party. The two that had been at the wedding in her dreams since she'd been a little girl. And that she'll never see again.

She's knows that they're out there somewhere. She knows that they're living their lives the way they'd fought so hard to do. That maybe, wherever they are, they're even thinking about her too.

But not even that knowledge can make the pain go away.

They're happy now, together at last, but where does that leave her?

The forgotten sister to her most precious brothers left behind once again, like always.

She'd thought, when she'd been a child, that when she finally married, the one waiting for her at the altar would be him.

But something went horribly wrong, they drifted so far apart until he could only see one thing.

And she'd been left behind waiting. Waiting for the day when he'd finally return home to her but that day just never came, no matter how hard she'd wished for it. No matter how hard she prayed and yearned and wanted and pleaded for him to come back to her, they were never granted. He was never there even when he was there, not for her, never for her, and he could never see just how much it hurt her that he couldn't let her in, that he couldn't trust her, that he couldn't love her.

So what was she supposed to do? Wait her whole life for a man that would never come?

Count on a dream that would never come true?

Waste her life away on a fantasy that had never had any hope to begin with?

She'd wanted so much to believe that he would stay in the end.

That somehow his loyalty to his home and to her would finally turn him around. Make him come back.

But it just wasn't meant to be. She realizes that now.

She has to go on with her own life, just like they're doing wherever they are.

She'll never forget them as long as she lives, but it's past time that she moves on.

Now there's someone waiting for her, and she won't let him down.

Because she loves him.

-End

Shadows in the Snow

2008-02-29T21:51:08Z

Title: Shadows in the Snow
Series: Ayashi no Ceres/Ceres: Celestial Legend
Characters: Tsukasa Shuro
Summary: There was something about the snow, about the winter, that was what Shuro had always been told. But she'd never really understood it, herself.
Rating: G
Disclaimer: If I owned Ayashi no Ceres then I wouldn't be poor and this wouldn't be fanfic.
Notes: A little backstory: This is a Shuro that I play at a particular RPG where she's in a relationship with Hitsugaya of Bleach but, when she eventually gets sent back home to her world, she'll lose all of her memories of the RPG and everything that happened there. The fic is set after she's been sent back home.

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There was something about the snow, about the winter, that was what Shuro had always been told. But she'd never really understood it, herself.

Of course there were the snowball fights, the snowmen and snow-angels, the hot chocolate, and the snow days; but there was also the numb fingers, the snotty noses, the back aches from shoveling, and the frozen vocal cords. Personally, Shuro had always preferred the summer if she had to choose a favorite time of year. Sure, it was hot and humid, which always made outdoor concerts absolutely disgusting between the temperatures, the heavy costumes, and the stage lights (nevermind the choreography and the poor audience members all stuffed into the venues like screaming fangirl sausages). But there was always air conditioning and those little portable fans. Or there was Shuro's all time favorite way to relax and cool down: The ocean. It had always been right there for her growing up, sitting right behind her childhood home and almost becoming a confidante to her; it knew all of her secrets -- even the ones that she'd been too afraid to tell Kei.

That was probably why, on brief holiday breaks from touring, she would sit out on a small rocky hill on the beach just watching the snow float down, disappearing into the waves. It would be freezing cold but Shuro had found that she didn't really mind since it would be the cold and the snow that would draw her out to begin with. She just . . . didn't know why . . .

For several months she'd been drawn to it -- sucking on ice cubes and taking walks when most people would rather be curled up in a blanket with some hot chocolate in front of a fire -- she just couldn't help it, though. The dropping temperatures called to her in a way that . . . well, nothing ever had, and she didn't understand it. It frightened her sometimes, but that was only when she wasn't out there, in the cold.

Out there, she felt safe; she felt like nothing could go wrong and, if it did, she felt like there was nothing keeping her from making it through alright. She felt warm in that way she did when she knew that everything was right. And she felt inspired because of it. Inspired in a way that she'd hadn't been since she'd first begun to realize her feelings for Kei; and, of course, her manager couldn't have been happier. Shuro's notebook was filled lyrics written on wrinkly, snow-drenched paper. Heartfelt lyrics that she wasn't quite sure where they were coming from . . . or to whom they were going.

That was the mystery that had brought Shuro out on this particular day. She sat on the balcony of her apartment in Tokyo, watching the fat, fluffy snowflakes float down from the clouds and disappear into the haze of the city below and thinking of Okinawa. She'd always hated living in the city, ever since GeSANG had relocated there when they'd first been picked up by a major record company; now, Shuro still didn't like it much, but it was more bearable, she thought more recently, in the winter. But why was that? Why was it that summer, spring, or autumn, all Shuro could do was find reasons to dislike the city, but come winter it was fine so long as she could experience it outside where could really feel it? Where she could stand outside and watch her breath drift away in the breeze while he fingers, her toes, and her nose tingled with oncoming numbness? She even had to keep a window open at night, which she knew was unhealthy and bad for her voice, but . . . it was the way that she could really sleep.

And why?

Shuro asked herself that question over and over again, flipping through the crinkled pages of her lyric notebook trying to make the connection that she knew was there but just couldn't grasp. When she'd first begun writing the new songs, she'd thought that she'd been writing about Kei and, of course, it had made the most sense -- they were mostly songs of longing, wondering if the singer would ever see a dear person again. And, of course, Kei had died and was gone and Shuro missed him dreadfully. But the connection just wasn't there. When she tried to picture her cousin and bandmate while she sang the new songs, it just wasn't right. But when she tried to just sing the songs, she immediately began thinking of the cold in which she'd written them.

But there was something else. Shuro felt, somehow, that something was missing; that someone was missing. The someone that she had been writing the songs for. But try as she might, she just couldn't find the right connection. That moment of clarity like she'd felt when she'd realized her earlier songs had been about Kei and her feelings for him.

Shuro shivered as a breeze swept up over her and she pulled the blanket she'd draped over her shoulders a bit closer and wondered, not for the first time, if she would ever figure it out. If she'd ever realize who it was she'd been singing for those past few months. And for the first time . . . she felt she finally knew the answer to that question.

She didn't have much time left, she knew that, so maybe that was why she'd even thought of it, but she looked down at her hand -- at the blackened skin framing the swollen veins, the marks of the C-Genome serum working its way through her body and slowly killing her -- and she knew. The faint memory of a promise whispered from the back of her mind, like a dream that she couldn't quite remember from a long time ago. They'd find a way. Somehow they'd find a way. And when she died, then they could finally be together again.

Kei would have told her that she was just being morbid, and she supposed that she was. Her mother would have thought that she'd finally gone off the deep end and had her locked up for fear that Shuro would try to kill herself. But that wasn't it. She knew that it wasn't a plea from some alien voice in her head for her to harm herself; it was a promise. A promise from someone that wanted her to live her life, to be happy, and, when the time came, would finally answer all of her questions.

A gust of wind blew over the balcony again and the cold air on her face Shuro realize that she'd begun crying at some point. However, the smile that had inexplicably settled on her lips despite them, made a voice in the back of her head chide her for being a dummy. There was on reason for her to cry. Yes, she was going to die, but she was going to make absolutely sure that it counted for something. So that she had no regrets leaving this world. Besides, Shuro knew that whatever promise had been made to her, it would be fulfilled. She trusted it absolutely and, when one of those fat, fluffy snowflakes floated down the back of her shirt, sending a shiver down her spine with melted droplet of water, she knew that her trust wasn't misplaced.

-End

Dark!Fic

2007-07-27T12:28:04Z

Title: Begging and Pleading
Summary: There was always something hungry and just a bit dangerous in his eyes when he made these "appointments" with me, but there was something else there that day.
Characters: Ed and Roy; Ed's POV
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Current Ed/Winry (with mention of Roy/Riza) looking back on past Roy/Ed; bondage-gone-wrong.
Disclaimer A: If I owned FMA then I wouldn't be poor and this wouldn't be fanfic.

Disclaimer B: The thoughts/opinions/sentiments/what-have-you expressed in this fic in no way shape or form express the thoughts/opinions/sentiments/what-have-you of the author. This is a series set in turn-of-the-century Western Europe-ish; views of homosexuality were Not So Nice back then. Opinions in this fic towards it are, therefore, historically accurate and also a plot device, so please not to be complaining to me about how omgwrong I am for thinking homosexuality is evil. Because I don't. And I will laugh at you and point you to every other one of my fics. Seriously, why would I be writing it if I thought that, people, come on.

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I should've seen it coming when I saw that look in his eyes when he asked me to "stop by" that night. There was always something hungry and just a bit dangerous when he made these . . . "appointments" with me, but there was something else there that day. Maybe a bit of over-eagerness? I don't really know, and I came to the conclusion long ago that I would probably never know what really went on behind those eyes of his.

Well, I guess that's not entirely true; I know something about what didn't go on behind them. There was no love between us. No matter which way you tilted your head or how much you squinted your eyes, it just wasn't there. That's not to say that we didn't care -- I would've thrown myself in front of a bullet for him and I'm pretty sure that he'd do the same for me -- but caring about and loving someone are two very different things. Besides, what we'd been doing had very little, if anything, to do with either of them. What we had been doing was . . . something else. Something maybe a little perverted. Something that, had anyone actually known about it, would have gotten Roy arrested. And those were the reasons why I'd never told anyone; I was partly ashamed because it wasn't something that a "normal" person would want or understand, and I just didn't want him getting arrested.

Which was why we always took the most careful of precautions. When I went to meet him that night, it was well after the time most normal people had already eaten dinner and were sitting down to listen to the radio or read the newspaper, so there weren't a lot of people outside on the street. I'd abandoned, as always, my normal clothing since it was rather conspicuous and, instead, dressed in a pair of plain grey slacks and a white long-sleeved pullover shirt with a dark red vest over it. With that and my hair tucked up under a Gatsby cap, I could've been just another paperboy on their way home from handing out the evening edition. I'd told Al, as usual, that I was going to go out and listen around by some of the pubs to see if I could hear any useful rumors about the Stone; he never seemed to question it. Neither did anyone else out on the streets at that time of night who were either on their way home from a late night at work, on their way to the bar, and the last of the paperboys trying to unload their final editions on the stragglers and drunks. They tended to be fairly new to the trade (they were always the ones that overbought), so they didn't question who I was or where I'd been or how I'd sold my papers when they didn't recognize me.

There was always a specific time I was supposed to meet Mustang and we both used the clock tower in the center of East City (lovingly referred to as the Fuhrer's missing eye, or Old Eye for short) since you could see it anywhere within the city limits and it would ensure that we were both on the same time. And we were strict about it; if I was even a minute late then I didn't even bother going and Mustang wouldn't have let me in anyway. So he would find out when the landlord of his apartment building would be settling in for the night and, an hour later, I would meet him at the back entrance of the building where he would let me in and I'd follow him up to his apartment where the first order of business was pouring a couple of glasses of whiskey or brandy.

I don't know why he did this, I never really dared to ask, except maybe the first time. I couldn't help but wonder why he was giving a boy of fourteen alcohol, but he just replied that it wouldn't be the worst of his crimes that night, and it simply became a ritual, same as his cigarette afterwards. I suppose, to a point, he used it to build up the courage to do what we did in those days; it wasn't "normal" for a man to be attracted to other men, after all, let alone a man of almost thirty to be attracted to a teenage boy of fourteen. And I guess a lot of people would look at me and say that I wasn't really attracted to him, that I'd been used and manipulated by an older and more powerful man, and the alcohol had been an obvious attempt to weaken my cognitive abilities so he could have his way with me. Maybe that was it, at first. Maybe that first time had all just been some evil, perverted attempt to get off on some defenseless kid. But then why did I keep going back? Why did I, even through my bitter hatred of the man and his manipulative ways, somewhat look forward to those times that Al and I returned to East City where I would see him again and don my paperboy clothes that came to smell permanently of alcohol, cigarettes, and sweat? I'd like to think that, while I may not realize them at the time, I became pretty good at being able to pick out those instances when Mustang had been manipulating me for his own purposes. I'd also like to think that those nights weren't part of any deeper plot. That they were just moments in time where two men -- one with a frustrating taboo sexual attraction and no other recourse, and one just coming into his sexuality and an easy and willing target -- could relatively safely fulfill their physical desires.

Don't think that he wasn't hard on himself either. He didn't think that I could tell, but the guilt that I would glimpse in his eyes sometimes was more familiar to me than any alchemic array -- I saw them enough times in the mirror. And it was worse that night. It was so much worse.

It was the same ritual as always: I met him at the back door at 8:30 exactly and he led me upstairs where I tossed my hat and vest onto the couch and plopped down there, myself, while he poured our drinks. It was the whiskey this time so I knew immediately that there was something wrong. We went through more of the bottle then we usually did, however slowly, while we talked about what had been going on while I'd been "traipsing around the country chasing fairytales," as he liked to put it. I didn't worry about time since we had until a quarter to midnight at the latest, as always, but I was starting to wonder about just what I was in for that night.

Finally he seemed ready to get on with it, leaning over to suck at my neck, smelling of more whiskey than he'd drank in my presence, though I'd always gotten the impression that he dipped into the stuff long before I would arrive there. I dutifully tilted my head, allowing him more room, and he passed down my throat, pulling my shirt back to get at my chest, the automail port in particular. He always seemed fascinated by it but that night he was even more so. He wrapped his lips around the small protrusion of metal screwed to my collar bone and began suckling it. I indulged him since I couldn't really feel it anyway, but then he wrapped his teeth around it and began tugging like some cat trying to dislodge something it thought was a treat. I could feel the sickly, unpleasant sensation of the screw and everything it was attached to inside of me being pulled outwards and I finally pressed my hands to Mustang's shoulders and forcefully pushed him back telling him that if he didn't stop, either his teeth or what was left of my collar bone was going to break.

Apparently he took the hint and he moved on, pulling my shirt up and attacking my chest instead. It was fine at first, and relatively innocent -- licking, kissing, sucking -- but then it started again. The teeth got involved and he slowly grew harsher until it became painful and I had to knee his head away. I thought that I'd gotten my disapproval across well with the glare I sent him to accompany the pseudo-kick, so I tried not to read into the grin he sent me back which was colored which a determination mingled with quite a bit of uncertainty. Nor did I struggle or protest when he pulled me up from the couch and finally led me to the bedroom where he closed the door and left only one light on -- the single one above his bed that gave out only the barest amount of light enough to see by. This wasn't unusual, really, since the lighting tended to change based on how Mustang was feeling that particular night and I tried to discern just that was while looking at the dim lamp, but couldn't come up with anything concrete.

I felt a nudge at my back and let the man lead me to the bed, losing my shirt somewhere along the way before I found myself lying down, leaning almost directly up against the barred headboard. Roy licked a straight line from my stomach to my throat and, by the time he was suckling on my earlobe, he was straddling me and grinding our hips together. I started panting but kept a check on my vocalization of just how good it felt, though I'm sure Mustang knew it anyway -- it was digging into his thigh, after all, as his was digging into my hip.

Once he'd decided that we'd both had enough, I guess, he moved up, straddling my chest instead so that his crotch was directly in front of my face with the bulge twitching towards me, just begging to be released. Mustang did the honors himself, pulling his belt from his pants and then unfastening them altogether. I didn't particular enjoy this part of our arrangement, but Mustang had done things to me that I liked but was sure that he didn't as well, including this, so I didn't make a fuss. Equivalent Exchange and all that. Besides, with his hard cock staring at me in the face I hardly had much of a choice. So, I dutifully opened my mouth and he eased himself in, gently rocking his hips while I sucked and licked.

He panted and grunted above me and I carefully reached into my pocket and pulled out the oil I generally used to maintain my automail, but that also served other purposes as well. I slid Mustang's pants a bit lower on his thighs and coated my metal fingers before sliding one slowly into that hidden pucker of muscle while my flesh hand gently cupped and rolled his sac. We'd used just about every possible position we could think of up to that point, so I was just as familiar with Mustang's dick as I was with his ass and I knew where to probe for the best reactions and he was reminded of that quickly. I felt him jerk and heard a choked moan as I hit the spot and I was surprised when he reached down, forcefully grabbing my hands away and lifting them above my head. He mumbled something that sounded like "too fast," but didn't pull out of my mouth, so I took the hint and just continued along like that while he fiddled around with my arms.

I wasn't sure what it was that he was doing since I only had the sensory information from one arm, but I instinctively knew that I wasn't going to like it, which was proven when he did finally pull away. He kissed me first, his tongue searching out his own taste in my mouth (another bit that I wasn't very fond of), and finally let me see what he'd done. The first hint was the fact that I couldn't move my arms and, when I looked up, I realized that Mustang had never dropped his belt.

He was flushed and panting when I looked back down at him, eagerness and trepidation warring in his eyes and mild fear and confusion in my own. He saw it easily, of course and his mouth was instantly at my neck, gently nibbling as his voice rumbled against my skin, murmuring what were meant to be seductive words about "control" and "trust" and "letting go." All I needed to know was that a possibly somewhat drunken man had tied me to his bed and intended to do things to me that he felt he needed me tied up for. I told him as such in no uncertain terms, but he insisted that I at least give it a chance and, if it turned out that I still had reservations then it wouldn't come up again. That, at least, I trusted him to keep his word on.

I accepted the offer, but prematurely as I soon found out. The next thing I knew, Mustang had reached over to his nightstand for something and when he came back, all of the lights went out.

The blindfold was tied securely around my head and it was thick enough that I couldn't even see what little light there was in the room, though I guess that was the point. My pulse must have doubled in that short amount of time and I'm sure that Mustang knew it, sucking at my throat again as he was. I couldn't see a thing and my arms were tied tightly enough that I couldn't wriggle them free; in my past experience neither of these two things, either separately or in conjunction with each other or anything else, were good. How could they be? They were specifically meant to limit the person they were being done to and why would you want something like that unless you planned to harm them?

But I didn't say anything. Not yet. I resolved to give it a chance, mostly out of my own pride, not wanting to seem weak in front of Mustang.

Besides, I was still hard and ready to get the damn show on the road already. His mouth didn't move from the spot, though, and I could feel him sucking increasingly harder, his tongue rubbing wet and warm over my skin until his teeth came into it. Again it started out light and then the pressure increased until he was biting down. I swallowed all vocal reactions to what I was sure would leave a very noticeable mark on my neck, wondering what in the hell had gotten into the man and almost calling a stop to it right there.

Then he moved on. I could feel his hands brushing over my sides, a gentle contrast to the sharp nips he made to my chest. His fingers brushed around the edge of the automail port and down, rubbing against my nipple. It made me squirm and once again I had to hold back the urge to tell him to stop. I couldn't touch him, I couldn't see him. How did I know what he was doing? How did I know that it was even him doing it anymore? My mind filled with all kinds of paranoid thoughts but they got to me in a way that all of Mustang's groping just wasn't and when his teeth finally closed around my other nipple far too harshly, I finally gave in and told him to stop.

But he didn't. Didn't even pause. I thought, at first, that he just hadn't heard me somehow in the completely silent room so, when he began nipping his way slowly down my sternum, I repeated myself more loudly.

He continued on down my stomach, my pleas growing in volume with each severe bite until he reached my navel. No, I told him as he delved his tongue in, thrusting in and out while his hands worked to unfasten my pants. I don't remember ever begging in my life unless my brother's life had been on the line, but I found myself pleading with a man that my mind was telling me might not even be there anymore. I tried, anyway, asking him desperately to please don't do that, I told you to stop before, I don't like it, dammit, you have to stop I can't do this, Mustang, no not there please don't, just let me go or at least take this damn blindfold off, you bastard, no, I said NO!

My knee made impact just as his hand had wrapped around my by then-flaccid penis and a quick transmutation had me free in seconds. I tore off the blindfold to see Roy lying on his back, both of his hands covering his side where I had presumably hit him and his own erection quickly shrinking. He didn't look at me as I got redressed and I knew why, could see it written all over his face. He hadn't meant for t to end up like that, but I couldn't just give him the forgiveness he needed. I couldn't tell him that it was alright because it wasn't. Yes, I'd agreed to it, but I'd told him to stop plenty of times before I'd had to physically make him.

We didn't say a word to each other when I left and, as usual, Al didn't ask any questions when I came back to our room at the inn and immediately headed for the shower, trying not to look at all of the marks that Mustang had left on me. I don't think I slept well that night, though it's hard to remember after all of these years; I do remember that it was a good long while before I took those newsboy clothes out of my suitcase again.

The meetings did stop altogether eventually as well. With the concern of my brother behind us, I grew older and began experimenting with more socially acceptable relationships and Mustang slowly grew more and more distant, calling on me less and less until finally he just stopped calling at all. I don't keep in touch with him much anymore, and I think both our wives are appreciative of that. They're both very sharp women and I have no doubt that they have a good idea of what had gone on between the two of us during my years working with the military and, well, they're both a little bit possessive.

I did write to him recently, though, in response to a letter he'd sent to me almost two months ago. I thanked him for the update on my brother, though Al and I exchange letters weekly without fail, and told him I was glad to hear of he and Riza's daughter finishing elementary school and her plans to go to high school as well. I updated him on mine and Winry's own set of twins and their first attempts at transmuting folded paper cranes -- I saw a lot of potential in our daughter but our son was just more interested in his mother's automail endeavors. There hadn't been much else to say, but I'd still felt as if there was something missing. I thought long and hard and finally added at the bottom:

P.S.

All these years, I know you've been beating yourself up over it. Listen to me this time when I tell you to stop: I forgive you.

-End

Fic

2007-07-15T07:27:24Z

Title: Can’t
Characters: Roy and Ed; Roy’s POV
Summary: It was bound to happen eventually.
Rating: PG-ish
Warnings: Slightly AU (IE we’re ignoring the actual end of the series, here); breaking up-ness.
Disclaimer: If I owned FMA, then I wouldn’t be poor and this wouldn’t be fanfic.

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It was bound to happen eventually.

It's a terrible way to think when you're beginning a relationship, but sometimes you just can't help it. If you're going to do that, though, you have to be prepared to deal with the consequences, no matter how much you expect them.

Edward was a very bright, intelligent, and mature young man and all of that and more only blossomed as he grew older. After he'd restored his brother's body and they were able to pick up their lives where they'd left off, the worry lines and fierce distrust that had colored his countenance for all of the years that I had known him had faded away and left only a handsome young man with a smile that could warm any soul and his whole life ahead of him. I had been pleased to hear of his decision to remain with the military under the new administration and, with his influence and my own support, he was able to acquire a laboratory in Central where he performed research and experiments, not out of the desperate need to save his brother's life, but of his pure, innocent, and insatiable curiosity.

Men and women who had had their State Certifications for decades were impressed with how much the blonde had accomplished in only six years; but those of us that had known him during the first five years of his commission couldn't be. We'd known the sacrifices that he'd made for his brother, not just the tangible -- his arm, his automail limbs and the physical strain that came with them -- but his very life itself. Alphonse had stopped aging the moment of the rebound and Edward had imprisoned him in the suit of armor that now stood in Edward's office (a morbid reminder of his sins and transgressions against his family and whatever god he didn't believe in), and Edward had made the decision, either conscious or unconsciously, that he, too, would put his life on hold until he was able to give that back to Alphonse. His love, devotion, and attention was poured into his younger brother to the point of obsession and everything was put aside and put off until he was able to repay his brother the wrong he believed he had done him.

Knowing this, it seemed only natural that, once that all-encompassing weight was lifted from his mind, all of these inspired theories and innovations would come pouring out. Edward had amassed enough knowledge, credibility, respect, and accomplishments to have been promoted several ranks had he been enlisted and at all interested in the power. Some wondered why he remained a simple commissioned officer, but they never respected him any less.

His reputation had grown immensely from his already impressive one and he'd even soon garnered a legion of admirers to rival my own. I suppose, considering that, it was rather ironic that he eventually moved into my own home.

Please don't misunderstand, me, however: I do not mean to imply that it was in any way that simple. It took quite a lot of effort on my own part. There were so many walls and barriers that I had to push my way past that Edward hadn't even realized he'd erected and, even once I'd managed to get past most of them there was still so much distrust there. I'd thought, however, that that, too, would be dealt with in time once I'd proven myself to him -- how hard could it be, after all? We'd been through quite a lot together and, though my . . . less than admirable reputation did often precede me, I assumed that, once we reached a certain point and I had neither left him nor cheated on him, he would begin trusting me more.

I suppose that's unfair of me. I don't mean to imply, either, that he was just as untrusting after five years as he was when we'd first started out, however, the fact that I was still getting suspicious glares after getting home late from work, that he would interrogate the women I would meet to make sure that there was and never had been anything between us, that he would insist on being there when I would go out for a friendly lunch with one of my former consorts . . . After so long, such things can tire even the strongest of men, and I will readily admit that I have never fit that title.

Of course Edward wasn't entirely to be blamed. I know very well what sort of life he's led up until now; I don't know if he's ever really seen any sort of long term relationship work out without ending in betrayal or tragedy, so of course he would be wary of starting one of his own. I thought that I could help him; I thought that I could show him that he could trust some people; that not every relationship had to end with one or both partners getting hurt. Even after five years, though . . . There were good times, of course, as there always are, but they seemed to grow fewer and fewer as the years went on; I can't really remember the last time we had a pleasant dinner together. And, even though I know that it will only reinforce his own thoughts on the matter and though I know it will break his heart . . . I'm ashamed to say that I simply can't take do it anymore. I can't take his suspicious glances, his questions, his distrust.

I'm not leaving -- that is one thing that I will afford him, though I know it will make little difference -- I will simply tell him, in no uncertain terms, that I cannot continue a relationship with someone that questions my every movement and action; with someone that had been expecting me to walk out on him since the relationship began.

And when the betrayal and pain nearly crumble him before he covers it up with his usual angry mask, I will pretend not to see it.

And when he rants and raves and tells me that he knew that it is was bound to happen eventually, I will pretend not to hear it.

And when he realizes that his suitcases are already packed and a train ticket is waiting for him to Rizenbul where his brother will take him in and comfort him the way he needs and he accuses me of being a smartass, I will pretend I didn't know it.

And when he storms out of the door and out of my life, I will pack my things and pretend I don't feel it until I wake up the next morning in a cold and unfamiliar bed.

-End

Fic

2007-07-06T20:22:12Z

Title: The Time Shall Come
Summary: There are many things in my life which I regret, but the first and foremost is having never said goodbye.
Disclaimer: If I owned FMA then I wouldn't be poor and this wouldn't be fanfic.
Rating: G
Warnings: Vague spoilers for the series and the movie; reference to past yaoi.
Notes: Man, it's been a while since I've written anything. Hopefully this will be the start of me jumping back into things since I know people are getting impatient with me. This one . . . was actually inspired by the song "10,000 Miles" by Mary Chapin Carpenter from the movie "Fly Away Home."

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There are many things in my life which I regret. It does me no good, that regret, because it will never change what I've done; or haven't done, as the case may be. I say "many things" because leaving behind even one regret is a hard thing to do, and I have tried very hard to make certain not to add any more to my list. There are a variety of things on this list, but the first and foremost is having never said goodbye.

I suppose that, in my mind, saying that one word would have made my leaving so much more real, that I would truly have to face the fact that I could never return and see them again -- that they would realize it too -- and none of us would be able to let go. So I didn't say it, I just smiled my smile and I turned my back on what had once been my life and the people in it that I had loved the most. It was the hardest thing that I had ever done, but I don't regret it -- it had been necessary -- I only regret not having said goodbye when I did.

Life began anew for me after that -- for us -- and as we traveled through our new lives we came upon people that we had thought we'd once known, only to be reminded quite painfully that these were merely mirror images of our friends, our family, our lovers. My lover.

The one man whom I had loved as fiercely and passionately as my brother.

The one man who could protect me even as he was pushing me out of my nest to fly on my own.

The one man who could infuriate and charm within seconds and leave you cursing his name and begging for more by the end of a single night.

He had been the most desired man in whatever town he stayed in and I was the one that would share his bed more than once. Ours wasn't the casual detachment of those one night stands of his; yet it wasn't exactly the romantic, love-struck story of some campy romance novel, either. What we had . . . was so much more than that. What we had was a mutual attraction. What we had was a similar burden to bear. What we had was a mutual need to express that attraction and escape those burdens even for just a little while. What we had was a mutual respect for those burdens and the possible costs of them.

Perhaps that was why I never regretted leaving the first time; why I'd rarely thought upon the fact that I hadn't been given the chance to say goodbye. I'd always known that I would return someday, so there was no need for goodbye, but he'd known as well as I did what the cost was going to be.

After our second parting -- the one with the missing farewells -- I'd known that I would never see that man again. And I didn't. What I saw -- who I saw -- was a mirror image of him; a man who hadn't been pushed over the edge of his breaking point, who wasn't haunted by the ghosts of the people he'd killed, who could smile without trying to impress or intimidate or cover up.

I am ashamed to say that I fell almost immediately. I'd thought that I'd found a more innocent man, a purer man that was truly happy with his life and that didn't have to put up with the nightmares of his own sordid past. What I found was a man that enjoyed his life but had no passion for it; the flame that had attracted me like a lame moth limping towards it just wasn't there and, soon, neither was I. He'd understood, somehow, just like a part of me had expected him to, but saying goodbye to him had never been able to make up for that most important of regrets.

As the years have drifted by, I've managed to gain a few more regrets, but still none of them can compare to that one. I never married, though my brother did and he made himself a home and a family. I continued to travel until there was nothing to travel for and I finally settled down near him, content to watch his family grow and age. We would visit each other whenever we could and, when our bodies finally couldn't take the strain as much, he would send his great-grandchildren to visit. Seeing them, though, is almost painful for the memories they bring back with their faces so similar to their great-grandparents' and, though his face isn't among them, I can't help but wonder.

Did he ever marry? Or did he remain a bachelor? What rank did he make by the time he finally retired? I wonder if he's even still alive, but one hundred and fourteen years is a length of time that not even this world has been able to achieve. Sometimes I wonder how one hundred years is even possible, but my brother and I are living proof that it is.

One hundred years. It is a very long time to have lived. An impossible time to have lived without any regrets. Despite them, however, or perhaps because of that one, I am ready for it to be done. My purpose has been fulfilled and I am satisfied. Now I am ready, though I am afraid that I won't be able to reconcile even that one regret. Because when my soul finally leaves my body for the last time and I meet his inside the Gate, I won't be saying goodbye for the rest of eternity.

-End

Fic!

2006-11-27T22:58:47Z

Title: Choose Your Adventure
Characters: Just about everyone
Summary: Everyone says that life has consequences, but few ever mention the choices that come before them. Two boys searching for their parents will learn the hard way that the choices they make may not result in the consequences they expected and, in the end, they may never be the same again.
Disclaimer: If I owned FMA then I wouldn’t be poor and this wouldn’t be fanfic.
Rating: We’re going with PG-13/T at this point.
Warnings: AU, language, and violence in future chapters.
Notes: So . . . Yeah, this is the second of my epic AU!FMA fics. This one wasn’t planned, it just kinda smacked me in the head and wouldn’t let go until I did something about it. Okay, I wasn’t exactly unwilling either.

Just a couple of other disclaimers: Yes, this did occur to me while I was on a Pirates of the Caribbean kick, but you’ll see in future chapters that the two plots are completely different (and this won’t make sense until future chapters anyway).

Also, again, this won’t come up for another chapter or so, but I apologize in advance for how I’m going to portray Riza Hawkeye and Maria Ross. I would have liked to keep them in similar stations as they have canonically, but it just doesn’t make sense with the setting. So please don’t string me up!

Oh, one last thing: To those of you wondering, no, I haven’t forgotten about Yock Island, I’ve just been having . . . A lot of computer issues and, honestly, lazy issues. I promise I’m almost done with the next chapter though!

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Choice One: To Leave

It wasn’t that the orphanage was bad, per se, that made the two boys decide to run away. On the contrary -- it was quite nice; the woman that ran it was very kind, they were given three square meals a day which, though not exactly the finest cuisine, was decent, and their chores were never unreasonable. This wasn’t the reason that they ran away. They knew, you see, that they didn’t belong there. And orphanage was for orphans, who were children who didn‘t have any parents, so there was no need for them to be in an orphanage because Edward and Alphonse most definitely had parents -- they could remember them clearly. And the day that they’d left the two boys there at the orphanage, they’d left them with a promise that they’d be back for them. Someday.

That had been nine years ago and apparently “someday” hadn’t come yet. Edward was convinced that “someday” was never going to come, but Alphonse was certain that they would keep their promise. One thing that they both agreed on, however, was that they weren’t going to get anywhere simply waiting around in the orphanage. They were both too old for most people looking to adopt children, but too young for the woman running the place to allow them to leave on their own; and, if their parents were in trouble (as Alphonse insisted they had to be if they hadn’t come for them yet), then the two boys couldn’t help them from inside the orphanage.

They’d planned their escape for a month before finally gathering what few possessions they had and putting their plan into effect. By the time anyone had even realized that they were gone, they were already halfway to the next town. A town that just so happened to be home to a prominent port, with ships coming and going nearly every hour.

The two brothers had learned, through strategically asked question to strategically chosen people that the last that had been heard of their parents, they had been heading for England. So, if Edward and Alphonse were going to really try to find their parents, then they needed to get to England. The problem was that they had neither money nor anything to sell that would be worth enough to buy them passage to England on even the cheapest of ships. They might have offered to work in lue of payment, but neither of them knew a thing about working on a boat and none of the hardened and mostly scowling sailors looked willing or patient enough to teach them.

“We’ll hafta stow away.”

Alphonse looked at his brother in shock who only continued nibbling on a half-stale piece of bread that they’d packed away before leaving the orphanage. “But, Ed, we can’t! That just like stealing!”

This was true and Alphonse saw that his older brother knew it, but that didn’t seem to deter him. “Well gee, thanks Cap’n Obvious. I wouldn’t-a known if you hadn’t told me.” Edward chose not to see his brother flinch. “Well how else d’you expect us to get to England? Swim?”

“We don’t know how to swim . . . ” Alphonse mumbled.

“Then I guess we’re gonna hafta stow away. It’s late now, so not many ships are gonna be taking off. We’ll wait ‘til just before dawn and sneak on board a boat with a cap’n that’s too stupid to notice.”

Alphonse still didn’t like it, even if they didn’t have any other way to England. “But Ed-”

“Don’t start, Al. We’ve got no other way. Just try not to think about it if it’s really getting’ to you that much, okay? Pretend we really did pay. We’re just too important to board with the rest of the passengers.”

This managed to make the younger boy smile and, so, the older boy in response. And that was really all that mattered, as far as Edward was concerned. So long as his little brother was happy, he would go to the moon for him. Well, this time Alphonse wasn’t happy, but Edward could understand that; he was okay, though, and that was fine for the time being.

Edward laid down on his haystack inside the abandoned barn they’d found and gestured for Alphonse to do the same. “Get some sleep, Al,” he said. “We got an early day tomorrow.”

*

Dawn hadn’t quite broken yet, but the docks were already slowly awakening. Crews were beginning to get head starts on loading and unloading cargo that they’d left behind the night before in favor of taking advantage of their brief time ashore; there were even a few passengers arriving, hoping to avoid the rush later on. It wasn’t anywhere near as busy and hectic as it had been during the day, but it was enough to keep the men working too busy to notice a couple of street urchins sneaking around where maybe they shouldn’t have been. No one saw them; or, if they did, the didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t unusual to see a couple of street rats sneaking around the docks, after all. Most of them were pickpockets or beggars or were just scrounging around for some tossed away scraps of precious food. Even the gruel that the sailors got at sea was better than starving. Some sneered at the idea, but most (the ones that remembered their own street rat days) took at least some pity on the kids, either by sharing a meal or two or pretending not to see them, even when they were pilfering someone’s wallet.

These two boys, however, weren’t after scraps from half-eaten meals or some spare change or loose wallet. They had their sights set on something much bigger.

There were plenty of ships to choose from, but the wrong choice could the brother thrown overboard, in jail, or sharing a cargo hold with a herd of disagreeable (and possibly seasick) animals all the way to England. They had to be careful, Edward told his brother, and pick the right crew that either wouldn’t notice them or wouldn’t give them up. More importantly, they needed to choose a captain that either wouldn’t notice them or wouldn’t punish them too severely if he did.

Although it was easier said than done, Edward and Alphonse found themselves a crew more quickly than they did a captain. Many of the sailors appeared lazy and uncaring; seeming ready and willing to ignore a few missing rations and extra sounds coming from where they shouldn’t. So the only way to narrow things down was through the cargo and the captain.

Edward and Alphonse immediately ticked off the ships with live cargo or anything else that they might not have wanted to travel so far with. Then, they went looking for a captain.

The first one that they came upon was a brick wall of a man, appearing ready and able and willing to smash anyone who got in his way. That probably included stowaways, so the brothers moved on.

The next captain they found seemed perfect, at first. He was a kind-looking older man with a smile that might have reminded the boys of their grandfather, if they’d known him. At first glance, he seemed like the type of man that wouldn’t notice someone stealing bread right off of his plate, right from under his nose. Of course the fact that one of his was covered with a patch and the other never actually seemed to open would support that theory. Until they watched one of their fellow street urchins try to sneak up behind the grandfatherly captain to snatch away a few coins from the man’s pocket. Before any one of the boys could even blink, the captain had a gun trained at the pickpocket’s forehead.

From where they were watching, neither Edward nor Alphonse could make out what the captain or the other boy were saying. That was fine, though, since they weren’t really sure that they wanted to know the pickpocket’s fate. Besides, they had business of their own to tend to before the ships began setting sail and it seemed that that business would be completed on some other part of the docks.

At least ten other potential captains were overseeing the loading of cargo and otherwise preparing of their ships to sail and Edward and Alphonse evaluated them all. Of course, as these things always go, it was the last captain that they spied on that the boys found a perfect match in.

He wasn’t standing by his ship, but off to the side of the docks when they found him. He wasn’t haggling prices for supplies or hiring more hands to help on board; in fact, what he was doing had nothing to do with sailing whatsoever, so far as the two boys knew. The captain -- a surprisingly young man when compared to the others they’d seen -- was standing near an inn and bar. It opened very early to cater to the sailors that mostly patronized it whenever they might feel a need to patronize it, and was run by a family of six. There was the mother, the father, the two eldest sons, the youngest son, and the two daughters. Both of whom were being sweet talked by the young, charming, and handsome captain. Edward got the feeling that, had the sisters’ father one of their brothers been out there (and seen the way the captain’s eyes liked to wander), the captain wouldn’t have had such a pretty face anymore.

As Edward and Alphonse watched, the same young street urchin that had just had a gun pointed at his head rushed up to the captain, unable to quite stop himself before he ran into the man’s leg. He glared down at the boy, daring him to give him a good reason as to why he’d taken the captain’s attention away from the quite easy-on-the-eyes young ladies. In an instant, his expression changed, however, once he heard the younger of the two sisters express their sympathy for the boy. Edward and Alphonse looked on eagerly as the women (girls, really) convinced the captain to give the boy a few scraps of food from the breakfast they’d packed for him. While he was busy doing that, the two brothers saw another street rat sneak up behind the captain, give the begging boy a thumb’s up and steal the money right out of the captain’s back pocket.

The two sisters obviously saw the pickpocket as well; it seemed that the captain was the only one that hadn’t noticed a thing, even though his wallet had been taken right out of his back pocket, emptied, and then slipped back in. Surely, even if he hadn’t noticed it being taken, the man would have noticed it being put back! But no, the captain just went on smiling his charming smile, giving no hint that he had any idea that there was something amiss.

The pickpocket flashed the money to the urchin and rushed off with the urchin following closely after.

Edward and Alphonse looked at each other and grinned. They’d found their captain.

*

The sneak on board was almost as easy for the two brothers as the pick pocketing had been for the two street urchins.

The ship, itself, was built both for cargo transportation and for passengers, so the crew was split between loading the cargo and helping the passengers (and their luggage) on board. This made things simpler, with their attention split in half. It would have been more difficult had they attempted to sneak on board with the paying passengers since any of them would surely notice two extra members to their parties; besides that they weren’t on the passenger list. So, the boys decided, instead, to take their chances with the cargo.

It took some prying, but they finally managed to remove the tops off of two crates filled with cotton without anyone noticing. Alphonse went in first so that Edward could reseal the top on that crate, making it less likely for anyone to suspect someone was in there. Then, Edward climbed into the other one, fixing the top as best he could from the inside. Apparently it was good enough because, after lying all cramped up in there for what felt like hours (and might very well have been) just listening to the hubbub outside, Edward finally heard voices and footsteps approaching. The weight shifted a moment later the boy heard grunting the crate bobbed its way towards what he could only assume was the ship.

“Geeze, what the hell d’they got in these boxes?” Edward heard from outside. He immediately froze.

“I dunno,” a second voice answered. “Label says ’cotton,’ so maybe it’s sand.”

“Hey, don’t get smart with me. I know what it says, but since when is cotton so heavy?”

“Carry many crates of cotton, do ya?”

There was a long silence and Edward could practically see the second man smirking while the first tried to ignore the fact that he’d just been made a fool of.

“Still,” the first man pointed out, “these shirts we’re wearing are made outta cotton, right?”

“Right.”

“And they’re pretty light, right?”

“Right.”

“So, logic’ly, this crate should be light, right?”

“Wrong.”

“Right! . . . Wait, what?”

“I said ’wrong.’ Just ’cause one single cotton shirt’s light doesn’t mean a whole big crate full octoroon’s gonna be light.”

“Oh yeah? How d’you figure that?”

“’Cause weight adds up. Plus you got the extra weight of the crate. Then, o’course, there’s the air. Since the ocean’s right here, the air’s got more water in it and some o’the ocean spray’s bound to get in there too. So now you got a wet crate full o’wet cotton. O’course it’s gonna be heavy.”

Edward nearly gave himself away trying not to laugh. What the second voice was saying made sense, but when compared to the fact that they were talking about cotton -- even wet cotton -- being as heavy as a fifteen year old boy, it was complete and utter bullshit. That would have to be an awful lot of cotton. Nevertheless, if the two men preferred to believe that instead of thinking that there might be a couple of teenaged stowaways in their cargo, that was perfectly fine by Edward and he wasn’t about to correct them.

At some point they must have actually arrived in the cargo hold because the crate dropped and Edward slammed against the floor of it. He heard the second voice assure the first that that was the last of the cargo and the captain wanted them to help the passengers settle in before they set sail. That was perfect.

Since the top to his crate wasn’t really secured, Edward was able to quickly free himself. He looked around the hold searching for his brother’s crate, but there were so many in there and they all looked alike to him.

“Al?” he whispered as loudly as he dared. “Al where are you?” His brother answered back with a whispered “Over here!” and Edward rolled his eyes. “You’re gonna hafta do better’n that, Al. There’re a lot of ‘over heres.’”

“Well it’s not like I can exactly see where I am, Ed,” the younger boy retorted.

Edward smiled sheepishly. “Good point. Well I guess you’re just gonna hafta keep talking and I’ll follow the sound of your voice. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Alphonse began saying whatever came into his head to help his brother find him; some of the things he came up with made Edward seriously question his sanity. But, on the other hand, he sometimes questioned his own too, so it didn’t bother him that much.

It took some searching, but the two boys were eventually reunited -- somehow, Alphonse’s crate had ended clear across the room from Edward’s. They gathered up what little they’d brought with them, resealed the crates (the two they’d hidden in along with a few others that Edward had opened by mistake), and, once all that was done, plopped down on the floor, both wondering the same thing. Alphonse was the first to actually ask, “Well? What now, Ed?”

Of course, being the elder brother came with certain responsibilities, all of which Edward took very seriously. They had to be the good influence, the best friend, the advice giver, the protector, and, when there were no parental figures around, the possessor of all of the world’s knowledge. So, even though he’d just been wondering the same exact thing not twenty seconds ago, he was prepared with an answer. Well, it was more of an educated guess.

“Well,” he said, leaning against a crate, “the two guys that carried us in said I was the last of the cargo. So that means that they just hafta get the rest of the passengers on board and finish up whatever they need to do to make the ship ready to sail. It probably won’t be that long and we’ll be on our way to England before you know it. After that, well, we’ll have to watch the crew and passengers to see when and where they eat to make it easier to snatch the leftovers. It might take a couple tries, but we still have food left, so that should be enough to hold us over ‘til we can get our hands on something else.”

Edward spoke with such certainty and confidence that it was difficult to not believe him, especially for Alphonse. The older boy had been there for him since long before he could remember, always going far beyond the call of brotherly duty. He was lucky to have Edward to look out for him and he knew that he wouldn’t be where he was then if it hadn’t been for his brother.

Which, as it turned out, was almost in serious trouble.

They just barely heard the footsteps in time and they both shared a panicked look before diving behind the cargo near the back of the hold. They dare peak over the tops of the crates or even breathe, even when a second and third set of footsteps joined the first. Inspecting the cargo hold, Edward mouthed to his brother, to make sure that there weren’t any stowaways. Alphonse mouthed back that Edward hadn’t mentioned that when he’d asked just a second ago. Edward stuck his tongue out at him.

Finally the three sailors seemed satisfied with their pathetic inspection (not that the stowaways were complaining) and they left the way they’d come. The two boys stayed where they were hidden for another few minutes, just in case someone else came along or one of the first three hadn’t really left.

When they were satisfied, they carefully crawled back out, not seeing anyone, and Alphonse gave his brother a Look that told him that he wasn’t going to asking the older boy anymore questions for a while.

-To be continued

FIC

2006-11-07T04:00:23Z

Title: Eyes
Characters: Envy
Summary: Sadism: Receiving pleasure from other people’s pain.
Disclaimer: If I owned FMA then I wouldn’t be poor and this wouldn’t be fanfic.
Warnings: Spoilers for the series, some strong language.

__________________________________________

Sadism: Receiving pleasure from other people’s pain.

The way envy understood this idea was that it had something to do with sex – that someone would receive sexual pleasure from the pain of others. For himself, he wasn’t quite so sure about the sex part since . . . well such things never really bothered him; but he certainly derived pleasure from other people’s pain. Or, rather, one person in particular. He hadn’t quite been able to do anything directly yet since the bastard had disappeared, but that only gave him time to develop the perfect revenge.

In the meantime, Envy did as he was told (mostly), following Dante’s orders, when he felt like it and allowing her to feed his hatred of That Man. Oh, he knew she did it on purpose, that she was just using him for her own ends, but that was fine by him, because he was using her too. Let her keep thinking that she was in control of him – she was fucking delusional anyway – just so long as she stayed out of his way when the time finally came for him to destroy That Man. As long as she gave him that, she could play her little games all she wanted.

The other homunculi didn’t seem to realize that Dante was doing this – that she was just using them all – but that was fine by him too; the less of them that knew, the better. Besides, he couldn’t expect them to really know. Lust was emotional to the point of idiocy; Gluttony was . . . well, an idiot; Pride and Sloth seemed to be on some kind of power trip, thinking that they were actually on equal footing with Dante – they were both idiots; and Greed . . . well, Greed didn’t really think too much of anything anymore did he? Because he’d been an idiot too. That was all fine with Envy too, so long as they didn’t get in his way when the time came. Whenever that would be.

It seemed like it was taking longer and longer for him to finally achieve his ultimate goal. Dante was supposed to be helping him find the bastard, but Envy knew that she was only giving him excuses and not doing a damned thing. That was alright, though, because he was doing a search of his own. He’d find the bastard by himself and then he’d kill him. But first, he’d destroy That Man’s sons – ruin their lives; break them apart inside and out; and then, he’d let That Man watch as he killed them both.

And now that Dante was officially giving them permission to go after the two brats, it just made it that much easier. Envy hunted them down like the disgusting rodents they were; how That Man could have ever loved them, Envy would never know. Whenever he saw them it just made him sick. He tried to control himself and not just beat in their faces until they were completely unrecognizable, but when he saw that blonde hair and those damned yellow eyes, he just wanted to rip them out and choke the brat with them. He might have too – he might have killed the both of them long ago – if not for the reminder that it would be so much sweeter if That Man got to watch.

So Envy controlled himself, held himself back, mostly by simply tormenting the two brats. Sometimes by screwing with their minds, taking on the images of their loved ones – Sloth would have been wonderful with that if the little bitch had cooperated with him – but mostly he enjoyed killing their loved ones more. The innocent people that had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was one of the reasons that he had taken so much pleasure in killing the troublemaker in the Investigations Department. He’d been so close to the brats that Envy just knew that it would kill them when they found out.

That and those eyes. Those damned yellow eyes! Even if he had to wait for That Man, at least he’d managed to destroy one pair of them.

-End

Original Fic!

2006-09-15T05:08:52Z

Title: Vicious Circle
Summary: After unknowingly cheating on his husband and being unable to provide an answer when asked who he loves more, the cat-boy (man, really), Lani, decides it would be better for everyone if he just left.
Rating: Meh, PG-13-ish eventually
Warning: Mentions of slash, incest, adultery and lots of what can either be construed as emo or one hell of a guilt complex.
Notes: Based on an RP arc known affectionately between ravenpirate and myself as "The Zoo." Keep in mind that 1: This doesn't actually happen within the arc. The idea just kinda came up out of another plot and it was really interesting but we didn't want to actually RP it, so I wrote it instead. 2: The plot this takes place after hasn't been posted yet (or played out, as a matter of fact).

Chapter One: One Side, No Corners

If he had been honest with himself all along, Lani would have seen this coming. Not necessarily exactly how it had happened; but the ultimate outcome would not have come as such a surprise. It had been Mason that had pointed out the truth about all of his relationships so many years ago and, even though his brother had lied to him before, Lani knew that he couldn't be lying about that. If he had been, then it wouldn't have ended like this. Over and over and over and over again.

And now, Lani was alone again.

It was all his fault, just like always, so the cat told himself that he shouldn't feel sorry for himself. He just couldn't help it, though. He'd loved Benjamin more than he'd loved anyone since his older brother -- they'd even had a son together! But all of the love in Lani's heart obviously just wasn't enough to stand up to his seemingly innate ability to mess everything up.

He hadn't meant to do it, of course -- he never did -- but he hadn't been able to stop himself. Not even memory loss was an excuse to cheat on your husband; and it just made matters even worse that it had been with someone whose name his husband could barely stand to hear. It didn't matter that Lani had forgotten himself or that Mason should have known better than to take advantage of that. All that mattered was . . . What mattered . . .

Lani didn't even know anymore. What had happened between he and his brother mattered, as well as the fact that he was married to Benjamin. And it certainly mattered that Benjamin had stopped loving him. That had been quite clear when he'd discovered what his husband had done to him. When his husband couldn't even offer him a straight answer as to who he loved more.

Lani could have easily used the excuse that everything had happened so fast -- that he'd spent months thinking that he was back in his college days. He hadn't even known who Benjamin was and he'd just been trying to get over the abrupt ending of his relationship with Mason. He'd thought that Mason hated him so when he'd discovered that he didn't, Lani had been overjoyed and . . . made one of the biggest mistakes of his life. It hadn't been until afterwards that Lani had remembered his husband and realized what he'd done. The same moment that his husband had realized as well.

Lani didn't think he'd ever forget the look on Benjamin's face -- the hurt and betrayal that had morphed into such anger. Lani had seen all of that before, being the idiot that he was, but never so strongly. And when Benjamin had demanded to know who he loved more -- his husband or his brother -- he hadn't been able to answer. He should have been able to, he knew that, because the person you loved most was supposed to be the person that you'd married, and he'd married Benjamin. But when he'd been with Mason, Lani had truly thought that, even though they would never truly be able to get married, that they would be together forever. After they'd broken up, Lani had spent seven years trying to move on; telling himself that it was no use wishing that they could get back together. It had taken all that time, but he'd finally been able to think of Mason as just his brother again, which had let him eventually begin his relationship with Benjamin. But all that time had been forgotten and Lani couldn't tell his husband who he loved more. He didn't even know, himself.

But he couldn't make excuses. He couldn't explain to Benjamin that he couldn't answer his question because everything had left him so confused. That wasn't how love was supposed to work and both of them knew that.

Lani just didn't know what to do.

He knew that he couldn't stay there, that had been obvious. Benjamin hated him (with good reason) and there was just no way that Lani could ever make it up to him. Lani had realized that almost immediately and he'd quickly left the house he'd shared with his husband for over twenty years and their son for almost as long. He hadn't really thought about it, he'd just left. That had been several hours ago and now Lani didn't know what he was going to do.

The whole situation had proven to Lani that his brother had been right all those years ago. That the only thing he was good for was sex. Lani hadn't wanted to believe it then, and he'd even managed to convince himself that it wasn't true. But the fact that he kept ruining all of his relationships -- that he always had ruined them -- was proof enough that it was true. If only he hadn't agreed to marry Benjamin, then Lani never would have been able to hurt him or their son.

Normally, when something like this happened, Lani would have gone to his best friends. Tomas always knew how to comfort him and make him feel better and Miron had always been so understanding. But Lani had to ask himself if he even deserved to feel better; or if it was right to barge in on his friends and make them pause their own lives to take care of his.

The answer to the first question was a resounding "no." People who cheated on their spouses deserved to live with their guilt forever. And the answer to the second question, Lani knew after thinking about it for only a few moments, was an equally resounding "no." Tomas had been taking care of him whenever he was upset since at least the time Lani had broken up with Mason back in college. Now, Tomas had a family of his own and Lani had made such a mess of his own life, he didn't need to burden his friends with it as well.

He was a grown man anyway -- he should be able to handle his own problems, especially when he'd caused them himself. That and, if he ended up doing such horrible things to his lovers, who was to say that he wouldn't end up doing the same to his friends?

It would be better for everyone if he just left completely -- started over in a new town. Only this time, he wouldn't make the mistake of getting close to anyone. That was the only way to make sure that he didn't accidentally hurt anyone again. Once he arrived wherever it was that he was going to go, Lani thought that, perhaps, he might at least send Tomas and Miron a letter letting them know that he was basically alright since they might worry about him. He would send one to Mason as well, apologizing for everything he'd done to him and asking both he and his husband, Camron, for forgiveness, even though he knew that he didn't deserve it.

Lani also thought about sending a letter to his own husband, as well as their son. He would ask them to forgive him as well without any expectations that they would. He would tell them that he did love both of them and wished that he hadn't done something so stupid so that he could have stayed with them and watched their son grow old as he grew older with Benjamin. He would send his wedding band along with it, because he was unfit to wear something represented the exact opposite of what he had done.

In the end, though, after thinking it over long and hard, Lani decided that he wouldn't send any letters. It would be best if he just cut all ties cleanly without giving anyone who might actually still care about him a reason to try and find him. Besides, he was still a little selfish and he wanted to keep his wedding band. It was a small reminder that, for at least a little while, he'd had that happiness that he obviously hadn't been meant for.

Lani gazed down at the ring, watching it glow in the fading light of the sunset. He remembered the day that it had been given to him and Benjamin had proposed to him. They'd just been returning to the dog's home after five years of being at war and barely setting foot outside of Benjamin's naval ship. The dog's sister, brother-in-law, and three nieces had been there to surprise him and he'd proposed to Lani right in front of them.

Lani could feel tears in his eyes and the ring blurred out of view, just like it had when he'd first seen it. They hadn't known each other much longer than their relationship had lasted (they'd met a year or so before that, when Benjamin had hired Lani as the healer on his ship), but they'd been so in love.

But, Lani supposed unhappily, the relationship had really been doomed from the start. After all, not only had he been involved, but how could anyone truly think that a relationship like that, forged during a war, could ever last?

-To be continued . . .

Original Fic!

2006-09-06T18:06:17Z

Title: The Penguin Blues
Summary: A young man, his cheating ex-boyfriend, and his dad.
Rating: PG - PG-13
Warnings: Some "adult themes."
Notes: This is basically a backstory fic for one of the original characters I RP as with ravenpirate. His name's Fedir Gains and he's what we call a "bird" -- basically he's humanoid with a pair of teeny tiny wings and a long feathered tail. This is really a quick overview of his life from the time he was twenty after he broke up with the lover he'd been with for a year up until two years before he meets ravenpirate's character, Milan. And yes, I ran out of creativity when it came time to title it. <.< >.>;;;

This is also the first real original fic I've ever done of any great substance. *Crosses fingers*

______________________________________

It had been one of the hardest things he'd ever gone through up to that point in his life. The only other event that could have come close was when he'd come out to his father. Eidel, his mother, had been quite understanding and had even seemed less than surprised about it. His father, however, had been quite surprised and less than understanding. As much as Fedir had been expecting such a reaction, it had still hurt to have his own father questioning his masculinity, moral fiber, and even his sanity sometimes. If that hadn't been enough, though, the whole reason he'd come out to the man had gone and betrayed him.

Things between he and Upton had been getting slowly worse since they'd moved in together, but Fedir had never imagined that the bird he'd thought he'd been in love with for almost a year could do something like that to him. That night, he'd come home early from a gig with his jazz band because the snow outside was keeping the customers away. When he'd gotten back to the apartment he'd shared with Upton, he'd been so devastated by what he saw that he'd just snapped. Upton had always treated him poorly and Fedir had always just taken it, but this had been the absolute last straw. Throwing his trumpet aside, Fedir had grabbed the hair of the half-naked bird and pulled her off of his lover. He shouted at her to get the hell out of his apartment and, once Upton began telling him to calm down (after zipping up his pants), Fedir turned on him as well.

In the end, Upton and his orchestra-mate had ended up in the corridor carrying their clothes. It was only at that point that Fedir had allowed himself to cry. He'd thought that he'd been in love, but that couldn't have been the case since true love was returned and someone who loved you would never cheat on you. But then Fedir was left alone.

Upton had betrayed him and he was left in an apartment filled with all of those bad memories. He couldn't go to his mother because would just worry about him. He couldn't go to his father either since, not only would he tell Eidel, but he already had such a low opinion of gay men anyway; this would almost certainly reinforce that and Fedir didn't want his father to be any more disappointed in him than he already was. Fedir didn't really know what to do, just that he had to get out of that apartment; but with his salary, he knew he couldn't afford to move into an apartment by himself. But he didn't to have a roommate -- he'd much rather just live by himself, especially after what had just happened to him.

What Fedir needed was money, but he couldn't ask the owner of the club he played at for a raise since his band had just started playing there a few months ago. Any extra job that he could get still wouldn't be enough to supplement what the club paid since he was too young to have any experience and only had a high school diploma. Besides, the hours would probably interfere with performances.

It was one of his bandmates that suggested what he'd ended up doing in the end.

"You need to do something you're already good at," he'd said.

Fedir had just snorted at him. "What'm I good at? I play music but I'm already in a band. It's not like trumpet players are all that in demand anyway; 'specially a jazz trumpeter."

"Well, hey now, no one said to go and join another band, but who says that that's all you can do to make money off of music?"

So Fedir had some flyers printed up, hung in local music stores, and soon enough, he had several young students eager to learn piano, guitar, and even a few wanting to learn the trumpet. Between the classes he taught, the gigs he played, and the money he made selling the things in the apartment he didn't want or need, Fedir was finally able to find an apartment that he could afford and that was far away from the other one. It was much smaller, but since he was only going to be living there himself, he didn't mind at all. The bird only took with him the bare essentials and bought and replaced some of the things from the other apartment. All that was left was informing his students of his new address and phone number. As well as his parents.

Fedir knew that he would lose some students by moving, but he'd gain some as well. His parents, however, didn't even know that he and Upton had broken up. He'd just been going through too much to deal with his parents on top of it all. But he couldn't tell them that he'd moved to an apartment alone without telling them about he and Upton.

"I knew it," his father said as his mother tried to comfort him. "People like him, they don't understand the meaning of 'commitment.'"

Fedir tried to squeeze out of his mother's arms but she had a chokehold on him.

"Don't start, Iason," Eidel chided her husband, finally releasing Fedir.

"What? It's true. Not a-one of them understands what it means to be in a real, committed relationship."

Eidel tried to stop Iason from speaking any more but their son interrupted them. "Which 'they' dad?" he asked with an exasperated sigh. He knew very well which "they" his father meant and it was for partly that reason that he had put off telling his parents about Upton in the first place.

Iason replied with a Look that told Fedir that he was right and he didn't bother staying any longer to hear any more. Giving his mother a final hug, he bid his parents goodbye and went back to his new home.

Fedir was used to his father's opinions on "them" but that didn't mean that he had to like it.

According to Iason, "they," a group that Fedir happened to belong to, were nothing but promiscuous, flamboyant, attention seekers that would rather live as women than the men they were born as. Since not one of those things applied to Fedir (except perhaps "attention seeker" since he did love to perform), he knew very well that his father was wrong. However, nothing he did or said would ever change Iason's mind. He was still far too hurt to even bother after broke things off with Upton anyway. So what was he to do?

After what he'd gone through, Fedir knew that he didn't want to chance getting hurt again, but he also didn't want to spend his life alone. So, since he couldn't convince his father otherwise anyway, he became almost exactly what Iason thought he should be.

On the nights when he wasn't performing, Fedir began going out -- to strip clubs and jazz clubs, but mostly gay bars. It was a way to not only keep himself busy but to find someone to keep him company overnight. They probably weren't the best places to be looking for companionship at, but Fedir wasn't looking for companionship. All he was looking for was someone to spend his nights with and he was usually able to do that.

Of course he took every precaution -- using protection, never inviting anyone to his own apartment, and he got tested every month for diseases -- and he still stayed away from the drugs that sometimes ran rampant at some of those places. Sometimes he drank, but never in excess and he walked everywhere or took a cab when he had the extra cash.

This was how Fedir lived his life for five years, going out nearly every night and going home with a different man each time. Never settling down and rarely ever going home with the same man twice. It worked out just fine for him at first, but after some time, Fedir began realizing that it just wasn't the lifestyle that he wanted. He'd liked coming home to a familiar face and waking up to it as well -- knowing, or at least thinking, that he was loved and not just a one-night-stand whose name would be forgotten with the dawn. He wanted something more, but he wasn't willing to let himself be hurt again either. But there simply wasn't anything to be done about it. Nothing that Fedir could think of anyway.

Until one morning. He'd been out the night before and spent it with a handsome bird that had left him sore in the morning. However sore he was, though, Fedir had early morning lessons and didn't like to stay for his bedmates to wake up anyway, so he left just as the sun was coming up. There were few other people out at that time so Fedir made it home rather quickly so he took a fast shower and changed in fresh clothes before checking his voicemail.

"Feddy, hon, it's Mom. Are you there? . . . alright, well call me as soon as you get this message -- I'm at the hospital with your father. Now I don't want you to worry. There was a . . . problem downtown and your father got caught in it. It's about . . . quarter-to-eleven and he just went into surgery. No one could tell me how long he's gonna be in there. Oh, shoot, my battery's dying. Alright, Feddy, call me what you get this and . . . and . . . don't worry. Your father'll be fine. He'll be . . . just fine. I-I gotta go. I love you. And I'll talk to you later. 'Bye."

Fedir didn't know when he'd ended up on the couch but he had to stand to put his phone back in the charger. He didn't know what to think. Or say. His father had been injured and, as of last night, was in surgery. Last night. His father had gone into surgery last night while he'd been getting fucked by a man whose name he'd barely known and couldn't even remember at that moment.

He felt sick to his stomach but he didn't have time to be sick. Once he got his thoughts back together, Fedir grabbed his jacket, wallet, and keys and rushed out of his apartment, waving his hands as he ran down the street trying to hail a taxicab.

His first stop was his parents' apartment to pick up his mother's cell phone charger; then, he was off to the hospital. Iason was just getting out of surgery, he was told, and being taken to the Intensive Care Unit. Fedir signed in, thanked the nurse, and rushed up the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator, to meet his mother outside the room Iason was being moved into.

He was still asleep, the doctor said, and wouldn't be awake for a while. However (Eidel and Fedir clutched each others' hands), there had been a significant amount of internal bleeding and they'd had to do an emergency heart and lung transplant on top of a blood transfusion. The technology to do this, while very reliable, was far from perfect and, in some patients, the transplanted organs would fail.

Eidel asked when they would know for certain if the new organs were working properly. The doctor told them that, generally, if something was going to go wrong, it would happen within five or six hours, then, left Fedir and his mother alone with his sleeping father.

The incident, from what Eidel had been told by Iason's partner and several other police officers that had been there, had involved several gang members, each one with at least one gun and plenty of ammunition. Fedir's father hadn't been the only officer caught in the crossfire -- two had already died and five others were being taken care of in that same hospital. The doctors had removed three bullets from Iason's chest but, according to his partner, he'd been shot four times. The missing bullet was lodged deep in his thigh and Fedir and Eidel later on learned that the doctors had wanted to focus on removing the three that had posed the biggest threats to Iason's life first. If they were able to keep him in stable condition, then they would go back in to remove the final bullet.

Throughout the morning the other officers that had been in the shootout and several that had worked with Fedir's father stopped by to give cards, flowers, and their sympathies to Fedir and Eidel. They learned that the gang members that had opened fire on the officers had either been killed in the gun battle or arrested -- a small comfort to Iason's wife and only child as they sat beside his bed, waiting for some sign that he was getting better, or at least waking up.

When he finally did awaken, it was at least a small relief on Fedir and Eidel. He was still very weak and, even though he hadn't been told about the surgery and transplants, he seemed to know that there was something wrong.

"What happened to the punks?" he asked hoarsely.

Fedir reccounted everything that the other officers had told them while his mother held her husband's hands and tried to keep a hold of herself. Iason seemed pleased with the results, though Fedir knew he would have been happier if no one had died.

What may have surprised anyone else, however, was that Fedir's father didn't even ask about his own health. His family knew what that meant, however: Iason knew that there was something seriously wrong. He didn't like to hear about bad news when there was nothing to be done about it. But he knew, this time, that he wouldn't be able to avoid talking about it completely.

Iason turned as much as he could towards his wife and took her hands in his own. "Eidel, honey," he said, "y'know where all of my records and everything are, right?" She choked back a sob and nodded. "Good. Listen, I want you t'take the money we've been savin' up and move to the beach like ya've been wanting to, okay?"

Eidel stared at him with wide eyes, barely able to settle herself enough to shake her head, no. How could he be talking like that when there was still a chance that he'd be alright!

Iason told her not to worry, though, because he loved her and everything would be alright. Fedir couldn't listen to it -- couldn't watch his mother cry as his father told her what to do after he died. He couldn't leave, though, knowing that those were probably going to be his last moments with his father. All he could do was stand there behind Eidel and try to be strong and hold back his own tears for her. Until Iason turned to him.

"Fedir," he said, gesturing to his son and releasing one of his wife's hands so that he could take one of his son's. "Fedir, I want you to take care of your mother."

"O'course, Dad. You don't even hafta-"

"I know, just . . . listen t'me, okay? Take care o'your mom. She always took care o'you, now it's time for you t'take care o'her. But . . . whatever you do, don't let it get in the way of . . . your life."

Considering how little Iason had seemed to think of Fedir's life and the choices he'd made, that came as quite a surprise. Fedir stared at his father, unsure of what to do or say, but that was fine because the older bird wasn't through just yet.

"I haven't exactly been . . . supportive of ya, I know, but . . . I just want you t'be happy, Fedir. I want ya t'be successful, whatever ya do, so y'won't hafta struggle like me'n your mother did. An' I want you t'be happy doin' it. An' not only that; I want . . . I want you to . . . to settle down. I want you t'stop sleepin' around -- don't gimme that look, we're your parents, we're not stupid. You're better'n that -- you deserve better'n that. I want you t'promise me, Fedir. Promise me ye're gonna find someone who deserves you, okay? Not like that Upton jerk; some other guy, better'n him. Okay?"

All Fedir could do when he heard that was nod as he tried to discreetly wipe at his eyes. He just couldn't believe that after everything he and his father had been through that Iason was actually saying those things. It was the closest he'd felt to his father in over a decade and it just wasn't fair that it took one of their impending deaths to make it happen.

"I promise, Dad," Fedir said once he trusted his throat not to close up on him. "I love you."

"I love you too, Fedir. An' I'm proud o'you. Always have been."

Eidel had long since broken down, covering her face with her hands as she sobbed away. It was almost too much for Fedir to take and he just tried to keep some control over himself while Iason tried to comfort his wife. It was so hard, though, watching his mother cry and his father weakened with each passing moment. She wanted to call the doctor once Iason began noticeably slowing down and having trouble just breathing but he forbade it saying that God obviously wanted this to be his time. So Fedir held his mother and said one final goodbye to his father when his body finally failed him.

Every day up through Iason's funeral, Fedir thought about his father's last words to him. From the time that Fedir had told his parents that he was going to pursue a music career instead of going to college, to the time that he had told that he was gay and in love with his former classmate, to the very moment before Iason had assured him that he did love and support him, Fedir had been sure that his father had been ashamed of him. Iason had wanted his son to go to college and get a "real job." He had wanted his son to meet a nice young woman, get married, and give his parents grandchildren.

Instead, Fedir only had a high school diploma and was living basically gig to gig and giving potentially useless music lessons to little kids that would probably never do anything with what he taught them. His only meaningful relationship had been with a lying, unloving man; and since then, the only sex he had was for a single night of pleasure rather than procreation. There had been no doubt in Fedir's mind that his father was ashamed of him. Until that moment in the hospital.

Iason just wanted him to take care of his mother and be happy. But Fedir was happy. Wasn't he?

He loved playing with his band every week at The Blue Penguin. It was absolutely thrilling to finally be making money to play music -- a dream come true! But . . . he wasn't really happy with his love life. It was fun going to the clubs and gay bars and, as much as Fedir loved jazz, it was easier to dance to that horrible techno-dance music and there was never any lack of attractive men looking to get laid. It had been somewhat exciting, sleeping with a different man nearly every night, and there was no worry about his lover cheating on him. After a while, though, he'd realized that he missed being in an actual relationship.

Which was all his father had wanted for him. To be happy in his career, even if he wasn't making a lot of money, and to find someone he cared about and who cared about him as much as his parents cared about each other. But Fedir wasn't going to find that person while trolling the bars and clubs filled with men mostly only looking for one-night-stands.

Iason's funeral, paid for by the police department he'd worked for, was befitting of a hero killed in the line of duty. Fedir couldn't help but think that his father would have been touched by the entire ceremony and the memorial afterwards, even if he would have hesitated to show it. He'd cared about his friends and his family, and he hadn't hesitated to show that. Since his career was so dangerous, Iason had written up his will after he'd gotten married and only changed it when Fedir had been born. He'd split his entire material life between his wife and his only child. Most of it had gone to Eidel, of course, and Fedir's share . . .

He could have used the money -- being a professional musician was only truly profitable if you were famous -- but after thinking about it throughout the funeral and most of the memorial service, Fedir decided that he didn't really need the money. Instead, he signed it all over to his mother and helped her move into her dream condo with a view of a beautiful tropical beach from her balcony. In return, he'd only asked for a few of Iason's belongings so that he would have something to remember his father by besides his not always quite happy memories.

He stopped going to the bars and clubs and focused on his music instead; he called his mother just about every day to let her know that he was doing alright and to make sure that she was doing the same.

Fedir was happy with his life and he was taking care of his mother as best he could. All of his father's wishes for him were coming true, except for one. Spending most of his time with his decidedly underage students when he wasn't rehearsing or performing with his bandmates, Fedir didn't really have the time to find the love of his life. But Fedir was only twenty-five -- he still had two years before he would find him.

-End

More fic!

2006-08-01T04:49:14Z

Chapter 10: Reasons

When Alphonse was just a young boy, he'd found a book in the library that had been misplaced in the fiction shelves which he'd been looking through. It was called, simply, Alchemy but, when young Alphonse tried to borrow it, he wasn't allowed to. He was told by the librarian that it actually belonged in the restricted section and only licensed alchemists could borrow it. Young Alphonse asked how he could become a licensed alchemist. The librarian told him that he had to find himself a teacher who was already a licensed alchemist, study very hard and then, when he turned eighteen, he could take a test and, if he passed this test, then would get his alchemist's license. Then he could go into the restricted section whenever he wanted and borrow any books in there that he wanted.

Having forgotten all about the novel he'd been looking for, young Alphonse hurried home where he'd found his mother setting out the day's wash to dry before her customers came to pick it up. He ran up to her and told her all about what had happened at the library and what the librarian had told him. Little Alphonse asked his mother -- begged her -- to find him an alchemy teacher so that he could learn alchemy and get his alchemist's license.

"I'm sorry," his mother had said, "but I'm afraid we just don't have the money right now to pay for a teacher. Maybe when you're a little older."

Young Alphonse was understandably disappointed but he was used to such disappointments, even at such a young age. So his life continued as it had before, going to school in the mornings, stopping by the library in the afternoon for a new book, helping his mother fold the day's laundry after he returned, and then reading until he fell asleep. Once in a while the schedule would change and he would play with his friends but this was just young Alphonse's life. Until his next birthday.

Little Alphonse and his mother had been saving up all year for his birthday party. There were balloons and hats and streamers and his mother had even baked a beautiful and absolutely delicious smelling chocolate cake just covered in sparkling candles with one in the center in the shape of a seven. Everything was absolutely perfect, there was just one thing missing. The guests.

Little Alphonse had invited his closest friends to the party, but due to the unexpected rainstorm, no one had been able to show up. Alphonse had been so disappointed, even though his mother kept assuring him that all they had to do was tell the other children that they should come tomorrow instead. That made him feel a little better, but it just wouldn't be the same, celebrating his birthday on a day that wasn't his birthday.

He and his mother tried to make the best of the situation, though, and she cooked him his favorite meal for dinner and even let him eat some of the cake for dessert, promising that shed simply bake another for the party the next day. Just as she'd been about to let him open his present, however, they were both surprised by a loud knock on the front door. They hadn't been expecting anyone due to the rain but, sure enough, when little Alphonse's mother opened the door, they saw two drenched strangers standing there.

Young Alphonse's mother invited them both in, though the large behemoth of a man scared young Alphonse and he clung to his mother's skirt. Their names were Izumi and Sieg Curtis, the woman explained and accepted his mother's offer of tea and birthday cake. They'd been on their way back to Dublith when their train had been cancelled thanks to the weather effecting the nearby river. They'd walked from the train station and tried to find an inn to stay in for the night until the flooding went down, but there just hadn't been any and the conditions had gotten worse outside. But it was no trouble, young Alphonse's mother had assured them. She was very glad to help.

As it turned out, however, their visitors were even more help in the end.

The storm had been picking up outside, making everyone inside increasingly nervous. The rain was bashing against the house, the thunder shaking the ground and, soon, the tree just outside the kitchen was struck by lightning. It remained standing somehow, but at such a precarious angle that it looked as if it would fall over at any moment. And it did. The wind picked up to dangerous speeds and the tree tipped over, crashing into the kitchen and strewing glass, wood, and other debris everywhere.

Little Alphonse's mother just didn't know what to do. Even if the storm ended soon, the kitchen couldn't stay like that. Unfortunately she also just didn't have the money to pay for such extensive repairs. She was at a complete loss for what to do and the kitchen was quickly filling with water from all of the rain, and the wind was bringing in dirt and debris from outside. It was just a complete mess and there was nothing that she could do about it.

So, Izumi stepped forward. The stranger asked young Alphonse and his mother to step back a bit, away from the kitchen, to give her some room. Once the kitchen was cleared of people, Izumi clapped her hands together, pressed them to the floor, and the room covered in what appeared to be blue lightning. Young Alphonse stood transfixed as he watched the blue lightning encompass everything and make it all begin to move and repair itself seamlessly. The broken window looked brand new again and the wall seemed just as it always had been. The dents in the floor and wood-burning stove were gone, as if they'd never even been there in the first place. And, finally, the tree chopped itself up into firewood and rested itself by the stove.

Both little Alphonse and his mother were in awe. Little Alphonse's mother wanted to somehow repay Izumi for what she'd done but both she and her husband assured her that it was nothing and she should just consider it payment for allowing the couple to spend the night. Since Izumi seemed a bit ill and weak, though, the four of them retired to the living room once more and took up another conversation.

Little Alphonse couldn't have told you anything about it, however, since he was too busy forming a plan in his head. It had been the first time that he'd ever seen alchemy and he just knew that this would be his one and only chance to ever learn it. So, the next time the conversation seemed to have lagged, young Alphonse asked Izumi if she would please teach him alchemy.

Izumi looked him over thoughtfully for a moment but turned away saying that she didn't take on students. Well of course she didn't, his mother said and apologized for his abruptness and assumptions. Little Alphonse ignored his mother and tried again, assuring Izumi that he would work really hard and everyone told him that he was very smart so he would learn quickly. Hoping to deter him, Izumi asked how the little boy was planning on paying her since, after all, a little boy couldn't possibly have the money to hire an alchemy teacher. Young Alphonse's eyebrows furrowed and he looked to his mother who merely flushed and patted his head, reminding him that they couldn't afford something like that right then.

Little Alphonse frowned sadly but nodded, climbing into his mother's lap. He'd been so close too.

What he hadn't realized, however, was that Izumi had been watching him -- especially his reaction to his mother's words. He'd been truly disappointed and she knew exactly how he felt. She believed him that he was serious about learning alchemy and they certainly weren't going to find many people willing to not charge them to teach young Alphonse.

"Two days later, I was on a train with Izumi and Sieg on our way to Dublith."

"Your mom stayed behind?"

Alphonse nodded and Edward couldn't help but notice that he appeared just a bit guilty about that; and he thought he had an idea as to why. "So what happened?"

"She was my teacher for six years. She and Sieg owned a butcher shop and I helped out there to pay for the lessons. She let me visit home at holidays, but otherwise I was only able to write letters to my mom. The letters just stopped coming one day, though, and about two weeks later, I got one from one of our neighbors saying that she'd died."

The two boys fell silent for a few moments, Edward simply waiting for his roommate to be ready to finish his story, though he had the feeling that he already knew the ending.

"You tried to bring her back."

Alphonse blinked up at the older boy, surprised, apparently, that he'd been able to figure it out. "Not exactly," he said quietly, hoping that the dimness of the light would help mask the tears in his eyes. "I almost did. I researched for months behind my teacher's back. I just wanted to see my mom again so bad because I didn't even get to see her before she got sick. Izumi found my notes, though, and stopped me before I was able to do anything."

Edward studied the younger boy carefully while a long silence stretched out between them. He'd had a feeling that the reason that Alphonse was in the school had to have been something like that.

"So you didn't really go through with it?"

Alphonse shook his head and the older boy hesitated before asking, "Do you think you would've if she hadn't stopped you?"

Alphonse looked up at him again, but almost immediately dropped his eyes back to the floor. "I don't know," he said, furrowing his eyebrows. "By the time she got to me, I already had the array drawn out in my room in her house. I hesitated, though, for a while. I'm not sure how long, but enough for Izumi to find and stop me."

"Why did you stop?"

Silence. And then, "I guess I was scared."

Edward could understand this completely, considering all of the stories about attempted human transmutations. None of these stories inspired confidence.

"I don't blame you," the older boy murmured, leaning back against the wall and staring at the door across from him. "It's pretty scary."

Once again Alphonse looked at him in surprise, though he didn't seem as surprised as he probably should have been. It seemed the younger boy had picked up on a few things, himself. He didn't even have to ask any questions; Edward could see it all on his face.

"It was my mom too, only there was no one around to stop me."

"You mean you actually went through with it?"

He nodded.

"And you actually survived . . . "

Edward could hear what sounded like awe in his roommate's voice. That was a bad thing. If people were going to be awed by him, he didn't want it to be because he'd lived through something like that. Besides, it wasn't as if he'd come out unscathed.

Leaning forward, away from the wall, Edward silently stripped off his grey uniform jacket. Alphonse was surprised by the movement and watched in confusion as the jacket was dropped to the floor. Then, his roommate unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and began rolling up his right sleeve, revealing a completely mechanical arm.

Surprise turned into shock and Alphonse wondered how he'd never noticed that his roommate had an automail limb but, as he watched Edward remove his glove, he realized: He was always wearing those gloves. This wasn't entirely unusual since they were a part of the uniform and every student at the school wore them throughout the day. But not many of them wore them to bed as well. Alphonse had barely even noticed the quirk, having been intent on not paying attention to his roommate as much as possible. The glimpse of metal beneath Edward's rolled up left leg pant was more easily explained since the older boy was always in long pants and socks, which wasn't at all unusual.

Then, Alphonse remembered that Edward was only fifteen and had been a student at the school for several years, from what he'd heard. So that had to mean . . . "How old were you?"

Edward gave him that gauging look that Alphonse was becoming so accustomed to before he answered, "Eleven."

That was . . . How was that even possible? Not only had Edward survived an attempted human transmutation, the most dangerous alchemy known, but he'd done it at the extraordinarily young age of eleven!

"You really are incredible . . . "

And here Edward had thought showing the younger boy what had happened to him would prevent that sort of reaction. He stared down at his hand, watching his mechanical fingers clench and unclench. "You think that just 'cause I managed to survive?"

"That's reason enough, isn't it? and the fact that you were so young." Alphonse just couldn't believe it. "You're probably the youngest person to ever survive that."

"Yeah," Edward snorted bitterly, clenching his automail hand, "what an accomplishment."

Edward could feel his roommate's eyes on him with that same measuring look he'd given him so often. He was trying to figure out why he was so bitter about it, but the older thought that it must be obvious.

"You didn't succeed."

"That's a stupid question."

Although it had been more a of a statement than a question, Alphonse had to agree. Of course he hadn't succeeded. No one ever had. That was why Alphonse had hesitated in the end -- he'd just been too afraid.

"So . . . what happened then?" he asked. "I mean, you lost your arm and leg, and all of the elements, right? So you must have gotten something in return. Equivalent Exchange: You can't have given up all of that and gotten nothing in return."

Edward forced down a shudder. "Oh, I got something alright."

"What was it?"

"I'll tell you this much: It sure as hell wasn't human."

Alphonse looked as if he wanted to ask again, so the older boy cut him off. That, he was not ready to tell him. Or anyone. "So your teacher turned you in?"

The younger boy nodded. "She brought me over to the military but asked that I be sent here."

He wasn't entirely sure why, but the older boy seemed surprised by this and Alphonse asked him what was wrong.

"Why would she want you to be sent here?"

"She said she went here when she was younger, and it helped her," he answered with a shrug.

Izumi. Of course, how could he not have realized? She hadn't been Izumi Curtis back then, but he still recognized the name. And how ironic that Alphonse, who had nearly attempted a human transmutation, should turn out to have been Izumi's student. Or maybe she'd been teaching her student something that she shouldn't have.

"Edward," the younger boy asked, cutting off his roommate's thoughts, "when you got sent down here the last time -- when you tried to move the building -- you didn't use an array." Alphonse had the look of someone who was just figuring out an extremely difficult puzzle. "And those little balls you were flicking at Master Mustang. It was alchemy, wasn't it? I thought it was but I didn't see any array."

Well, there was no way of getting around it. Besides that it wasn't as if he'd done much to hide that particular ability from anyone.

"How is that possible? How are you and my teacher able to perform alchemy without an array?" No matter how hard he tried, Alphonse just couldn't think of a way that anyone should be able to do something like that. It was defied all the laws of alchemy that he'd been taught!

Edward looked up at his roommate. He didn't want to get into it. In fact, the less people that knew how he managed to use alchemy without an array, the better. There were too many people out there that would misuse an ability like that. But, then again, Alphonse definitely didn't seem like that type, or the type that would attempt to perform such dangerous alchemy just to be able to perform array-less alchemy. He was just . . . curious.

"Your teacher never told you?" he asked carefully.

Alphonse shook his head. "She never even did it after we got to Dublith. Not in front of me anyway."

"She was probably just trying to protect you."

The younger boy gazed questioningly at him.

Edward sighed. "The reason I'm able to perform alchemy without an array is the same reason I'm here."

"You mean . . . the human transmutation?" The older boy nodded. "I don't get it. Why would performing human transmutation make you able to not use an array?"

It was a perfectly understandable question. The only problem was that Edward wasn't sure he could answer it. "I'm not sure, exactly, but something happens when you do and . . . I dunno. You just learn how, okay?" Along with quite a few other things that he wished he hadn't learned.

Alphonse got the feeling that his roommate thought he didn't believe him, though he couldn't figure out why that would be. He'd seen Edward perform array-less transmutations and he had no reason to think that he was lying. The older boy was really so much more amazing than he'd thought and it made Alphonse feel just a bit vindicated for all the time he'd spent watching Edward and trying to figure him out. It would have been somewhat disappointing to find out that there had been absolutely nothing interesting about his roommate.

"Edward?"

Without even really thinking, the older boy sighed and said, "Y'know, you don't have to call me Edward. Ed's fine."

Alphonse, to his surprise, smiled at him. "I was just wondering. When you did the transmutation . . . were you scared?"

Edward seemed to sure of himself and undeterable that Alphonse couldn't imagine that he had been even a little scared. It made the younger boy feel almost silly for not even being able to go through with his own plans. Edward was just so strong and incredible and Alphonse . . . was weak and unremarkable.

To his surprise, though, Edward looked down at his automail hand and nodded.

So then it was true. Edward really was human. Even someone as powerful and confident as the older boy was had been frightened in the face of such dangerous and uncertain alchemy.

"Hey, Ed."

"Yeah, Alphonse?"

The younger boy smiled at him again and shrugged. "You can call me Al."

-To be continued

Fic!

2006-08-01T03:28:37Z

Title: Holy Mother
Summary: Sometimes she wished that none of this had ever happened to her.
Rating: G/K
Disclaimer: If I owned FMA, then I wouldn’t be poor and this wouldn’t be a fanfic.
Notes I wrote this because . . . well, I thought that Trisha Elric was portrayed very one-sided from the eyes of two boys that adored and deified her. But even perfect mothers have low moments sometimes, especially when their husbands abandon them with no word to take care of two small children by themselves.

_____________________________________

Having children was hard, especially when they were very young. It was made even more difficult when you had to take care of them on your own. For almost six years now, Trisha Elric had had to be mother, father, caretaker, maid, warden, and sole provider for her two boys. She loved them very much, of course -- they were the light of her life. It was just that sometimes . . . Sometimes she wished that none of this had ever happened to her.

It was selfish of her, she knew. So incredibly selfish of her. More than selfish. But sometimes she just wished. She wished that she didn't have to take care of two children all by herself. She wished that she hadn't had children to begin with, because that had been the reason that he'd left, hadn't it? It wasn't until after Alphonse had been born that he'd just gone. That was what she most wished for, though. She wished that Hohenheim hadn't left her; or that she just hadn't met him at all.

Everything had seemed so perfect in the beginning. He'd appeared out of nowhere one day, a handsome southern gentleman with all of the charm of a prince and all of the knowledge of the most intelligent scholar. Trisha had only been a teenager then, while Hohenheim had been the sweet, charming, worldly older man. He'd quite simply swept her off of her feet.

Trisha's parents hadn't approved, of course, but they'd been married as soon as she'd turned eighteen. They'd been so in love and she hadn't even cared that Hohenheim hadn't been able to take her on a honeymoon. Instead, they'd moved directly into his home in Rizenbul and, about two years later, they'd been blessed with little Edward. Trisha loved watching her husband play with their son. It was truly heartwarming and she took so many pictures and they were scatter all over the house. So she had thought that Hohenheim would have been pleased when she told him that she was pregnant again. She'd been quite mistaken.

It had been around that time that Hohenheim began changing. He become less involved in his family -- less interested -- and he began spending more and more time in his study, locking himself away inside for hours on end refusing meals and, sometimes, even sleep. He became distant and, eventually, wouldn't even stand to be touched, even by little Edward. It hurt so badly when he pulled away from her, but it had all come together when she began smelling the perfume.

She'd been such a fool to think that a man so much older than her would have actually been truly interested in her. She was just too young and probably too immature for him; he obviously would have preferred some older woman with more worldly experience. So it shouldn't have come as such a surprise to her when she awoke one morning to a cold, empty bed and her husband nowhere to be found.

Trisha had gone immediately to their neighbors hoping that they might have heard something, since Pinako Rockbell had been an old friend of Hohenheim's. But no, he hadn't left any word there either and the Rockbells had been just as surprised to discover that he'd disappeared. The strangest thing was, though, that all he'd taken with him had been a suitcase of clothes; all of his other belongings were still there, even everything in his study that he'd always guarded so desperately.

It just didn't make any sense and Trisha had to wonder what it was she had done to make him not love her anymore. More often than not, Trisha did blame herself and just wished that she had been given the chance to change whatever she'd done wrong.

But sometimes . . . Sometimes, in moments she wasn't at all proud of, she wished that she had never met Hohenheim; that they had never gotten married; that she had never had children.

-End

OMFG NO WEI AN ORIGINAL FIC

2006-07-23T21:36:55Z

Title: Changing Perceptions
Summary: It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen except in science fiction stories.
Rating: G

There were stories. There were always stories. Whether they were true or not depended on who you asked, but, for the most part, the people seemed to be split right down the middle between the believers and the non-believers. And, of course, both sides insisted that the other was insane for not agreeing with them and it took quite a lot for one of them to change sides. It was a long and seemingly never ending struggle for each side to prove its own validity, but the struggle did finally end, as all must eventually.

Now, most stories would begin telling you what a normal, beautiful, clear day it was, but this one won’t, simply because it wasn’t. The sky was rather overcast on that particular day threatening rain as a violent wind blew frigid air to the south. So there were very few people outside. Until The Thing appeared.

It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen except in science fiction stories. It broke through the clouds in a flash of fire and a loud pop, startling the few people outside. The commotion that they made drew others outside and, seeing the growing crowds merely drew even more people outside. The Thing was otherworldly in every way possible -- its shape, the way it flew, even the horrible pulsing hum emanating from it -- and there was no one alive that could have found any way to claim it was some kind of hoax.

The struggle was over, the believers had won and, by the next morning, everyone the world-over would know. The Thing had flown over the entire country, frightening and fascinating everyone who saw it until it finally vanished late in the afternoon with another conspicuous explosion.

Back inside of The Thing, once it had left the planet’s atmosphere, one of the pilots flipped a switch, immediately filling the cockpit with the sound of static.

“Houston,” he said, “this is Armstrong Seven. The mission has been completed and we’re on our way home.”

Fic

2006-07-03T20:56:04Z

Title: Family Dynamics
Characters: Roy Mustang, Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, and Hohenheim Elric
Summary: As hard as he'd been searching for Edward and his brother, Roy had never imagined that he would find them as well as the man that he had come to town in search of five years before.
Rating: G/K
Disclaimer: If I owned FMA then I wouldn’t be poor and this wouldn’t be fanfic.
Warnings: Some spoilers for later on in the series.

______________________________

It was the first time that Roy had been out to Rizenbul in five years. The last time had been because of in investigation into Hohenheim Elric; this time, it had been because of an investigation into that man's sons. It was a foul state of affairs when a veritable country hero was being tracked down like some criminal but Mustang had his orders and no one else could be trusted to handle the situation the way it should be handled.

As hard as he'd been searching for Edward and his brother, however, Roy had never imagined that he would find them as well as the man that he had come to town in search of five years before. Neither had the brothers, obviously, and their father's sudden reappearance was met with two very different reactions.

Edward's reaction was truly typical of him and hadn't really surprised anyone. Anger seemed to be the young blonde's default setting when it came to his emotions. But you never saw the full impact of it until he was truly angry about something. Seeing his father again was one of those things that made him truly angry. Roy couldn't really blame him considering what the man had done to his family -- and what he hadn't done. It had to have been difficult growing up as a young child after your father had literally abandoned your family. And then to lose their mother as well. Roy could certainly understand why the boys had wanted to bring her back so badly; and if only Hohenheim had just been there for his sons then maybe they wouldn't have had to suffer as much as they had.

Roy could see all of those thoughts running through Edward's mind whenever he looked at his father and Hohenheim was probably just lucky that Alphonse was there. For reasons that were clearly completely beyond Edward, the younger boy still loved his father.

Perhaps it was because Alphonse had simply been too young to really experience the pain of the man's abandonment. Or, perhaps, he was simply far more forgiving than any person Roy knew. It was likely a mix of the two but, either way, it was definitely something that Roy admired about the youngest Elric.

Not that Roy was saying that Hohenheim deserved to be forgiven for what he'd done to his wife and sons. However, he'd had the opportunity to speak with the other man and he'd seemed to truly regret what he'd done. Although Roy had gotten the sense that he not only regretted it for completely different reasons, but that he was hiding something else about why he'd left in the first place.

Roy wouldn't have asked, since it was absolutely not his place or his business and it simply wasn't the time, but he wasn't even given the chance to as Hohenheim was suddenly swept up by his sons. The two boys seemed to be arguing over something and, before he knew it, Roy was staring at Alphonse's and Hohenheim's backs disappearing into the distance and the darkness. When he turned to find Edward, he saw that the older boy had already gone back inside.

It sent a small trickle of dread down his spine. Hohenheim's reappearance had come at such a bad time.

The two brothers could not afford to be divided against each other right now.

-End

Fic

2006-07-03T00:13:26Z

Chapter 9: Sneaking Around

"You need me to what?"

Edward's gaze didn't falter for a moment as he repeated the request, "I need you to sneak me down to see Alphonse."

Roy stared at the boy, trying to convince himself that Edward was joking or perhaps he'd just misunderstood. But no, he knew the blonde better than that. He carefully rested his elbows on his desk and steepled his fingers as he put back on his calm mask. "Might I ask what this is about, Edward?"

"You may ask, doesn't mean I'm gonna answer."

Mustang almost smirked. "You realize the danger of what you're asking me, don't you?"

Edward just rolled his eyes and turned to lean back against the man's desk. "Yeah, well it's not like they can expel me or anything. They'll just throw me back down there for another few weeks if they find out, big deal."

"With the way you talk, Edward, one might almost suspect that you enjoy it in solitary confinement."

Edward couldn't see the frown on his teacher's face, but he could imagine it. "I can't really complain," the blonde shrugged, "It gives me time to think without having someone looking over my shoulder all the time."

"Perhaps not all the time," Roy muttered, and Edward was too angered by the statement to notice the bitter tone in the man's voice.

The boy whirled back around and glared at Mustang who only regarded him coldly. Edward snorted and shook his bangs out of his eyes. "So are you going to help me or not? If not I'll just find another way to get down there myself."

Roy scowled but nodded, "I will speak to Lust; but understand that this is not going to be as simple as smuggling notes and food back and forth. You'll have to give us some time to figure something out, a plan of action." The man lifted his gaze back to Edward to make sure he was truly listening as he added, "If Lust says there is no way, then there is no way and you are not to try it on your own. Do you understand me, Edward?"

"Yeah sure, whatever," Edward shrugged and plucked his lateness excuse note from Roy's desk on his way out without another word, leaving his teacher wondering just what the hell he was going to do about this.

*

Not a word of the plan was spoken to anyone else since neither Edward nor Roy could be certain when someone else might be listening in. They didn't even speak to each other about it until a few days later when Roy came to Edward with Lust's decision.

"So she'll do it?" the blonde asked impatiently once the door to Roy's office was closed. He wouldn't have taken them in there if she wasn't going to do it.

"The only way to get you down there is for you to be punished as well," the man explained, not bothering to actually answer the question. This didn't seem to surprise Edward so Roy just continued, "Tomorrow morning, Lust is going to be doing the rounds on the boy's floors of the dormitory."

"So I harass her and get myself sent down. Simple enough. Anything else? She got any preferences or anything?"

Mustang gave the blonde a look that wiped the smirk off of his face. Once he was sure he was being taken seriously again he continued, "When you are taken down to the isolation rooms, she'll place you in the room with Alphonse and then take you out once your punishment is up. Whatever do to Lust, don't overdo it. It should be something that will send you down there for about a day; anything more and she can't guarantee that no one else will get involved."

This all made sense and Edward nodded but there was something more pressing on his mind. "What about Envy?"

Roy knew exactly why Edward was concerned about the Guardian and Lust had as well. The man hadn't even needed to mention it to her before she'd assured him, "Lust says she can keep him away, but only for a certain amount of time. That's why you must be out of there within two days at the most."

The blonde gave one last nod and let his arms uncross. "That it?"

"That's it." Roy watched as his student turned to leave. Suddenly, though, he was just a bit worried about the blonde leaving and following the ridiculous plan. "Edward, wait."

The young man turned around to see Mustang standing behind his desk and he raised an eyebrow at the man.

Roy knew that whatever warnings he had to give the blonde would just be laughed off so he cut it down as much as possible. "Don't do anything stupid."

Edward just snorted, rolled his eyes, and walked out of the office, leaving Roy to his thoughts.

This was a completely dangerous business, far more than the other stunts that Edward had pulled before. To not only break the solitary confinement of another student, thereby risking himself, but to risk also the Headmistress discovering that he'd been helped by a teacher and one of her own Guardians? Roy wasn't certain what Dante would do if they were discovered but he knew it wouldn't be good for he and Lust, at the very least. What he was really worried about, though, was what would happen to Edward without he and Lust covering for him.

But that sort of thinking was completely unproductive and wouldn't do Edward, Roy, or Lust any good. Of course, neither would merely hoping that things went along as planned, but Mustang had already done his part and that was all that was left for him to do.

*

There was a certain air about Edward when he was up to something, though Russell was sure that he was the only one that noticed it that morning. That could have been because Fletcher was the only other with them, though, and he rarely noticed things like that.

The older blonde was tense, though, seeming to be waiting for something while still remaining fairly cocky. That wasn't unusual since the shorter boy always seemed to be cocky, but this time, or whenever he was up to something, it was seemingly focused on whatever Edward was waiting for. Which turned out to be the Guardian, Lust.

"Going to breakfast, boys?" the woman asked, surprising all three of them when she seemed to materialize out of nowhere behind them. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I scare you?"

Russell, wanting to just get his brother away from the woman, was cut off by his former roommate.

"Only if it's true that you were once a man."

Lust's gaze snapped to the oldest of the group, her eyebrow merely raised in challenge. "Is that so?" she asked calmly. "That's interesting, considering what I've learned about you."

Edward's face turned bright red and Russell watched as the gears worked in his head. What in the world was the little shrimp up to? And why did he have to get Russell and Fletcher involved? The taller boy had half a mind to just take his brother and leave Edward to whatever scheme he'd thought up this time. Unfortunately, he had this annoying sense of responsibility towards his former roommate.

"Edward," he warned quietly, "let's just go to breakfast."

"No can do," the shorter boy replied and he stepped away from the brothers towards Lust. "So, how exactly is that any business of yours?" he asked the Sin.

"You should know better than that, Edward. Everything is our business."

"Is that so?" he retorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "Then that has to go both ways, doesn't it? After all, it's not really fair to us not knowing anything about our guards, is it? So tell me, Lust, were you really that bad of an alchemist that you caused a rebound that cut your dick off?"

Russell watched the Guardian carefully as his former roommate spoke, noting that the moment her expression turned positively livid, Fletcher ducked behind him. He didn't blame the younger boy with the Lust was glaring at Edward and, without another word she surged forward and grabbed the short blonde by the arm and disappeared down the hallway with him. Russell and Fletcher stared after them both but it was the older brother that voiced what they were both thinking, "What the hell was that all about? And what's he up to now?"

*

Of course, by the time the bell had rung signaling the end of breakfast and the beginning of classes, nearly everyone in the school was talking about what had happened between Lust and Edward. Well, various versions of it anyway, and most of them centering on the very last question the blonde had asked Lust before she'd taken him away.

Edward, however, wasn't there to enjoy the rekindling of his popularity since, as usual, he was being escorted down to the isolation rooms for his punishment. The only difference, of course, was that the isolation room wasn't isolated this time.

Alphonse wasn't entirely sure how long he'd been down there since it was hard to tell time when the only light you had was a dim hanging lamp instead of a window. Even if he could tell by when he got tired, all of the days just seemed to melt together anyway. Besides, with nothing to do but think, Alphonse found himself getting tired more often than just at bedtime. Or, at least, he thought it was. He just wasn't sure anymore.

However long it had been though, Alphonse was almost positive that the time hadn't come yet for him to be released. This was why he found himself watching the heavy metal door when he heard it unlock. His punishment wasn't over yet -- it couldn't be over yet -- so there should have been no need for anyone to unlock that door. Not unless something was wrong. But what on Earth could be wrong enough that they break his solitary confinement?

Alphonse wasn't really sure who it was he'd been expecting to see once the door opened, but the person that was there surprised him.

Lust held the heavy door open with one hand with the other resting on her hip as she gazed into the small room at the boy. She didn't say anything and Alphonse was far too uncertain of what was even going on to say anything. Finally, still without a word, Lust stepped aside towards the door to reveal . . . his roommate.

"Edward?" the younger blonde gaped and started at the dry, cracked sound of his own voice. Had it really been that long since he'd even spoken?

Edward didn't answer except to lift a silencing finger to his lips as he stepped past the threshold and Lust. He shared a glance with the Guardian and she merely said that she'd be back tomorrow morning before shutting and locking both boys in. The older boy waited at the door listening to the fading sound of Lust's footsteps until it was completely silent outside. Then, he turned to Alphonse.

The younger boy just sat in the corner of his little isolation room, staring at his roommate and wondering if he was hallucinating or dreaming or something.

"You look like Hughes when I told him that Gracia was married."

"Ms. Gracia's married?"

"No," Edward smirked and crossed the room to sit down beside the younger boy. "But you look like him when I told him that."

Alphonse blushed as he watched Edward lean back against the wall behind them, crossing his arms behind his head. How could he be so casual? He'd just walked into Alphonse's isolation room, escorted by Lust, and all he could do was make fun of him? Well, maybe things hadn't changed as much as he'd thought. The younger blonde was too confused about what exactly was going on to worry about how well they were or weren't getting along anyway.

"Why are you here?" he asked suspiciously. "How are you here? What's going on?"

Well, Edward supposed that he couldn't really blame his roommate for being curious about all of that. After all, it wasn't everyday that a student broke another student's solitary confinement, let alone one of the students with the help of a Sin.

"I figured you were getting kinda bored," he replied with a shrug which was at least partly the truth. Even for him there was only so much sitting and thinking someone could take. Apparently Alphonse wasn't buying it, though, raising his eyebrow at the older boy. Edward sighed and kicked his feet out in front of him. "There was something bothering me," he admitted instead.

The other boy was still just staring almost blankly at him and it was making Edward uncomfortable. Why didn't he say anything? Or at least move.

"What?" the older blonde snapped finally.

Alphonse didn't seem phased at all, but he did answer, "You still haven't told me how you got here."

Oh. Right. That.

Edward hesitated -- for a long time -- because . . . well, he just wasn't sure if he could trust his roommate with that kind of information. If it had been his old roommate . . . Well, actually, he wasn't sure he would have trusted him either. There was a major problem with trust in the school though Edward at least had to admit that may have been because there were very few chances for anyone to prove their trustworthiness. Alphonse, though . . . Well, Alphonse had had a few chances to prove himself and he hadn't really given the older boy much reason not to trust him. Except that he didn't really know Alphonse that well. Of course, that was really partly his own fault.

"Edward?"

The older boy blinked up as he realized that he'd zoned out without meaning to. He just shook his head and slouched back against the wall. "You saw," he answered simply, "Lust brought me down."

"No, really?" Alphonse drawled. "Why did she bring you here though?"

Edward gave his roommate a pointed look. "'Cause I asked her to."

The other boy looked at him in bewilderment and he wasn't sure if that was because he'd asked Lust to bring him down there or because he'd asked Lust to bring him down there or because she had. Probably both. He didn't ask any further though, so Edward didn't need to come up with any stories.

"So," Alphonse asked after a long silence, "have I missed anything interesting while I've been down here?"

Edward shrugged, "Not unless you like listening to stupid rumors about yourself."

"Rumors? About me? Like what?"

Edward couldn't believe that his roommate didn't realize that there would be rumors all over the place about what had happened. Especially since it had to do with Envy.

"You didn't really think that you could do something like that in front of an entire floor of girls without the entire place hearing about it, did you?" The shorter boy smirked at his roommate. "Everyone's heard at least some version of what happened by now."

"What do you mean 'some version of what happened'?"

That actually made him laugh. Was Alphonse really that naive? "You can't be serious. Come on, Al. By now, only you, me Russell, Winry, and Panina know what really happened."

"And Envy."

"Yeah, him too."

Alphonse's interest seemed to have been piqued and he leaned forward slightly. "So what's everyone been saying about it?"

"Oh, the usual," Edward replied casually. "They're pretty much split down the middle trying to figure out if you were being heroic or just trying to show off."

Hearing that, Alphonse just stared at him. "Why would I do something like that just to show off?"

That was a very good question and one only those idiots that had come up with the theory could have answered. "Don't ask me. I'm not the one that came up with any of it."

"I didn't say you did."

The two boys just stared at each other for a few moments, Alphonse wondering why the other was there and Edward just trying to figure his roommate out. It was the younger boy who finally looked away, his cheeks a bit red but Edward wasn't sure if he might have been imagining it -- the light wasn't great in the little room.

"Why do you think I did it?"

The question was asked so quietly that Edward might have missed it if the entire place hadn't been so quiet. He'd actually been pondering that very same question since it had happened, never really coming to an answer. It had been obvious, at least to him, that Alphonse hadn't been trying to show off and he couldn't imagine that anyone who knew the younger boy would actually believe that either. But the only other options were that either Alphonse had done it to get back at Envy for something (which didn't seem right either) or that he had done it simply to help Winry and Panina. But why would he do something like that? Why would he risk himself like that for two girls he hadn't even known for a year? It hadn't been as if they'd really been in trouble, they were just getting new room assignments -- no reason to dress the most notorious Guardian of them all in drag. No reason to get yourself sent down to solitary confinement for a month and a half.

"I'm not sure," he answered finally. "I haven't really been able to figure that out. Guess that was part of the reason I came down here."

Alphonse raised an eyebrow at him. "To find out why I did it?" The older boy nodded and he just shook his head. That was why he'd gone through all of that trouble to get down there? Edward was even stranger than he'd thought.

"So why did you?"

Well, it wasn't as if it was a dangerous question, really, so there was no real harm in answering. "Why wouldn't I have? I mean, Envy was harassing them and it's not like anyone ever cared before that they shared a room. The only reason he did now was because of what Headmistress Dante did to us and Russell."

"You figured that out too, huh?"

Alphonse gave him a Look. "Y'know, I may not be as intelligent as you, but it only takes a bit of common sense to figure that out. And that they didn't have any reason to move us but there's not much can do about it now."

"You didn't want to be moved?" Edward asked curiously.

"You didn't either. And I liked rooming with Fletcher."

"Guess I can't blame you for that. He's really not that difficult to get along with."

"No, he's not."

There was something the younger boy's tone, a slight emphasis on the word "he," that told Edward something was being implied about him. He smirked. "You saying I am?"

"Are you saying you're not?"

Well . . . there was really nothing that Edward could say to that. Even if he didn't think that he was difficult to get along with, there was no way that he could deny that other people thought he was difficult to get along with and, since the blonde just didn't have to get alone with himself, he really had to take other people's words for it.

"I guess not."

Alphonse seemed satisfied with this response so Edward let the topic drop. Unfortunately, the younger boy seemed to still be curious. Well, he knew that he'd brought it upon himself, really.

"So," the other boy began, his voice somewhat hesitant, "you seem to really get along with Russell and Winry and everyone but . . . Well, I just don't get it. Why not anyone else? I mean, you don't seem to ever give anyone else a chance."

That had been completely unexpected and, once again, Edward found himself without an answer except for an indignant stutter, "I-I give people chances! What're you talking about?"

"I thought it was pretty straightforward but fine, let's just go with the idea that you do give people besides Winry, Panina, Russell, and Fletcher chances. I'm willing to believe it, really. I guess what I'm really asking, then, is why you don't give me chances."

The look the younger boy was giving him made Edward squirm, especially considering the question he'd just been asked. Well, he supposed he hadn't really been asked a question so much as Alphonse had just demanded an answer from him. An answer that he wasn't sure he was ready to give.

"What are you talking about?" he asked finally, deciding to feel the younger boy out first. "I've given you chances. We're lab partners, aren't we?"

"Only because you came late to class and I was the only left who need a partner."

"Yeah, well, I told you about Tucker, didn't I?"

"While trying to convince me it was a rumor."

"I still told you, though! That shows a lot of trust! I never even told Russell about that."

Alphonse looked as if he'd been about to say something, but he stopped himself and, since they were the only ones in the room, Edward had no idea why. He was being stared at again, though, as if he were a faulty array that Alphonse was just figuring out how to make work.

"You really never told Russell about Tucker?"

Edward shook his head.

"So why'd you tell me?"

A shrug. "You asked."

"And Russell never did?" Alphonse seemed flabbergasted by this, but it was true.

"Russell hasn't asked questions in years."

"Why?"

"And sometimes you ask too many questions."

The younger boy flushed again and he turned away, leaving Edward feeling somewhat guilty.

"Look, it's not my story to tell. If you really wanna know then ask him when you get outta here."

That was fair enough and Alphonse agreed silently. That didn't mean that the questioning was over, though.

Alphonse looked up at his roommate again and considered his words before he finally asked, "Edward? The thing about Tucker. That means that it really was true? He really did all of those things?"

"Yeah," Edward answered grimly, "Dante's got it all in her file on him. It probably would've been all over the newspapers but you know how they always try to cover up illegal chimera stories. This one was no different. Besides, Dante would've found a way to have the story buried or discredited anyway -- it wouldn't be very good publicity for everyone to know you have a murderer watching over kids, no matter how screwed up you claim they are."

The entire situation left a foul taste in Edward's mouth (though there was little about the school that didn't) and, from the look of things, Alphonse tasted it too. Edward couldn't blame him at all. It was a bad state of affairs to say the very least and he knew that if just one person, just one of the Headmistress' supporters knew about Tucker and Kimbley and Yoki and, even more importantly, the Guardians, then the Yock Island Correctional School would finally close its doors for good. the problem, of course, was getting all of this information not just to the right person, but getting out period.

Those contemplations were doomed to be repeated over and over again, though, so there was no need to dwell on them right at that moment. Alphonse was intent on not letting the older boy either.

"There's been something that's been bothering me," he said, staring out at his hands, "since that first time you came back from solitary confinement after I first came here." There was no answer so Alphonse took the silence as an okay to continue. "Why didn't you ever ask me why I was sent here?"

Edward decided that that had to have been the most random question he'd ever heard but, then again, who was he to talk? He'd just gone to visit someone in solitary confinement who everyone thought he hated.

"Why?" he replied. "Did you really want to tell me?"

"Not really."

"Well then what's the problem?"

That was a very good question. What's the problem? What was the problem? No, Alphonse hadn't really wanted to tell the older boy but . . . he did remember wanting him to at least ask. Why? "Because you just seemed like you didn't care at all. Like I was some smear of food on the table or something. It would've been nice if you'd shown some interest. It wasn't exactly a great first impression."

He really had seemed that cold, hadn't he? Edward looked back on his behavior and cringed, but he hadn't known if he could trust Alphonse enough!

"Alright," he replied, turning so that he was facing the younger boy. "Alphonse, why were you sent here?"

Now that was more like it, even though he had had to practically demand it. Now that the question had been asked, though, Alphonse was suddenly unsure if he actually wanted to answer it. Looking at Edward, though, he remembered that the older boy had been honest with him so far, so it was only fair that he be as well.

Taking a long, deep breath, Alphonse tried to relax and remember that no one could judge him since he'd already been tried and sentenced. Besides, it was just Edward and maybe the older boy might feel like sharing as well.

Finally he found it in him to speak for the first time about the sin that he had committed -- or nearly committed -- to get him sent to the school. "A few months ago, my mother died. My father had died when I was just a baby so the only person I had left was my Alchemy teacher. She was the one who found me before I nearly killed myself."

-To be continued

Chapter 10: Reasons

Fic x 3

2006-06-24T07:49:25Z

Title: Moving Forward
Characters: Roy Mustang, mostly
Summary: Roy Mustang was in denial. Deep in denial.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers for the series and the movie; possible really vague hints of Roy/Ed and Roy/Al.

___________________________________

It had been so long since that fateful day that had changed everything in the flash of an alchemic reaction. And so long that Roy Mustang had been telling himself that it had all been for the better.

The government had been overthrown and replaced by a parliament, which was most definitely a good thing. He no longer held his position as Colonel Roy Mustang, the Flame Alchemist, which was, at least, a good thing for him. The country was slowly rebuilding itself with the help of the reformed military and its own steam power. Alphonse's body had been restored and, even though his memories of the five years he'd spent trapped in that metallic body were gone, maybe even that was for the best.

But then there was Edward. On that very night that everything had changed, Edward had disappeared. Of course everyone that had known the Elric brothers' secret had realized what had happened the moment young Alphonse had been discovered in his ten year old body. The young blonde must have been so frightened, waking up in a strange place, all alone when the last thing he remembered was standing in his father's study at home with his brother. Now, though, his brother was gone -- disappeared in the span of one night. The FullMetal Alchemist's name had become renown throughout the country, hailing the young man who'd possessed it as a genius, a prodigy, and one of the most powerful alchemists alive that, despite the State Alchemists' reputation, had actually followed their motto: "Be thou for the people." And in the end, he'd sacrificed it all to achieve the one thing that no one before him had ever been able to do. Edward Elric had proven the impossible to be possible, but had given his life in the process.

And Roy Mustang was in denial. Deep in denial. Perhaps it was because there was, ultimately, no actual proof that he'd died. Perhaps it was because he'd believed that the Elrics had been able to create the Philosopher's Stone in the end and, using that, there was just no way that he could have died. Or, perhaps he'd just been surrounded by death nearly his entire military career, had just recently lost his best friend, and hadn't wanted to admit that someone else that he'd cared so much about had been taken away from him far too young, even if it had been the blonde's own choice. Perhaps, also, he didn't want to admit that he might have done more, himself, to save the extraordinary young man that it had been his duty to protect.

As much as Edward hadn't wanted to admit it, he and Roy had been very much alike; it had been one of the things that had attracted the Colonel to him in the first place. That and the fact that Edward had been an absolute genius at the only the age of eleven and mostly self-taught. But they were both able to look ahead when they needed to, reading people's personalities nearly flawlessly to determine what they'd do next. Even more so, though, they both had an acute sense of guilt that they drowned out by throwing themselves into their work that they believed would somehow make up for their sins. It was why Edward had fought so hard to restore his brother's body. It was why Roy had worked so hard to get to the top in the Military. And it was why Roy was where he was now: There simply was no way to make up for his sins with Edward.

It was cold up in the north -- it was always cold -- and there seemed to be a constant blanket of snow on the ground. Roy lived there, in a small wooden house, serving as a police officer. The house was comfortable enough for his purposes, because all he needed to do was live and protect his country. He had to keep going because he could. Wasn't that what he'd told Edward so long ago? You have to move forward because you can so as you weren't dead.

But he couldn't move forward with his previous plan because the position he'd been vying for had been terminated. But, also, the reason he'd wanted to become Fuhrer in the first place was so that he could make certain that no one would ever again have to do the things that he and the other State Alchemists had had to do in Ishbal. Now, though, there was no need for him to do that because the new government was going to straighten things out. Supposedly. They seemed to be doing a decent job so far, but, then again, nearly anyone would seem better than the self-serving, bastard homunculus Fuhrer that Roy had managed to bring down.

He still wanted to serve his country, though, because it was what he wanted to do, but he didn't feel he was nearly as productive as he had been now that he was stuck out in the middle of nowhere. If he'd still been the Flame Alchemist, then he probably could do more, but every time he'd tried he could only hear the screams and see the horror-stricken faces of the innocent people he'd slain using it. How could he do good for anyone if he couldn't get past those paralyzing memories?

So he didn't use alchemy anymore. Instead, he had a rifle -- standard issue for all police officers -- which he used mostly as something to lean on as he stood for hours on end just staring out at the White.

Until one day when, out of the curtain of snow, appeared a figure. The person was hunched over against the cold wind, a long coat flapping out behind them. It was the color of the coat, however, that fixated the man's eyes on the approaching figure.

Roy knew that coat.

And he barely was able to even breathe as details slowly became clearer: Long, blonde hair; a long, red, hooded coat; black clothes beneath, white gloves.

There was only one person he knew of that wore those clothes and, for one glorious moment, as the young man finally came up to him, he thought that it really was him. But when the seeming apparition looked up, he illusion was broken. The blonde hair was darker as well as those gorgeous, gold Elric eyes, and his face was much rounder and more innocent.

This wasn't Edward, but it was definitely an Elric.

"Are you Roy Mustang?" Alphonse asked with an intensity to match his brother's.

Roy could only nod dumbly.

"Good," the blonde smiled, breaking the illusion again. "You know me. My name's Alphonse Elric and I was told that my brother and I used to work for you."

Another nod. Alphonse seemed to be getting a bit frustrated with the lack of actual responses.

"I need to ask you a few questions about my brother and the night he disappeared."

Finally Roy came out of his stunned silence and gestured towards the front door of his little wooden house, "Of course, Alphonse." The desolate, snowy desert could protect itself long enough for him to answer a few questions.

-End

Fic x 2

2006-06-24T07:44:01Z

Title: Human Nature
Characters: Alphonse
Summary: Alphonse knew that he should be grateful to his brother for sacrificing so much for him and he was but sometimes . . . Sometimes Alphonse couldn't help but wonder: Should he even have been saved at all?
Rating: G
Warnings: Not much, really. Just the musings of a fourteen year old stuck in a suit of armor.

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A fourteen year old boy.

A seven foot tall suit of armor.

A cheerful disposition and optimistic outlook.

A cold, unfeeling body and expressionless face.

Sometimes, despite his attempts to look on the brighter side of their dark life, as opposed to his brother who had been practically born a cynic, Alphonse couldn't help but fall into the same trap of depression that seemed to happen to all of the Elrics eventually.

It had been almost a year since they'd turned their backs on their home. A year since he and Edward had tried to resurrect their mother. A year since Edward had sacrificed his arm in order to save his younger brother's life. A year since Alphonse had been trapped inside a suit of armor. The younger brother had lived for almost a year inside of the numb, metal body he'd been given in order to save his life.

But what kind of life?

Alphonse knew that he should be grateful to his brother for sacrificing so much for him and he was but sometimes . . . Sometimes Alphonse couldn't help but wonder: Should he even have been saved at all?

Their mission, as brothers, was to find a way to restore their bodies so they could go back to the way things had been before the fateful attempted transmutation. But it had been so long since then that Alphonse was having trouble remembering what it had even been like. He wondered if Edward felt the same way he did sometimes but, of course, he knew better than to ask. If he asked, or even seemed like he was going to, then the older boy immediately shut down. This was just how his brother dealt with things though, Alphonse had long since come to realize. Whenever something was bothering him, Edward just shut down and put on an angry front that may have fooled strangers, but it didn't fool him.

The problem was that, not only did Alphonse not always know what his brother was running from, he didn't have a way to run, himself.

Edward, you see, drowned himself in anger and fighting and pain and food. Alphonse, however, didn't really like to fight, he couldn't eat, and he didn't feel any pain -- at least not physical. So all that the younger had to do was think, though that didn't always lead to good places and he had nowhere to run away to when that happened.

Because all he could do was think.

Oh, he could walk and he could talk and he could even perform alchemy still, but what more was he than a soul and a pile of metal? Or was he even that?

Just what exactly was he? Because he most certainly wasn't a boy anymore and, with the way things were looking to be heading, he'd never get to become a man either. No, he was just a soul attached to a suit of armor, if that. Because what was a soul anyway? Something they'd been taught as young children was what made them human and alive. But the brothers had stopped believing in the god that had supposedly given them their souls, so how could they believe that their souls existed when their godly creator didn't?

And how was his soul -- a purely spiritual and possibly even mythological thing -- attached to a suit of armor -- a purely physical thing? By a blood seal? They'd tried to use blood for their mother's soul, though, and it definitely hadn't worked, so why did it work for this?

Alphonse just didn't understand. He didn't understand how he was alive, if it could even be called that. He didn't understand what, if anything, he was.

For some reason, though, there were at least two people that always seemed to be so sure of the answers to these questions, even though he wasn't all of the time. Edward, of course, because there would never be a doubt in his mind about his younger brother's humanity. The other person, though, came from a more unexpected place. Colonel Roy Mustang.

The Colonel had been the first and only person since Edward that hadn't looked at him in horror, shock, or disgust when he'd learned the nature of Alphonse's suit of armor. He'd treated him with respect, as most others had done out of decorum mostly, except the Colonel seemed to actually be sincere about it. He also treated him like a young boy, which was something that no one else did and, while Edward was intent on being treated like an adult because he was always mistaken for a child, Alphonse loved being treated like a child when everyone always mistook him for an adult.

It was this man, as well as his brother, that managed to remind Alphonse of his own humanity every time. He might not always know exactly what he was, but they reminded him of who he was. He Alphonse Elric, fourteen years old, the youngest son of Trisha and Hohenheim Elric, and the brother of Edward Elric with whom, somehow, he was going to accomplish the impossible.

-End

Fic!

2006-06-24T07:15:03Z

Title: A Familiar Dance
Characters: Mostly Edward Elric and Roy Mustang
Summary: In order to win a battle, one must know their opponent's weakness and use it against them.
Rating: G
Warnings: Slight language warning.

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"Why don't you just give up? We both know that this wild goose chase of yours is just that : A wild goose chase. What you're looking for doesn't exist and what you're trying to do is not only impossible, but illegal."

It was a familiar argument -- a far too familiar argument -- and Edward was getting damn-near sick of it and just couldn't understand how Mustang wasn't too.

The blonde had just returned to Eastern Head Quarters after yet another lead had gone dry. It was just no use, Edward had thought on the train back. Every time they thought that they'd found something solid, something that could finally lead them to the answers they needed, it turned out to be a hoax; or a misunderstanding; or a tall tale; or just stupid rumors that had started out of some ancient alchemist hundreds of years ago that had performed so-called "miracles" but with no more proof than what people said about him. Really, not even a written document; what logical person would actually believe that?

What was the point, though? When every lead ended in a dead end and every "Stone" turned out to be either fake or just hadn't even existed at all?

But what right did Mustang have to tell him it was impossible? What right did a man who never even left the comfort of his office unless it was to go home, on a date, or because the Fuhrer had commandeered it, have to tell Edward -- who'd been working his ass off in the field since he'd been twelve years old -- that what he was trying to do was impossible?

He didn't, that's what!

Mustang had no idea what it was like beyond his own desk and his own blind ambitions and devious plots to take over the world. While Edward had been dealing with the scum of the Earth (present company included) in order to do something noble and save his brother's life. How could you possibly compare the two?

You couldn't. It was as simple as that and Edward was just about to point it out to his commanding officer when they were both startled by a loud crash from the outer office. Both alchemists were on their feet in an instant, Mustang tugging his embroidered gloves on while Edward threw open the door.

"Chaos" was a rather strong word for the scene they walked in on, but it wasn't exactly orderly either. Alphonse was on the ground in front of Riza Hawkeye's desk, surrounded by various items that used to be on her desk, as well as other soldiers. There was a chair lying on its side next to the broken glass from what looked like it had once been a light bulb and one of the hanging lamps above it was swinging back and forth from the ceiling.

Mustang stood back as Edward rushed to his brother, pushing aside his superiors carelessly.

"Al!" he shouted, concern clear in his voice as he hunched over to look in the hollow eyes of armor. "Al, are you alright?"

"Of course I am, Brother," Alphonse replied, a cheerfulness in his voice that simply couldn't be shown on his face. "One of the light bulbs just went out and I said I could change it since I'm so tall, but even I couldn't reach it so I stood on a chair but I accidentally tipped it over. I'm fine, though," he said, rapping lightly on the side of his helmet. "It'll take a lot more than that to hurt me, though I'm afraid I made a bit of a mess out of First Lieutenant Hawkeye's desk."

The woman assured him that there was no harm done but Alphonse insisted on helping her reclean her desk anyway while Fury went about sweeping up the broken glass and Falman replaced the broken light bulb with a fresh one.

With all of the commotion going on, there only one person left to see the flicker of emotions across Edward's face as he knelt on the floor: Sadness, at first, and guilt, which then turned into a brooding thoughtfulness and, finally, the familiar fierce determination that the FullMetal Alchemist was known for.

The room fell silent as Edward stood, a grim smile on his face as he turned back towards Roy and spoke.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe the Philosopher's Stone doesn't exist. But when has that ever meant anything to anyone? Cars didn't exist a hundred years ago; telephones didn't exist two hundred years ago. Fire doesn't exist in this room right now yet, with a snap of your fingers the whole building could be in flames. Just because something doesn't exist doesn't mean it can't. All you need are the right ingredients and the right way to put them together and anything can be made.

"And I will find out what those ingredients are and what that way is, Mustang. You can count on that, if only so that I can have the satisfaction of proving you wrong for once."

Edward spun around, his braid lightly hitting his shoulder as he called for Alphonse . The younger boy quickly finished straightening a pile of papers on Hawkeye's desk and bowed politely to the Colonel before hurrying after his brother, his clunky armor body clattering away with him.

Five pairs of eyes turned to their superior once the brothers were gone but Roy merely cleared his throat quietly and shut the door behind him as he disappeared back into his office. Things went back to normal outside, he could hear, but his calm expression didn't falter for a moment until he was safely seated behind his desk. Resting his elbows on a few piles of paperwork, the Colonel steepled his fingers and grinned.

Edward was so very predictable.

-End

More OC Goodness

2006-03-19T04:10:46Z

Mmf, I love this guy. So this is Fedir, a bird (hence the wings), and a jazz musician. He plays the trumpet professionally in a night club called the Blue Penguin along with his band made up of a pianist, a bassist (electric, sadly, not stand-up), a drummer, and an occasional guitarist and singer. He also plays piano and guitar, though, in his spare time to help pay the bills. He's currently in a commited relationship with another bird, Milan, whom he loves dearly despite the problems Milan gives him (and, trust me, there are plenty), and who also happens to strip for a living.

Sketched out and shaded in pencil 'cause I didn't trust myself to color him right in PhotoShop. His hair is actually black, and I forgot to color in his other wing, but overall I think this is one of my best drawings. ^.^

OC-ness

2006-03-19T02:58:20Z

This poor little lost forest spirit's name is Nevan. He wandered away from the forest that was his home and got lost. He's also got little birdie wings on his ankles, but you can't see them 'cause . . . I'm not ready to go beyond the bust-shot yet. :D

Ummm . . . He was sketched in pencil, lined in marker, and colored in PhotoShop. I'm fairly pleased with it, but I'm working on it. I think I just need to get a handle on coloring and shading in photoshop. It would probably be easier if I had a tablet but that'll have to wait until I can afford one. :D

FIC

2006-03-16T00:51:29Z

Notes: And I triumphantly return with another chapter! Sorry it took so long, I know some of you were getting impatient and my only excuse is that I just couldn’t come up with what to do with this chapter. Never fear, though, I’ve picked up the plot again and I have that same basic idea of where I was going with it! The show must go on, as they say, and I‘ve no intention of letting this one stop! :D

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Chapter 8: Perception

As the term continued, chemistry easily became Alphonse's favorite class; it was his last class of the day, and it was the only time that he didn't have to listen to Edward's big mouth because both of them had come to a silent agreement that they would focus entirely on their lab experiment and not talk. It was almost pleasant, working with him under these conditions and Alphonse was discovering that the older boy was, in fact, very intelligent; there would be times when he would be working out an equation on the assignment sheets and he swore Edward just glanced at the problem and a second later he'd have the answer. It was a bit of a blow to Alphonse's ego, but he dealt with it because it was a better grade for him as well as it was for Edward.

Master Shou Tucker couldn't explain it. He'd been stuck with Edward for longer than the boy would probably like to admit, and each term Edward would fail in part because he was always at odds with his lab partner. Now he'd heard some of the gossip among the teachers about how poorly these two boys got along -- this was why he hadn't felt so bad about partnering them because if they already disliked each other then there was no need to set Edward up with someone who didn't hate him yet and create more problems.

And now come to find that the two worked better than any of the other groups. It probably helped that they were both quite intelligent, but it still just didn't make any sense, considering what Tucker had heard from the teachers and even a few students.

But, then again, who was he to argue?

Near the end of the period, Tucker looked up from the quizzes he'd been grading and decided to take a quick look around to see how the groups were faring. He slowly made his way down the aisles, checking in on the partners and how they were doing with the assignment, making corrections here and there to prevent any possible accidents.

Edward and Alphonse worked at the last occupied table in the room and Tucker watched the boys as he made his way over, silent without really meaning to be. Edward was bent over the assignment sheet and his notebook, scribbling away and Alphonse was on the opposite side of the table with his back to the teacher, so both were surprised when he came up beside them and asked them how they were getting along.

Alphonse was more surprised than Edward was and he nearly tipped over the burner he'd been lighting. Luckily the older blonde managed to reach out and stabilize it before it fell over and Alphonse breathed a sigh of relief. Two sets of light brown eyes turned to the teacher, the lighter almost golden ones glaring while the darker ones merely asked why Tucker had had to sneak up on them like that.

"Sorry about that," the man murmured in his almost eerily quiet voice with a twitch of his lips that might have been a smile if you looked closely enough. He pushed his glasses back up his nose, catching the glare of one of the overhead lights and masking his eyes for a moment. "I just wanted to see how you two were doing. Though, considering, I suppose that's really unnecessary."

"Considering what?" Edward asked, almost demanded, and Alphonse noted that the older boy hadn't turned back to his work yet. Odd, usually Edward didn't give anyone but Mustang this much attention.

Tucker chuckled hoarsely and lifted a hand in what was meant to be a calming gesture, "I only meant that you and Alphonse have been doing so well in class. It's hard to imagine that all that talk about how badly you two get along is true."

The two boy shared a Look but before anything more could be said, the bell rang indicating the end of classes for the day. All of a sudden the classroom was filled with chatter and the sound of stools scraping against the floor and equipment clanking against each other.

Edward and Alphonse did their best to ignore Tucker as he explained to the class that they'd pick up where they'd left off tomorrow. The boys cleaned up their table and grabbed their notebooks before leaving.

"He's so creepy," Alphonse muttered as they walked down the hallway heading toward their room to drop off their books and finish some of their homework before dinner. "Who just appears like that out of nowhere? It's not natural, being that quiet."

"The Guardians are that quiet," Edward pointed out almost off-handedly, and Alphonse was too taken up in the subject matter to be surprised.

"Yeah," the younger boy agreed but added with a grin, "But the Guardians are inhuman anyway, they're supposed to be creepy. Master Tucker's just a teacher and has no reason to be creepy."

Alphonse saw his roommate's expression falter for just a moment before he actually smirked; not the same unfriendly one he'd seen when Edward had tried to move the building, but an almost friendly after-sharing-a-joke one. Alphonse was conscious enough this time to be shocked.

The two boys continued up to their room in almost friendly conversation, sharing battle stories, as it were, of Tucker and his "creepiness." He always seemed to be watching you, they said, as if sizing you up for something; he was always so quiet and almost shy, but in a way that made him seem uncomfortable being around people; and yet he was always just a little too friendly and eager to please.

"As if he was trying to get on your good side before he hacked you up and gave you to the cafeteria to put into those meat patties," Alphonse joked.

"I wouldn't put it past him, "Edward agreed with an almost bitter smirk that Alphonse could see from his desk across the room. "It wouldn't be that hard for him either, considering."

Alphonse blinked at the other boy, not quite sure what he'd meant by that. "Considering what?"

The expression on Edward's face went from confused to surprised and, from the way he spun around in his chair back to his homework, Alphonse could only assume it was because he'd said something he hadn't meant to. And now the older boy was shutting up. Alphonse couldn't believe it! Here they were, finally speaking like normal human beings and enjoying themselves and his stupid, uptight, paranoid roommate had to go and ruin it! Well, Alphonse wasn't going to let Edward get away with it.

The younger boy turned entirely in his chair to face Edward and asked again, "Considering what, Ed?"

"Nothing," the other boy answered with a shrug, "Just some rumor."

Alphonse tried to think back on the rumors he'd heard about Tucker and somehow link them to what Edward had said, but he came up with nothing. So he asked.

"Just some rumor!" the other boy answered, getting more agitated.

"Well if it's just some rumor, then just tell me; I don't see what the big deal is."

Edward finally turned back around and looked at his roommate, long and hard, as if he were one of the liquids they'd been trying to identify in chemistry. Whatever it was he'd been trying to determine, he apparently determined it was good because he turned back to his homework and began speaking again.

"It was before he came here," Edward explained, forcing his tone back into something more conversational, "Tucker was a licensed Alchemist, like some of the other teachers; only the keyword being 'was.'" Alphonse asked what happened. "They found out he was doing illegal chimera experiments. People's pets had been going missing in his neighborhood and they found all of them in Tucker's basement in these cages all fused together, along with this woman and her daughter. It was her husband who'd figured it out, apparently, and went to the police."

Alphonse sat in stunned silence for a few moments and Edward didn't blame him. He'd been pretty sickened when he'd head it too. When the younger boy finally managed to speak, his voice was little more than a croak. "What-... What happened to all the animals? And the woman and her daughter?"

Edward shrugged. "The police said that all the chimeras were destroyed; but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't keep some of the to experiment on. The one made out of the woman and her daughter... They said it died, I don't know, but they gave back the remains to the husband and he had a funeral for them."

"So then why is he here?"

"Headmistress Dante," Edward answered shortly, "He may be a criminal but he's also a genius and she wanted him here. So she showed up one day in court and cut a deal with the judge trying his case and they gave him a choice: Go to jail until his execution, or come work here. Guess which he chose," the older boy added wryly.

Alphonse couldn't believe it, but when he tried to remind himself that Edward had said it was only a rumor, he found he could believe that even less. This didn't have the feel of a rumor -- there was too much information to it -- and besides, "I've never heard that rumor before..."

Edward didn't say anything, just tensed up a bit and turned back to his work.

A cold chill ran down the younger boy's spine and he forced himself to turn back to his work, though he wasn't focusing on it at all. What Ed had just told him...it didn’t seem like a rumor, which could only mean that it was actually true... Which was the most unsettling thing that Alphonse could think of.

“It’s almost time for dinner.”

The younger boy nearly jumped ten feet in the air but turned around to find Edward staring at him thoughtfully. And then his expression cracked into the closest thing Alphonse had seen to a smile on his roommate’s face since he’d first met him.

“C’mon,” Edward said, rising and heading for the door, “Let’s go pick up everyone else.”

Alphonse nearly smiled back, figuring that the older boy was trying to take his mind off of what he’d just been told and really appreciating it. Of course part of it was that Edward didn’t want the younger boy saying anything about the story to anyone; no one was supposed to know that story and he wasn’t even sure why he’d told Alphonse, but it was too late to take it back now.

The two boys headed up the hallway to pick up Russell, learning that Fletcher had come down with the cold that had been going around the school so the younger boy wouldn’t be joining them. He’d insisted that his older brother go, though, so Russell followed Edward and Alphonse back down the hallway and up the stairs to find the girls. He couldn’t help but notice that the tension that was normally in the air with the two other boys was all but gone, but Russell wasn’t about to question it either. Whatever had happened between them, it had obviously been for the better.

When they finally arrived at the girls’ floor, they could hear the commotion easily from even the stairwell. Someone was arguing, and loudly. As they got closer, Ed could pick out both Winry’s and Panina’s voices and, though his first instinct was that they were just having another argument, he quickly realized that this wasn’t the same as their usual arguments. What tipped him off was the sound of Envy’s mocking voice, and apparently both Alphonse and Russell heard it too because all three boys were suddenly rushing down the hallway.

Sure enough, there he was, standing before Winry and Panina and their dormitory, with both girls glaring at him.

“The Headmistress has plausible reason to suspect,” the Guardian was saying to the girls in a mockery of a calm tone, “So she has decided that you two should be moved to separate rooms. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Panina growled and puffed up like a wolf trying to scare away an enemy in its territory, “That’s not true, Headmistress Dante has no reason to suspect us of anything! And you can’t just come prancing down here tell us she randomly decided she doesn’t want us rooming together anymore and just expect us to be ready to move out in ten seconds! We have homework to do and dinner’s about to start in a few minutes!”

Envy grinned slowly, jutting out his hip and resting his hand on it. “Well then,” he all but purred, “I suggest you get moving.”

Both girls looked about ready to eat the Sin’s face off but they knew they couldn’t do anything to him; and, worst of all, Envy knew it too.

Russell, Edward, and Alphonse watched the scene unfold from about halfway down the hallway along with a mob of other girls from the floor. Russell turned to one of them and asked if she knew what had happened.

“I’m not entirely sure,” she answered, “I came out after they started shouting at each other. Near as I can tell, Headmistress Dante sent Envy up to get those girls to switch roommates.”

“But why?” Russell urged.

The girl flushed and cleared her throat a bit uncomfortably. “Well,” she explained, leaning closer to the tall blonde and lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “I can’t be sure, but some of the other girls talk about them sometimes. They say that they’re...y’know, with each other?” She paused as if trying to make sure that Russell knew what she meant. “And people have been talking about those two boys that had been...well...with each other too and how Headmistress Dante had had them switch rooms. I figure it’s probably the same thing.”

Both Russell and Edward flushed when they heard that and Alphonse was a little surprised that his roommate hadn't attacked the girl. But Russell was too focused on Panina and Winry to bother. They both looked ready to do something about it, but before either of them could even formulate a plan, Alphonse was in action.

The blonde sprinted down the hallway just as he saw Envy make a grab for Winry, and he grabbed a pen from one of the girls who'd been doing their homework and then come out into the hallway to see what the commotion was about. With nothing else to draw on, Alphonse took the pen to his palm and pressed it to then pressed it to the floor. The array he'd drawn sparked to life and the blue energy crackled down the floor, heading straight for Envy. In an instant the rug opened up and swelled beneath the Guardian and he was only able to blink before he found himself wrapped up in it.

The entire hallway burst into laughter and other girls that had been hiding out in their dormitories even peeked out from behind their doors. Envy stood livid amongst them, his face flushed red, though whether it was from anger or embarrassment no one could tell.

"You," the Sin growled, turning to Alphonse and stalking towards him. Another roar of laughter went up in the students as he tripped over the long dress that the blonde had transmuted onto him and in a fit of rage Envy tore it off, hurling it at the forgotten Winry and Panina. "You little brat!" Envy hollered, grabbing the blonde by his collar and yanking him up from the floor. "Dante'll deal with you, and I assure you, you won't get out of this without a month in solitary confinement!"

And he was better than his word.

*

Word had spread all over the school about the brave blonde boy who'd dared mock the vicious Envy and, though some claimed he'd done it purely out of a need to rebel and others that he'd been rescuing the two girls that the Sin had been harassing, all agreed that it had taken a lot of guts.

Edward couldn't go anywhere within the school without hearing tales and rumors about his roommate and he idly wondered as he sat down to breakfast, if this was how it was whenever he was sent down to solitary confinement. Somehow he doubted it. Sure there were rumors about him, but since everyone expected that kind of behavior from him by now anyway they weren't nearly as wide-spread or awe-inspiring as this. That thought bothered him more than he thought it should.

Yes, people expected this kind of behavior from him, even the Guardians and the faculty, and especially Headmistress Dante. Alphonse, on the other hand, was the one always getting praise from the faculty, and all of the students loved him and, thought he couldn't say that the Guardians particularly liked anyone, they certainly didn't seem to have it in for the younger boy like they did Edward. So why had Alphonse done it? It was only going to make the Guardians more likely to start looking for things they could throw him into solitary for, especially Envy. He should have just let Edward take care of it; it wasn't as if he didn't have the reputation already anyway.

"Ed stop your brooding already."

The blonde looked up and scowled at Winry who just rolled her eyes at him and turned back to her eggs. Panina took up the conversation, however. "Seriously, Ed, you've had that 'oh my god, what have I done, it's all my fault' look on your face since Al got sent down. What's wrong?"

"Well that's a pretty stupid question," Edward retorted, attacking a sausage with his spork.

Russell considered the older blonde for a moment before turning calmly back to his breakfast, "I don't think it is." He didn't have to look up to know that there was an expression of annoyed confusion on his former-roommate's face. "First of all, there's the fact that, no matter how you look at the situation, there's no way to plant the blame on you. It involved Envy and Winry and Panina and Alphonse got himself involved out of his own sense of duty to his friends. Honestly, Ed, you have the most twisted sense of logic I've ever encountered. Secondly, and I know we're all wondering the same thing, why do you care so much?"

"What?!"

Edward looked around the table at the rest of his friends: Russell was still looking calmly down at his breakfast; Winry was still eating hers but was looking pointedly at him; Panina had stopped eating and was all-out glaring at him; and Fletcher, Leo, and Rick were just blushing into their trays.

"What do you mean why do I care?"

Panina gasped and pressed her hand to her chest, feigning shock, "What? You mean you don't know?" The look on his face said it all. "I can't believe he doesn't know. Somebody please enlighten him," she cried, throwing up her hands in defeat and turning back to her breakfast, "I'm suddenly not in the mood to deal with his self-delusional bullshit."

Before Edward even got the chance to retort to that, Winry had pounced. "Think about it, Ed," the older girl said, glowering at him, "All Al ever tried to do was be friendly to you, and how did you react? You didn't, plain and simple. You completely ignored him! And didn't even give him a decent reason as to why! He doesn't know you, Ed, because you haven't even said one word to him since you met. Not one decent word, anyway. For all appearances you hate the kid, and the rest of us have been at a loss as to why. Maybe he just reminds you too much of yourself when you first came here." The girl allowed herself to feel pleased when Edward blushed and looked away. "I can only imagine what sort of hell he's gone through having to live with you."

"They're lab partners too," Russell pointed out.

Winry gaped and threw her hands up in an echo of Panina's gesture, "Well it's a wonder he hasn't killed himself. I probably would in his shoes." She turned to the darker-haired girl next to her and grabbed her wrist as she stood, "C'mon, Panina, we gotta finish that homework for Hawkeye."

The other girl stood without a word, only glancing at Edward and giving him an "I told you so" Look as she grabbed both her own and Winry's trays and followed the blonde out of the cafeteria.

Russell stood to leave as well and he nodded towards his brother who didn't even seem to need to see the gesture before he took his tray and followed the older boy out. Rick and Leo, too, made a hasty exit, mumbling something about a group project and leaving Edward alone at the table, scowling at his half-eaten breakfast. He suddenly wasn't very hungry.

What were they all trying to say? That he hated Alphonse? They should have known better than that! All of them! Just because he never really talked to him. And had put up a fuss about having to move in with him. And had given him an attitude every time he did happen to talk to him...

Shit...

And if the others, his friends, the people that knew him, had thought that he hated Alphonse, then what in the world did Alphonse think? He didn't hate him, he'd just never been particularly polite; but he was that way with just about everyone.

That brooding look that Winry had scolded him for only deepened by the time the first warning bell rang for first classes and Edward's entire demeanor was agitated as he went from class to class.

What if Alphonse really did think he hated him? It would make sense, Edward realized, looking back on the tension that was always between them and comparing it to how comfortable the younger boy was with everyone else. It bothered him more than Edward liked to think, because he didn't hate Alphonse and the thought that someone might actually think that he'd hate the younger boy for no good reason... It would make Edward no better than the likes of Envy or Wrath.

*

That day, Edward's teachers couldn't get much out of him, even less than they could normally, which told them that something was obviously wrong. They didn't push their luck.

Even Mustang spent most of the lesson actually teaching instead of falling into a baiting match with his short blonde pupil.

Edward wasn't paying attention, though; he was thinking, though Roy couldn't tell what of, exactly. Though, if the way his gaze darted to Alphonse's chair every so often was any indication, he could only imagine it had something to do with the younger boy. He'd heard of the incident, of course, and though he was only able to put together details from various rumors and what Envy had claimed had happened, Mustang couldn't help but be somewhat impressed.; he hadn't thought Alphonse capable of something like that.

As soon as the bell rang for the next period, Roy turned back to his desk and called Edward over before he got the chance to leave. That was fine by Edward because he hadn't planned on leaving anyway; he needed to ask Mustang something.

"What's going on?" the man asked once the room had cleared out and the door had closed.

Edward snorted in disbelief, "Don't tell me you haven't heard by now. I thought you liked gossip." The comment only earned him a half-hearted glare and the blonde sighed and raked a hand through his bangs. "Envy was upstairs harassing Winry and Panina, trying to make them switch roommates when Al, Russell, and I went to get them for dinner. He was only doing it to justify making Al and Russell switch rooms, and we all knew that. But before I got the chance to do anything about it, Al went ahead and," he paused with a short laugh, "Transmuted the rug under Envy into a dress on Envy. Naturally Envy was a bit upset and so he dragged Al off to Dante and he got sentenced to a month and a half in solitary."

"'Sentenced'? Really, Edward, you make it sound as though this were a prison and Headmistress Dante a warden."

"Well isn't it?" he snapped at that damned grinning face. "We broke the law, right, Mustang? So we all got sent here and we're not allowed out until we've done our time. The whole lot of you are our guards and Dante's the warden. I thought you knew that already."

For just a moment, Edward thought he saw a sad smile break Mustang's normally cool facade, but it was gone almost before he got a second look.

"Well, Edward," Roy murmured, sitting down at his desk and pulling out his notepad to begin writing the student a note for Master Tucker to explain his lateness, "You know there's nothing you can do to get Alphonse out of this punishment."

"I know that. That's not what I wanted to ask you."

The man looked up from his desk and raised an eyebrow at Edward. "Oh? And what was it that you wanted to ask me?"

"I need a favor," the Edward said simply; Roy didn't look at all surprised,. Until he told him exactly what that favor was, "I need you to sneak me down to see Alphonse."

To be continued...

Chapter 9: Sneaking Around

OC-ness

2006-02-11T17:46:53Z

This chix0r is Niwa Kimiko, descendant of one Niwa Daisuke from DNAngel. She was originally created for an RP in which we ignored the ending of DNAngel and stuck Dark in the future to bother Wufei from Gundam Wing. Kimiko is the first female Niwa to host Dark in her body because of extenuating circumstances. And she is also the mother of Wufei's child. >.>

I honestly don't have too many notes for this one other than that her ponytail's off-center-ish. But this could also be because I didn't really have a very good idea what she looked like to begin with. ^.^;;;;;;;;;;;

Fanart!

2006-02-11T17:31:55Z

I figured I just put both of these two together. 'Cause they belong together. X) Oh yeah, that's Ed and Roy from FullMetal Alchemst in case anyone didn't know.

They're bangs're kinda slanty on the right side, but other than that I'd say they came out okay. Except Roy's ear's kinda fat. >.>;;;; And I need to work on the end of Ed's braid 'cause it looks kinda weird...

I'm working on Al as well, but I can't get his hair right, so I'll put off posting anything of him yet. XP

Fic ^8

2006-02-09T04:04:36Z

Chapter 7: Summer Term

The relative relaxed atmosphere of the brief repose from classes was quickly snuffed out when they started up again. Control was reestablished by the faculty, though this wasn't required for the Guardians, who hadn't allowed their control to wane to begin with.

Before breakfast the morning of the first day of classes, schedules were distributed to the students by their counselors, accompanied by one of the seven Guardians. Much to Maes Hughes’ delight, his chaperone was the Guardian called Lust -- a rather tall woman with a thick fall of dark hair and a body quite befitting of her namesake. It was rumored among the students that, if they were caught breaking the rules by Lust and they gave her a plausible sob story, then she’d let them off the hook with a warning. But, then again there was also a rumor that she had been born a man and, due to some terrible Alchemical rebound, she became a woman...

Nevertheless, Lust was noticeably not as cruel as Envy, Wrath, or Greed, which was why Alphonse was immensely relieved when she followed Hughes into the dormitory.

“Hey, kiddo, how’s it hangin’?”

“Good morning, Mr. Hughes,” Alphonse greeted the man, stepping aside so he and Lust could enter. The Sin gave him a curious look, but he didn’t really know what to make of it so ignored it instead.

Maes crossed straight to the other side of the room and stood at the foot of Edward’s bed, grinning wickedly at the still sleeping boy. “Oh, Edward,” he sing-songed, “It’s time to wake up.”

The blonde didn’t move and, from the expression on Maes’ face, he’d been expecting that. “C’mon, sleepyhead, rise and shine!” Still there was no reaction and Maes just grinned all the wider as he bent down beside the bed and abruptly pulled the sheets away, “Up and at ‘em, short stuff!”

If Alphonse hadn’t known any better, he’d have thought that Edward had been awake the whole time with how he flailed on the bed before launching himself at Maes, shouting a few incoherent profanities. Luckily for him, though, Maes was able to sidestep the boy and Edward ended up crashing into his own desk chair.

Maes chuckled good-naturedly and Lust merely stood silently near the door, an eyebrow raised at the short blonde tangled in he legs of the chair and one side of her lips curled up in a smirk. It was Alphonse who finally stepped over and grabbed his roommate’s bicep, attempting to help him up. Apparently that was the wrong thing to do, however, and the younger boy had but a moment to register that Edward’s arm was unusually hard before his own hand was smacked away.

“I can get up myself,” the older boy muttered, a faint flush on his cheeks as he stumbled to his feet and leaned back against his desk. “So what the hell do you two want?”

Lust’s expression didn’t change, nor did she say a word, but Maes just laughed and crossed over to Edward, wrapping an arm around his shoulders despite the blonde’s attempt to shrug it off. “It’s the first day of the Summer Session, Ed,” he pointed out, knowing that the boy knew it already, “You know what that means.”

The man held his hand out to his silent escort who reached into a small messenger bag slung over her shoulder and retrieved two envelopes. Maes glanced at the names written on the backs of each and handed them to the two boys. “Schedules!”

Both Edward and Alphonse had a look of trepidation on as they took the envelopes and opened them to find their schedules for the Term inside. Two pairs of eyes skimmed over the list of classes and times and, once they seemed satisfied with their fate for the next three months, Maes clapped Edward on the back and fell in at Lust’s side.

“Well, I hope you boys enjoy the Term, have a good first day of classes, and don’t worry, Edward, if you fall behind again you can ask your roommate for help! He did a pretty good job tutoring your friend Fletcher last term.” And with that they were both gone, leaving the two young blondes gaping at the door.

After what seemed like an eternity, Edward finally spoke, scowling at the door as if he might be able to strike Maes down dead even though he’d already most likely moved down the hall. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I-I don’t know,” Alphonse answered sheepishly, his cheeks turning pink. Oh, he knew what Hughes had been implying, which the younger boy couldn’t have felt more uncomfortable about if he’d tried, but why had the man brought it up in the first place?

Edward seemed to catch on more quickly than he did, though. “Let me see your schedule.”

The unquestionably demanding tone of voice that he’d used, more than any curiosity he might have had made Alphonse turn to him with an incredulous look on his face, clutching the piece of paper a bit tightly and ask, “Why?”

“Just let me see it,” the older boy answered, forcing back the urge to roll his eyes as he snatched the paper away and held it up next to his own.

“Hey!” Alphonse exclaimed, as the schedule flew out of his hand. He stalked up to his roommate, intent on rescuing it, when he saw the... Well, the only way to describe the expression on Edward’s face was disturbed. “What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly becoming worried and, when no answer was forthcoming he quickly came up beside the shorter boy.

Two classes. Their schedules were identical save for their names at the top and two classes.

Alphonse tried to school his expression into something less horrified, but Edward didn’t seem to really notice anyway. That evil man had done it on purpose, he was sure. Hughes was punishing him for failing his classes last term. Well, this was extremely unproductive if he wanted the boy to actually pass his classes this term.

Edward wasn’t at all happy either and his movements were agitated as he finally moved back over to his trunk to get dressed. How was he expected to get anything done with Alphonse around?

The two boys dressed in tense silence, decidedly not looking at one another, even when they finally left to meet their friends for breakfast. The others might have noticed something was going on, the even more palpable static between the two roommates, but prudently didn’t say a word. Instead, they spoke amongst themselves about their new schedules and how things were going for Fletcher and Russell with the new room assignments. It probably wasn’t the best of topics as it was directly related to Edward’s and Alphonse’s own situation as well and the near-hostility between them seemed to thicken. If it weren’t for the bells marking the end of the meal, the others might have flown away anyway, eager to be away from the impending explosion they could feel crackling in the air like a transmutation gone awry.

*

The first day of classes went as smoothly as was to be expected; there were always a few students who had read their schedules wrong and ended up in the wrong class, some newer students who got lost in the monstrous building, a few teachers who had forgotten for a moment just which class they were supposed to be teaching. For the most part, such mistakes made in the first few days of a new term were forgiven and students and teachers alike learned their lessons quickly.

Alphonse was both pleased and displeased that his first class of the day was his Ethics and Morals class. On the one hand, it was the one of the two classes he didn’t have with Edward; on the other, it meant he was starting off the day listening to Master Gran ramble on about his questionable view on what societies values should be. That man was not someone Alphonse thought he was capable of dealing with early in the morning.

The other class he had without his roommate was his physical activity period with Master Armstrong just after lunch. Other than that, Alphonse spent the day entirely in the presence of Edward and trying as hard as he could to ignore the boy. This was far more difficult in Math, as neither Edward nor Master Mustang seemed to have gotten out of practice baiting each other over the nearly four months since they’d seen each other, but the younger boy did his best and hoped that he’d be able to last out the rest of the term.

*

By the end of the first week, Alphonse was rather proud of himself with how well he was managing the term, considering. He hadn’t missed any assignments and, with the extra studying he assigned himself (which was done in the library after dinner) was helping with what he wasn’t able to grasp during class itself, where there was always someone there to distract him.

For Edward’s part, he didn’t seem to be at all worried about his own grades and, the more time he spent with the older boy in class, the more Alphonse came to get the feeling that Edward’s only goal was to challenge the teachers. His attitude towards all of the teachers was similar to how he acted with Mustang except, the younger boy noted after a time, at least with Mustang there was an almost grudging respect.

He wasn’t entirely sure why, and he didn’t even think anyone else noticed it. Well, except Mustang; he had to know, because Alphonse could see that he wasn’t stupid enough to say some of the things he did with a young man whom he thought hated him. Especially not when the young man’s attitude towards him seemed so important to him.

The other teachers, however, did not receive any sort of respect, grudging or otherwise, from the short and temperamental blonde. Even this fact was something that confused Alphonse; certainly Mustang wasn’t the only teacher who deserved some respect, as far as the younger boy was concerned. So why didn’t Master Armstrong, Hawkeye, or even Mister Hughes get the same regard?

*

It was finally the last class of the day, Chemistry, and, now that the preliminary lecturing was over, the students were told to finally pick their lab partners for the first laboratory exercise.

“Choose wisely,” Master Tucker announced with a hoarse and vaguely nervous chuckle, “You’re going to be stuck with your partner for the rest of the term.”

A few students immediately turned to their friends who also happened to be in the class and claimed a lab table for themselves. The other students who were left looked uncomfortably at the others in the class, pleading with their eyes for someone to pick them instead of them having to approach someone they didn’t really know that well.

Alphonse was a little lost himself, being one of two advanced students in the class. He didn’t really know the girl either, though, and merely sat there somewhat uncomfortably until everyone else was finally paired off. He looked up to see who was finally left, only to find that his plan to simply partner up with the leftover person wasn’t going to work as there seemed to be an odd number of people in the class.

He looked up rather helplessly to Master Tucker who simply told him that there were a couple of students missing from class (already) and to just cotton on to one of the other groups for the time-being. The blonde nodded and looked around to the other groups, most of which avoided his gaze. The other advanced student smiled sheepishly at him, though, and waved him over.

While Master Tucker explained their instructions, Alphonse mindlessly copied them down in his notebook while trying to remember who wasn’t there. Chemistry was one of the blonde’s favorite subjects, as he found it the one “natural science,” as it was called, that was most similar to Alchemy, dealing with the combining and separating of materials and energies and the reactions you get. He didn’t want to be stuck with a bad partner.

Luck, as always, was against him.

Edward came trudging into the classroom and immediately dropped a note onto Tucker’s desk. Alphonse watched as the man read the paper, wondering how he could have forgotten about his roommate (or maybe he’d just blocked it out), and then cringed when Tucker pointed to him and gestured to Edward.

It figured, it really figured that he’d get stuck with Edward as his partner. The older boy didn’t seem too pleased either as he walked straight past Alphonse and toward an empty table.

Tucker continued explaining the directions for the experiment and Alphonse copied them down quickly before he bothered moving.

“Here,” he muttered to the other boy, dropping his notebook in front of him, “This is what we have to do; I’ll go get the stuff we need.” He didn’t receive an answer, but that didn’t bother him as he went to collect the necessary supplies.

Edward sat there, scowling at the notebook in front of him, wondering why everyone apparently thought it would be amusing to make the younger boy his partner in everything he did. He didn’t need a partner, didn’t want a partner, especially not Alphonse.

He let those thoughts swirl around his head, drowning out the others that tried to elbow their way through and doing his best to ignore Alphonse as he made his way over to their table, his arms full of various instruments and containers. Remembering why he was there in the first place, Edward quickly scanned his roommate’s notes to refresh his memory; he’d been through this class before and Tucker wasn’t one to vary his syllabus at all.

Alphonse carefully went through setting up their table, keeping his eyes decidedly away from Edward, though he couldn’t help but ask, “Why were you late anyway?”

The older boy noted the vaguely accusatory tone of the other blonde’s voice, as if he were being so put out by the fact that he’d been late, and rolled his eyes, “Mustang held me back.” There was an unspoken “Duh,” at the end of that sentence, but Edward wouldn’t lower himself to voice it.

However, the point was that Alphonse knew it was there; and remembered the incident. He tried not to let it show that he’d forgotten, though. “Why did he hold you back?” the younger boy asked as if Edward was stupid for not inferring that from his previous question.

“None of your business.”

Well, he hadn’t missed a beat, and both boys finally settled back to their work -- Edward satisfied that Alphonse wasn’t going to ask anymore questions and Alphonse satisfied that he wasn’t going to get any more information than that.

*

Despite the flagrant bitterness between them, the two boys seemed to work together better than the other lab groups. Or perhaps it was because of the bitterness, both blondes so intent on not focusing on each other that they focused on the only other thing they could: The lab assignment. It probably didn’t hurt that they were among the most intelligent in the class, but it was most definitely that sever drive to focus on something other than the fact that they were working together that made them work so well together.

Even Maes saw the difference two weeks later during his meetings with both of the boys (scheduled conveniently after the first tests of each course were all graded and recorded), though he prudently kept his personal observations to himself. After all, since they were working fine together then, perhaps as time went on, the boys might be able to help each other in other things as well.

That was certainly the man’s hope, anyway. Especially for Edward; that boy was too solitary and Maes knew that he wasn’t the only one that saw it.

Perhaps, the man thought, considering this new information, Head Mistress Dante might have an idea of what she was doing after all.

To be continued...

Chapter 8: Perception