Of Sex and Automail
Ed knew that there was something wrong with the village from the moment he saw it, nestling in the cup of the valley like a rodent pretending to be tame but likely to bite. To the untrained eye it probably looked like a pleasant enough place but Ed had long experience in these matters and he knew that the village was sick. Or, rather, that someone in it was sick. He had an instinct for these things, for people who had crossed a line of behaviour or a line inside their spirit and who now existed beyond the pale. After all, he thought, it takes one to know one.
It had been Al’s idea to go there. He had overheard a conversation in a railway waiting room a few miles away. The women had been discussing a village where strange things had been happening, disappearances, mutilated animals, and screams in the night. Ed was reluctant to investigate, they got sidetracked too often as it was, but Al had insisted.
“I have a feeling about this place,” his brother had said, “Besides it sounds as though they could do with our help.”
Edward had conceded whilst privately admiring his brother for his unselfconscious compassion. Al didn’t ask for much and he had trailed around the countryside after Ed, uncomplainingly, for years now. Ed had made all the decisions and not all of them had been good ones. Perhaps it was the turn of the younger brother.
So there they were and Ed felt that he had to know now. As they headed into the high street, Al’s progress causing tiny movements in the glass of windows facing onto the street, Ed wondered at how quiet the place was. The buildings were dusty looking but in good repair; there was an almost chocolate box air of rural simplicity yet there were no people to be seen, not even a stray cat.
In the village square an ornamental fountain tumbled into a stone bowl carved with fish. The Elric brothers stopped and Ed drank. The silence began to weigh inside his ears, almost painfully. His skin prickled with tension as though someone was walking up behind him. Al was clenching and unclenching his giant fists. The whole of the air around them felt like an indrawn breath.
They nearly jumped a foot in the air when a child ran out of a nearby house, the door flying open with a sound like a shot. The child hurtled towards them and lurched to a halt a foot from Al, staring up at him with an expression of mingled horror and delight.
Al tended to produce that kind of reaction in people.
“Hello,” The child said.
“Hello,” Al replied.
The child looked no older than ten. He gazed at them with bright blue eyes.
“Where is everyone?” Ed asked him.
“They all went away.”
“And left you here alone?” Al exclaimed, his tone appalled. The boy hesitated and then shrugged as if to indicate the often inexplicable behaviour of grown ups.
“I suppose that they forgot me,” He replied.
“Forgot you? How?”
Al was merely answered with another shrug.
“When was this?” Ed asked.
“Yesterday.”
“Well, they can’t have got far in one day,” Al told the boy, kindly, “We’ll catch them up and reunite you with your parents.”
“Why would I want that?” The boy said, defiantly.
That stumped Al.
“What’s your name?” Ed enquired, forcing down a shameful but automatic dislike of the child. The boy grinned at him, mirthlessly.
“Santiago,” he said, “But call me Santi.”
“I am Edward Elric; this is my younger brother Alphonse.” Ed told him, looking at the child thoughtfully. He reminded Ed of someone that he didn’t much like but he couldn’t think who. The child frowned.
“He is the younger brother? But you are the little one.”
This did not make Ed like Santi any better.
When the shouting had stopped, it seemingly only having broadened Santi’s grin, Ed realised that he had more pressing concerns than his wounded pride.
“Hey kid, “He said, “Any food around here?”
As it transpired there was plenty of food in the village, in cupboards and larders and cellars, on tables in bowls half eaten and with a sheen of congealed skin on top, in shopping bags propped against counters spilling out onto the floors. Santi led them from house to house until he found something he liked, like a housewife shopping. By then Ed was too unnerved to be hungry and he watched the boy help himself to rice in a deserted kitchen where the owner had left slippers under the dusty table. Ed leaned over and whispered to Al.
“Why would the whole village leave and yet not take anything?”
--------------------------------------------
That morning Colonel Roy Mustang had made himself a promise. He had been shaving in the bathroom mirror, trying to see through the foxing and the steam. With the door open the reflection of his bed, the bed that he had shared with Edward, intruded itself into his eyes. That was typical of his thoughts lately; Ed was always there just over his shoulder, but not real. He was the ineradicable memory. For a moment Roy hesitated with his razor poised in mid air. He let himself...feel. He thought of Ed’s mouth, Ed’s hands, the taste of his skin but it all still had an air of unreality, of something that could not have happened. Before that very surprising night Roy had never harboured the hope that Ed might want him because such self indulgence reeked of misery. Yet now Ed had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wanted Roy very much indeed.
It had been like a miracle, unsought and terrifying, hot and hungry, desperate and glorious. Even the memory of it made his skin ache, Ed’s firm body under his fingers, sobs of pleasure uncontrolled, shameless words of desire. If Roy let it, it would have been all he thought about every minute of every day.
Until now the only things that had kept him going were attempts at iron self control and mental censorship. It had been months since that night and in that time Roy hadn’t seen or spoken to Edward once, not one word. He had woken up alone. It had stayed that way. Oh, he didn’t blame Elric for it. After all he had been completely honest. “It’s only sex,” he had said, “It doesn’t have to mean anything.” At the time Roy had swallowed the pain incited by those words because he had wanted Ed so badly that he had been prepared to take him on any terms, even knowing that it meant nothing to him.
But secretly Roy had hoped that it had meant something to Ed, that he would be drawn back to Roy, sooner or later. Standing there that morning, staring into his mirror, Roy had to admit that this hadn’t happened and wasn’t likely to. It had been a one night stand and no more. Edward clearly regarded it with appropriate pragmatism and Roy should endeavour to do the same. He needed to stop wanting Ed, or he would be good for nothing.
So, whilst shaving, Roy had sworn that it was over, done, no more thoughts of Edward Elric and no more bleeding inwardly for something that he could never have.
Now, in his office, surrounded by respectful subordinates, his face a mask of calm and military precision, no one could have known that anything was wrong. No one could have known that he had broken his oath ten times today already. He realised that Riza Hawkeye was talking.
“It’s happened again,” She was saying, her tone clipped, “An entire town this time. Two thousand people just gone.”
“The usual?” Roy queried. He restlessly ran a pen between his fingers, tensing, testing its strength. He had a strange urge to break something.
“Yes, the first anyone knew of it was when a visitor arrived to find no one there. We have established a media blackout but I don’t know how much longer we can keep these events from the public. The frequency of these disappearances is increasing.”
“Our hands are tied in this matter,” Roy reminded her, speaking past the flare of sick anger in his guts. Two years these reports had been coming in and for two years they had been ignoring them, on orders.
“But how many people have to die (because I think we can presume them to be dead) before we do something?”
“The decision not to investigate these incidents was made at the highest level,” Roy told her. He knew that his face showed no emotion but inside he was raging. Sometimes he couldn’t even remember a time when he hadn’t had to obey orders that made him sick to his stomach. Hawkeye’s disgust was evident, her mouth tightly compressed as the habit of obedience warred with her fundamental morality. Roy wished that he could agree with her but for her sake he could not. If she knew that he too despised these orders then she would want to do something about it and in the process she would destroy her career.
“What is the next item on the agenda?” He asked.
“But,”
“Leave it, Hawkeye.” His voice brooked no refusal. Whatever monster was out there dissolving entire communities, it would have to be left to it. It was nothing to do with him.
------------------------------------------
Ed’s discomfiture was growing. Santi made him nervous, made him tense, and the empty village with its creaking doors and abandoned cups of tea, frankly terrified him. Where was everyone and why would they leave a child behind? Santi didn’t seem especially worried or upset about it and gave only vague answers when asked about his family, vague answers that Al had clearly decided to accept at face value. So, for the meantime Ed was keeping his concerns to himself. He only wished, in a secret, guilty part of himself, that Al wasn’t so trusting of everyone they met. Not that Ed ever wanted his little brother to see the world in the same, slightly hopeless way that Ed did; it just would have been nice not to be alone in his suspicions.
Not to mention the fact that it was pretty embarrassing to be growing increasingly afraid of a child. Ed sighed and wandered back to the fountain. Al was being shown the village by their ‘host’ and Ed’s only comfort in that was that Santi couldn’t hurt Al. Few people could, physically at least.
Ed stared into the water in the carved bowl and tried to decide what to do. He could hardly present the child with his suspicions. They sounded paranoid even to him. How could a ten year old kill an entire village? Somehow Ed knew that they were dead and not just ‘gone away.’ The village hissed with ghosts, it had been emotionally polluted by their making. Apart from Alchemy, Ed didn’t know of any way to kill without leaving obvious traces but could the boy really be an Alchemist? Certainly he was young but that hadn’t stopped Ed and Al all those years ago.
Ed shuddered before his thoughts could go any further down that particular road and raised his eyes from the water. In the distance he could see Al and Santi heading back up the main street, their tour apparently over. Ed decided to wait until he had some idea of what this child really was. There would have to be evidence if Al was ever going to believe it possible.
-----------------------------
Roy arrived back at his flat as late as he could manage. He liked to be almost dropping with exhaustion before facing the empty rooms, the empty bed, and the cruel and persistent lack of Edward Elric. If Roy was tired enough he could fall asleep quickly and not be plagued by too many pointless thoughts and memories. At least that was the theory. It rarely worked in practise. More and more Roy seemed not to be in control of his own mind. His oath had been broken so many times that it was past all meaning. Now he stood looking down at his bed with hot imaginings wreaking their revenge against his pathetic attempt to deny them. How stupid he had been to try to refuse them; now they were merciless in their pique. They determined to show him things that he was afraid to see.
[censored content - adult access must be enabled to view it]
He had made the mortal error of falling in love with Edward Elric.
---------------------------------------------
Edward Elric woke up in the middle of the night and stared at the ceiling. He wasn’t sure why he was awake. What he was sure of was that he was hard with hunger. Horrified, he glanced across at Al who lay perfectly still on the other bed, the light in his eyes banked. Ed had never been completely sure whether Al slept as such. He certainly lay quietly in bed but why would a suit of armour need true sleep? He certainly didn’t need food. Perhaps Al just lay there and tried to rest his mind, drifting peacefully in the dark like a day dream on a hot afternoon.
Either way Al was not sufficiently asleep for Ed to deal privately with the problem. Sometimes Ed wished that he could be alone now and then, to just be normal. But neither of them had the right to pleasure, to normal things; they were too steeped in sin.
A strange noise from the floor below, a noise like an animal had got in and was dancing on a hot oven, caught Ed’s attention. It was an odd whimpering, whining sound that made Ed’s blood run cold and rush abruptly back up to his head. As sleep was now distant Ed decided to investigate. If there was an animal down there it would be the first living thing, aside from Santi, that they had seen since they arrived in this god forsaken place. Ed crept downstairs past the door to the other bedroom where the boy slept.
Except that Santi wasn’t sleeping.
Ed stood in the open doorway to the kitchen and watched Santi playing. A man was slumped up against a table leg. At least once it had been a man. Now it wasn’t much more than a pulsing mass of flesh, tortured in every possible way. Parts of him were inside out, parts of him were missing and lying in tidy piles on the floor, and parts of him were transmuted. Ed had never seen Alchemy used to torture someone before but, sadly, he was aware of the concept.
Santi dropped the chalk that he used to draw a transmutation circle around the remains of his victim. He looked up and saw Ed and laughed merrily, as though he had been caught planning a birthday surprise for his mother. Ed shivered. Santi brought his hands down on the chalk marks and with a flash the body was gone. It settled across the floor as a very fine dust. Ed remembered then that this was a very...dusty...village.
“You did this to all of them.” He said to Santi. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, and I ran out. That always happens. It’s like buying a really big bag of sweets, you know? You always think that they will last longer that way but the more you have the quicker you go through them.”
Ed sighed wearily. He was beset by déjà vu. Did all the serial killers of the world just wait for him to happen by so that they could be insane at him?
“You do know the difference between people and sweets, right?” He said.
Santi snorted as if to suggest that Ed was splitting hairs.
“Where did you learn Alchemy?” Ed demanded. He didn’t point out that a child Santi’s age wasn’t usually, and shouldn’t be, taught Alchemy because that would have been rampant hypocrisy on Ed’s part.
“My family taught me, out of books.” Santi told him. He was rubbing blood absentmindedly from one hand to the other.
“And did you kill them too?” Ed enquired. He began to edge into the room. He was already wondering how to get the child to Central, to some people in white coats and a cell with very thick walls.
“Certainly not!” Santi retorted, “You can’t kill them. I know, I tried.”
Ed’s head snapped up.
“Everyone can be killed,” He said.
“Provided that they are human to begin with.” Santi grinned.
Ed took a painful breath. All had become clear.
“You were raised by homunculi, weren’t you?” He muttered. He should have known. If Sloth, Lust and Envy had raised a child, this was probably the child you would get. He was reluctantly impressed though that they had been able to teach Santi things that they were themselves incapable of.
“But I’ve left home now,” Santi declared, proudly, not quite answering Ed’s question.
The boy hummed to himself. Ed was unpleasantly aware of the gulf between Santi’s view of the world and his own. The room was full of a moral dissonance that made Ed’s teeth hurt.
Santi stirred the dust on the floor with his foot, contemplatively.
“They die so fast,” he lamented, like someone who enjoys his work, despite its inconveniences. Then his expression brightened and he looked up with renewed cheerfulness in his hard cobalt eyes.
“Your turn now,” He chirped.
“I don’t think so,” Ed disagreed, reaching out for him. Santi twisted away, light on his feet, and thrust his hands into the circle again. The stone flagged kitchen floor rose up like a tide until a wall stood between them. Ed clapped his hands together and pushed his palms against the wall. With a sound like a gale the stone shattered outwards and blew a hole in the side of the house. The building shook and groaned.
Santi laughed and threw up another, larger wall. When Ed had disposed of it he was greeted by a flurry of carving knives hurled with surprising skill. He ducked and they bounced harmlessly off the wall behind him. Santi howled with rage and sent a rip curl of stone through after them. The structural creaks and screams of the building intensified alarmingly. Al ran into the room just as Santi drew a gun from his back pocket.
“I get bored with alchemy sometimes,” He observed, as he pointed the barrel at Ed.
As Santi fired the building gave in.
---------------------------------------
They telephoned Roy at home at six in the morning to tell him that the Elric brothers were in the city again and that Edward was dying, having been trapped in a demolished building. With his soul full of red hot nails Roy drove to the hospital like a maniac, scattering early morning commuters and narrowly avoiding killing a postman. There was a silent scream in his head as he ran down endless white, antiseptic corridors and into the private ward.
He found Al sat by Edward’s bed. The elder brother was certainly as white as death, his arm swathed in plaster.
“Is he...is he?” Roy demanded, not quite able to finish the sentence. Al jumped respectfully to his feet.
“He will be alright, Sir!”
Roy closed his eyes briefly against an urge to crucify the hysterical and misinformed army telephonist who had called him. He was aware that he was shaking and was afraid that Al would notice so he took a hold of himself. Time to cry with relief later, when he was alone. He nodded in his accustomed calm manner.
“What happened?” He demanded. Al told him about Santi, about the dead village, about how Al had found Ed fighting the child only for the building to cave in around their ears. Ed had broken his arm in three places and Al had had to carry him to help. There had been no time to look for Santi’s body beneath the rubble.
“He was just a child!” Al wailed, miserably, “I can’t believe that he is the reason for all those disappearances but...” Al glanced at his unconscious sibling, “Edward would not have fought if that was not the case.”
“Perhaps he will be able to tell us more when he is awake.” Roy spoke through a mounting horror. Several things had fallen into place and he did not like the emerging picture. Santi must be the creature that he had ordered Hawkeye not to pursue, the reason for all those silent towns, the monster being protected by someone at the very top of the military. If that...child had killed Ed then it would have been Roy’s fault. It was just one more order that he shouldn’t have obeyed. One more moment when he should have been strong enough to say, ‘no, this is wrong.’ He looked down at Ed and knew that if this man broke his heart, as he suspected would happen, then it would serve him right.
Roy Mustang deserved to suffer.
------------------------------------------
Ed woke up, coasting on a happy wave of painkillers and took in the pleasingly clean hospital room. Al wasn’t in sight but Ed was unconcerned. He remembered being brought here by his brother, carried on and off trains, fading in and out of pain and awareness. Now the drugs had made everything fluffy and good. So when he saw Roy Mustang slumped in a chair by the bed he didn’t glare as he normally would. Right now Ed had only kind feelings for all of mankind, even the colonel.
“Hey...hello.” Ed murmured sleepily. His superior officer jumped a little and looked at him keenly.
“How are you feeling,” Roy asked, coolly.
“I’m feeling just dandy,” Ed sighed, “Am I though?”
Roy’s mouth twitched as though repressing a laugh.
“You are fine, you have merely broken your flesh arm,” He said.
“That’s odd, “Ed mused, dreamily, as he watched the motes move across the surface of his eyeballs in the light from the windows, “It’s usually the other one. Winry will be pleased. She said that if I smashed up her Automail one more time she was going to replace it with one covered with jolly pictures of ponies and pixies.”
Roy smiled lopsidedly, “I think you need to go back to sleep, Ed,” He whispered.
It was true. The heaviness in Ed’s eyes was overtaking him and he began to sink back.
“It’s good to see you again,” Roy said softly, as Ed drifted away.
It had been Al’s idea to go there. He had overheard a conversation in a railway waiting room a few miles away. The women had been discussing a village where strange things had been happening, disappearances, mutilated animals, and screams in the night. Ed was reluctant to investigate, they got sidetracked too often as it was, but Al had insisted.
“I have a feeling about this place,” his brother had said, “Besides it sounds as though they could do with our help.”
Edward had conceded whilst privately admiring his brother for his unselfconscious compassion. Al didn’t ask for much and he had trailed around the countryside after Ed, uncomplainingly, for years now. Ed had made all the decisions and not all of them had been good ones. Perhaps it was the turn of the younger brother.
So there they were and Ed felt that he had to know now. As they headed into the high street, Al’s progress causing tiny movements in the glass of windows facing onto the street, Ed wondered at how quiet the place was. The buildings were dusty looking but in good repair; there was an almost chocolate box air of rural simplicity yet there were no people to be seen, not even a stray cat.
In the village square an ornamental fountain tumbled into a stone bowl carved with fish. The Elric brothers stopped and Ed drank. The silence began to weigh inside his ears, almost painfully. His skin prickled with tension as though someone was walking up behind him. Al was clenching and unclenching his giant fists. The whole of the air around them felt like an indrawn breath.
They nearly jumped a foot in the air when a child ran out of a nearby house, the door flying open with a sound like a shot. The child hurtled towards them and lurched to a halt a foot from Al, staring up at him with an expression of mingled horror and delight.
Al tended to produce that kind of reaction in people.
“Hello,” The child said.
“Hello,” Al replied.
The child looked no older than ten. He gazed at them with bright blue eyes.
“Where is everyone?” Ed asked him.
“They all went away.”
“And left you here alone?” Al exclaimed, his tone appalled. The boy hesitated and then shrugged as if to indicate the often inexplicable behaviour of grown ups.
“I suppose that they forgot me,” He replied.
“Forgot you? How?”
Al was merely answered with another shrug.
“When was this?” Ed asked.
“Yesterday.”
“Well, they can’t have got far in one day,” Al told the boy, kindly, “We’ll catch them up and reunite you with your parents.”
“Why would I want that?” The boy said, defiantly.
That stumped Al.
“What’s your name?” Ed enquired, forcing down a shameful but automatic dislike of the child. The boy grinned at him, mirthlessly.
“Santiago,” he said, “But call me Santi.”
“I am Edward Elric; this is my younger brother Alphonse.” Ed told him, looking at the child thoughtfully. He reminded Ed of someone that he didn’t much like but he couldn’t think who. The child frowned.
“He is the younger brother? But you are the little one.”
This did not make Ed like Santi any better.
When the shouting had stopped, it seemingly only having broadened Santi’s grin, Ed realised that he had more pressing concerns than his wounded pride.
“Hey kid, “He said, “Any food around here?”
As it transpired there was plenty of food in the village, in cupboards and larders and cellars, on tables in bowls half eaten and with a sheen of congealed skin on top, in shopping bags propped against counters spilling out onto the floors. Santi led them from house to house until he found something he liked, like a housewife shopping. By then Ed was too unnerved to be hungry and he watched the boy help himself to rice in a deserted kitchen where the owner had left slippers under the dusty table. Ed leaned over and whispered to Al.
“Why would the whole village leave and yet not take anything?”
--------------------------------------------
That morning Colonel Roy Mustang had made himself a promise. He had been shaving in the bathroom mirror, trying to see through the foxing and the steam. With the door open the reflection of his bed, the bed that he had shared with Edward, intruded itself into his eyes. That was typical of his thoughts lately; Ed was always there just over his shoulder, but not real. He was the ineradicable memory. For a moment Roy hesitated with his razor poised in mid air. He let himself...feel. He thought of Ed’s mouth, Ed’s hands, the taste of his skin but it all still had an air of unreality, of something that could not have happened. Before that very surprising night Roy had never harboured the hope that Ed might want him because such self indulgence reeked of misery. Yet now Ed had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wanted Roy very much indeed.
It had been like a miracle, unsought and terrifying, hot and hungry, desperate and glorious. Even the memory of it made his skin ache, Ed’s firm body under his fingers, sobs of pleasure uncontrolled, shameless words of desire. If Roy let it, it would have been all he thought about every minute of every day.
Until now the only things that had kept him going were attempts at iron self control and mental censorship. It had been months since that night and in that time Roy hadn’t seen or spoken to Edward once, not one word. He had woken up alone. It had stayed that way. Oh, he didn’t blame Elric for it. After all he had been completely honest. “It’s only sex,” he had said, “It doesn’t have to mean anything.” At the time Roy had swallowed the pain incited by those words because he had wanted Ed so badly that he had been prepared to take him on any terms, even knowing that it meant nothing to him.
But secretly Roy had hoped that it had meant something to Ed, that he would be drawn back to Roy, sooner or later. Standing there that morning, staring into his mirror, Roy had to admit that this hadn’t happened and wasn’t likely to. It had been a one night stand and no more. Edward clearly regarded it with appropriate pragmatism and Roy should endeavour to do the same. He needed to stop wanting Ed, or he would be good for nothing.
So, whilst shaving, Roy had sworn that it was over, done, no more thoughts of Edward Elric and no more bleeding inwardly for something that he could never have.
Now, in his office, surrounded by respectful subordinates, his face a mask of calm and military precision, no one could have known that anything was wrong. No one could have known that he had broken his oath ten times today already. He realised that Riza Hawkeye was talking.
“It’s happened again,” She was saying, her tone clipped, “An entire town this time. Two thousand people just gone.”
“The usual?” Roy queried. He restlessly ran a pen between his fingers, tensing, testing its strength. He had a strange urge to break something.
“Yes, the first anyone knew of it was when a visitor arrived to find no one there. We have established a media blackout but I don’t know how much longer we can keep these events from the public. The frequency of these disappearances is increasing.”
“Our hands are tied in this matter,” Roy reminded her, speaking past the flare of sick anger in his guts. Two years these reports had been coming in and for two years they had been ignoring them, on orders.
“But how many people have to die (because I think we can presume them to be dead) before we do something?”
“The decision not to investigate these incidents was made at the highest level,” Roy told her. He knew that his face showed no emotion but inside he was raging. Sometimes he couldn’t even remember a time when he hadn’t had to obey orders that made him sick to his stomach. Hawkeye’s disgust was evident, her mouth tightly compressed as the habit of obedience warred with her fundamental morality. Roy wished that he could agree with her but for her sake he could not. If she knew that he too despised these orders then she would want to do something about it and in the process she would destroy her career.
“What is the next item on the agenda?” He asked.
“But,”
“Leave it, Hawkeye.” His voice brooked no refusal. Whatever monster was out there dissolving entire communities, it would have to be left to it. It was nothing to do with him.
------------------------------------------
Ed’s discomfiture was growing. Santi made him nervous, made him tense, and the empty village with its creaking doors and abandoned cups of tea, frankly terrified him. Where was everyone and why would they leave a child behind? Santi didn’t seem especially worried or upset about it and gave only vague answers when asked about his family, vague answers that Al had clearly decided to accept at face value. So, for the meantime Ed was keeping his concerns to himself. He only wished, in a secret, guilty part of himself, that Al wasn’t so trusting of everyone they met. Not that Ed ever wanted his little brother to see the world in the same, slightly hopeless way that Ed did; it just would have been nice not to be alone in his suspicions.
Not to mention the fact that it was pretty embarrassing to be growing increasingly afraid of a child. Ed sighed and wandered back to the fountain. Al was being shown the village by their ‘host’ and Ed’s only comfort in that was that Santi couldn’t hurt Al. Few people could, physically at least.
Ed stared into the water in the carved bowl and tried to decide what to do. He could hardly present the child with his suspicions. They sounded paranoid even to him. How could a ten year old kill an entire village? Somehow Ed knew that they were dead and not just ‘gone away.’ The village hissed with ghosts, it had been emotionally polluted by their making. Apart from Alchemy, Ed didn’t know of any way to kill without leaving obvious traces but could the boy really be an Alchemist? Certainly he was young but that hadn’t stopped Ed and Al all those years ago.
Ed shuddered before his thoughts could go any further down that particular road and raised his eyes from the water. In the distance he could see Al and Santi heading back up the main street, their tour apparently over. Ed decided to wait until he had some idea of what this child really was. There would have to be evidence if Al was ever going to believe it possible.
-----------------------------
Roy arrived back at his flat as late as he could manage. He liked to be almost dropping with exhaustion before facing the empty rooms, the empty bed, and the cruel and persistent lack of Edward Elric. If Roy was tired enough he could fall asleep quickly and not be plagued by too many pointless thoughts and memories. At least that was the theory. It rarely worked in practise. More and more Roy seemed not to be in control of his own mind. His oath had been broken so many times that it was past all meaning. Now he stood looking down at his bed with hot imaginings wreaking their revenge against his pathetic attempt to deny them. How stupid he had been to try to refuse them; now they were merciless in their pique. They determined to show him things that he was afraid to see.
[censored content - adult access must be enabled to view it]
He had made the mortal error of falling in love with Edward Elric.
---------------------------------------------
Edward Elric woke up in the middle of the night and stared at the ceiling. He wasn’t sure why he was awake. What he was sure of was that he was hard with hunger. Horrified, he glanced across at Al who lay perfectly still on the other bed, the light in his eyes banked. Ed had never been completely sure whether Al slept as such. He certainly lay quietly in bed but why would a suit of armour need true sleep? He certainly didn’t need food. Perhaps Al just lay there and tried to rest his mind, drifting peacefully in the dark like a day dream on a hot afternoon.
Either way Al was not sufficiently asleep for Ed to deal privately with the problem. Sometimes Ed wished that he could be alone now and then, to just be normal. But neither of them had the right to pleasure, to normal things; they were too steeped in sin.
A strange noise from the floor below, a noise like an animal had got in and was dancing on a hot oven, caught Ed’s attention. It was an odd whimpering, whining sound that made Ed’s blood run cold and rush abruptly back up to his head. As sleep was now distant Ed decided to investigate. If there was an animal down there it would be the first living thing, aside from Santi, that they had seen since they arrived in this god forsaken place. Ed crept downstairs past the door to the other bedroom where the boy slept.
Except that Santi wasn’t sleeping.
Ed stood in the open doorway to the kitchen and watched Santi playing. A man was slumped up against a table leg. At least once it had been a man. Now it wasn’t much more than a pulsing mass of flesh, tortured in every possible way. Parts of him were inside out, parts of him were missing and lying in tidy piles on the floor, and parts of him were transmuted. Ed had never seen Alchemy used to torture someone before but, sadly, he was aware of the concept.
Santi dropped the chalk that he used to draw a transmutation circle around the remains of his victim. He looked up and saw Ed and laughed merrily, as though he had been caught planning a birthday surprise for his mother. Ed shivered. Santi brought his hands down on the chalk marks and with a flash the body was gone. It settled across the floor as a very fine dust. Ed remembered then that this was a very...dusty...village.
“You did this to all of them.” He said to Santi. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, and I ran out. That always happens. It’s like buying a really big bag of sweets, you know? You always think that they will last longer that way but the more you have the quicker you go through them.”
Ed sighed wearily. He was beset by déjà vu. Did all the serial killers of the world just wait for him to happen by so that they could be insane at him?
“You do know the difference between people and sweets, right?” He said.
Santi snorted as if to suggest that Ed was splitting hairs.
“Where did you learn Alchemy?” Ed demanded. He didn’t point out that a child Santi’s age wasn’t usually, and shouldn’t be, taught Alchemy because that would have been rampant hypocrisy on Ed’s part.
“My family taught me, out of books.” Santi told him. He was rubbing blood absentmindedly from one hand to the other.
“And did you kill them too?” Ed enquired. He began to edge into the room. He was already wondering how to get the child to Central, to some people in white coats and a cell with very thick walls.
“Certainly not!” Santi retorted, “You can’t kill them. I know, I tried.”
Ed’s head snapped up.
“Everyone can be killed,” He said.
“Provided that they are human to begin with.” Santi grinned.
Ed took a painful breath. All had become clear.
“You were raised by homunculi, weren’t you?” He muttered. He should have known. If Sloth, Lust and Envy had raised a child, this was probably the child you would get. He was reluctantly impressed though that they had been able to teach Santi things that they were themselves incapable of.
“But I’ve left home now,” Santi declared, proudly, not quite answering Ed’s question.
The boy hummed to himself. Ed was unpleasantly aware of the gulf between Santi’s view of the world and his own. The room was full of a moral dissonance that made Ed’s teeth hurt.
Santi stirred the dust on the floor with his foot, contemplatively.
“They die so fast,” he lamented, like someone who enjoys his work, despite its inconveniences. Then his expression brightened and he looked up with renewed cheerfulness in his hard cobalt eyes.
“Your turn now,” He chirped.
“I don’t think so,” Ed disagreed, reaching out for him. Santi twisted away, light on his feet, and thrust his hands into the circle again. The stone flagged kitchen floor rose up like a tide until a wall stood between them. Ed clapped his hands together and pushed his palms against the wall. With a sound like a gale the stone shattered outwards and blew a hole in the side of the house. The building shook and groaned.
Santi laughed and threw up another, larger wall. When Ed had disposed of it he was greeted by a flurry of carving knives hurled with surprising skill. He ducked and they bounced harmlessly off the wall behind him. Santi howled with rage and sent a rip curl of stone through after them. The structural creaks and screams of the building intensified alarmingly. Al ran into the room just as Santi drew a gun from his back pocket.
“I get bored with alchemy sometimes,” He observed, as he pointed the barrel at Ed.
As Santi fired the building gave in.
---------------------------------------
They telephoned Roy at home at six in the morning to tell him that the Elric brothers were in the city again and that Edward was dying, having been trapped in a demolished building. With his soul full of red hot nails Roy drove to the hospital like a maniac, scattering early morning commuters and narrowly avoiding killing a postman. There was a silent scream in his head as he ran down endless white, antiseptic corridors and into the private ward.
He found Al sat by Edward’s bed. The elder brother was certainly as white as death, his arm swathed in plaster.
“Is he...is he?” Roy demanded, not quite able to finish the sentence. Al jumped respectfully to his feet.
“He will be alright, Sir!”
Roy closed his eyes briefly against an urge to crucify the hysterical and misinformed army telephonist who had called him. He was aware that he was shaking and was afraid that Al would notice so he took a hold of himself. Time to cry with relief later, when he was alone. He nodded in his accustomed calm manner.
“What happened?” He demanded. Al told him about Santi, about the dead village, about how Al had found Ed fighting the child only for the building to cave in around their ears. Ed had broken his arm in three places and Al had had to carry him to help. There had been no time to look for Santi’s body beneath the rubble.
“He was just a child!” Al wailed, miserably, “I can’t believe that he is the reason for all those disappearances but...” Al glanced at his unconscious sibling, “Edward would not have fought if that was not the case.”
“Perhaps he will be able to tell us more when he is awake.” Roy spoke through a mounting horror. Several things had fallen into place and he did not like the emerging picture. Santi must be the creature that he had ordered Hawkeye not to pursue, the reason for all those silent towns, the monster being protected by someone at the very top of the military. If that...child had killed Ed then it would have been Roy’s fault. It was just one more order that he shouldn’t have obeyed. One more moment when he should have been strong enough to say, ‘no, this is wrong.’ He looked down at Ed and knew that if this man broke his heart, as he suspected would happen, then it would serve him right.
Roy Mustang deserved to suffer.
------------------------------------------
Ed woke up, coasting on a happy wave of painkillers and took in the pleasingly clean hospital room. Al wasn’t in sight but Ed was unconcerned. He remembered being brought here by his brother, carried on and off trains, fading in and out of pain and awareness. Now the drugs had made everything fluffy and good. So when he saw Roy Mustang slumped in a chair by the bed he didn’t glare as he normally would. Right now Ed had only kind feelings for all of mankind, even the colonel.
“Hey...hello.” Ed murmured sleepily. His superior officer jumped a little and looked at him keenly.
“How are you feeling,” Roy asked, coolly.
“I’m feeling just dandy,” Ed sighed, “Am I though?”
Roy’s mouth twitched as though repressing a laugh.
“You are fine, you have merely broken your flesh arm,” He said.
“That’s odd, “Ed mused, dreamily, as he watched the motes move across the surface of his eyeballs in the light from the windows, “It’s usually the other one. Winry will be pleased. She said that if I smashed up her Automail one more time she was going to replace it with one covered with jolly pictures of ponies and pixies.”
Roy smiled lopsidedly, “I think you need to go back to sleep, Ed,” He whispered.
It was true. The heaviness in Ed’s eyes was overtaking him and he began to sink back.
“It’s good to see you again,” Roy said softly, as Ed drifted away.
