desert fic rewritten

[mikkeneko]

Phew. Okay, I know this will look familiar -- but I rewrote, and rearranged, and added material, and oh yeah this fic is in first person now because the pronouns were killing me. X_x Even if you've read this before, I advise looking for the new stuff. And more new stuff to follow.

Many thanks to jade_pen for his advice and patience.

Untitled desert fic
Spoilers: Ep. 42
Pairing: Ed/Scar
Warnings: Angst, weirdness



It was light when I came to, the dazzling white light of the desert sun. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, by this time most of my memories had come back into working order.

This place, whatever it was, was still in the desert; probably not too far from Lior had been. They certainly didn't get sun like this in the Western cities. And if I was still in the East, after what had happened in Lior, then it was a pretty sure bet I was not under the care of the military. I only had the vaguest notion of what they would do with me if they found me; I'd never intended to let myself fall into their hands.

I'd never intended to survive to this point, anyway.

But if not any of the Western survivors, then who was the shadow from last night? The person had helped me, which didn't seem to speak of an enemy; but I also remembered the Western tongue, which let out any of my countrymen or the Liorans. I didn't have very many friends among the Westerners.

Alphonse? I wondered, venturing the thought with some wariness. my last thoughts before the world broke down was that if I could save Alphonse, from what Kimbley had done to him, then some tiny part of this had been worth it. And I got the distinct if uneasy impression that it had been Alphonse who had intervened when I was on the point of death, and just how the boy had saved me was something I would prefer not to think about too closely.

Not Alphonse.

It wasn't much of a mystery; I hadn't been awake all that long, staring at the sun-spattered wall for lack of the energy to move, when there were footsteps and thumpings at the cave mouth. With some effort, I shifted around until I could see better. It was no surprise at all when Edward ducked in through the door -- a motion more involuntary than necessary, considering his height. He was carrying a netted bundle of... something, his shirt was missing, and he was sunburned. The white light dazzled off his skin, giving the boy a red glow that made my eyes hurt.

Edward stomped inside, raising the dust in the small cave, and dumped his bundle on the cave floor. He then sat down, cross-legged like a tailor, and began to unroll it. It looked like a bundle of foliage to my eyes; dry grasses and scrubby brushes that grew in the waterless region.

Only when all the contents passed his scrutiny did Ed look up, and meet my gaze. Those fierce yellow eyes gave me the same jolt that had struck me the first time I'd seen them up close. The color was foreign, unnatural, but the shape and intensity were painfully close to home.

"So," Edward said without preamble, "you're awake, you bastard."

Every statement directed at me now seemed to be prefaced with "you bastard." I didn't much mind; it was as good a name as any other. I gave a noncommittal noise in response.

Ed was still staring, and I didn't have the energy to muster for a contest of willpower right now; I knew how badly I'd lose. Instead, I let my eyes slip back to the stone roof. "What is this place?"

"Hell if I know. This is your country, not mine," Ed said, an angry grumble behind each word. "Some hole in a ground somewhere to the north of a nice shiny new hole in the ground that used to be Lior. The military's crawling over the area. Looking for you."

Which left the rather obvious question as to why Edward was hiding from his own people. I watched with vague interest as Ed moved around the small cave; when he went to the back, well away from the sunlight, there was the splashing of water and I realized where the water from last night must have come from. "You were lucky to find a cave with a spring," I said out loud. "Water is valuable."

Ed turned to face me, and grinned as though the observation had been a compliment. "Lucky my ass," he said. "I didn't find this spring, I made it. Had to burrow through nearly a mile of solid bedrock to bring it to the surface, but it's either that or make it from scratch, which is a pain. Had to do that before we found this place, and it tastes nasty that way."

In what appeared to be a glass cup -- more alchemy? -- Ed scooped up some of the water and brought it back over, dumping it in the bowl of food and bending over it. He clapped his hands and placed them on the sides of the bowl; there was another blinding flash of alchemy, and then Edward was bending over what appeared to be a bowl of oatmeal.

I frowned. If not for the spring, we likely would have both died in the desert sun; the same for the food Edward had apparently transmuted out of dry grasses. But the last year had taught me nothing if not that the old Ishvarites had been right about the Art. It was unlikely that Edward had ever bothered to consider what effects his transmutations could have on the desert around him; even less likely that he would care. Alchemy, no matter how apparently benign, was an abomination against the natural order of things that twisted even the best intentions to ruin.

I said this to Edward; predictably, the boy scowled. "That old line again?" he said scornfully. "Fine then, you can eat and drink fuckall. There's nothing around here except what I make, you ungrateful bastard. Do you really want to die? I can arrange it quick if you'd like!"

I didn't particularly care one way or the other. I'd never intended to survive Lior.

Hadn't survived Lior.

In spite of his harsh words, Ed brought the bowl of food and some water over and crouched at my side. He set them down nearby and looked at me expectantly. "Go on, eat up. You've got to be hungry by now."

The food smelled good and the water even better, but knowing where it came from was more than enough to quell my desire for it. "Keep it."

Ed rolled his eyes with patently obvious exasperation. "Don't go all chivalrous on me now. I've already eaten plenty, and I can make more, you know. This is for you."

It was a kind gesture, but still -- "I don't want," I growled, "anything that's been made by that accursed Art."

Edward twitched, but said, "Well, too bad. That's all there is. It's this or starve."

"So be it." It sounded like a grander gesture than it really was. I had no more reason to stay alive, and since my sacrifice had not gone as planned, it was no more than to me than a choice between the next best road to death.

Ed exploded. "You bastard," he said, "don't tell me you're still clinging to that pathetic doctrine of yours? Now, after everything you've done? You -- you -- you used people and led them and tricked them like sheep, you did more abominable things than any -- than most alchemists would ever do in their life! How dare you try and take that self-righteous tone with me, after you spit on your own faith and turned your back --"

I'd thought myself too burnt out and weary to ever feel rage again. I'd been wrong. It flared down my veins and burned away the fog of apathy that had settled over me. Without even knowing what I was doing, I found myself up off the sand and lunging for the alchemist, hot with the intention to strike and kill, to silence those foul words. Far more foul for being true.

As an attack, it was a joke; Ed reacted after barely a split second of surprise. His shoulder hit my chest and he reversed my momentum, slamming me back into the rough wall and pinning me there. The shock jarred me out of my anger; Edward's leg had overturned the glass of water, and it sank shining into the parched sand of the ground.

"What the hell do you think you're trying to do,?" Ed nearly spat in my face, very up close and personal. "You look like something that's been on a lake floor for a month, and you can hardly move, much less fight me. It's not like it used to be, you bastard -- you don't have a fancy killer arm to do your work for you now!"

His human hand slammed my wrist back against the wall in emphasis -- and with a shock, that was the first time I realized it was there. I felt nothing from it, it was numb to me as a block of ice and did not move as commanded. I had to look directly at it to confirm that it was there at all.

That shook me, far more than Edward's violence, because I distinctly remembered losing that arm -- giving it up to Alphonse as it had once been given to me. The other arm had been lost in the fight with Crimson -- and that one was still gone. But somehow, this one had returned to me.

Memories came back to me, fragmentary and overwhelming, and something ached in my gut. Alphonse had saved me. I did not know how, or why, but the one certainty I had carried out of that chaos was that Alphonse had returned me to life -- for however much longer -- by means of the very power I had died to create.

I'd seen too many people kill with alchemy, and for it, and by it. I'd never wanted my life artificially extended by such obscene methods.

It hadn't been my choice.

"Why did you save me?"

Edward seemed to have been waiting for this question; those words made him quiver like a bowstring. He released me all at once, to lean shakily back against the wall, and leapt to his feet, glaring down from his -- momentary -- advantage in height. "Well I can tell you, it wasn't because I've got any fondness for you!" Ed snapped out, and it was clear from his tone how much he'd been itching to say this. "You're a filthy killer, you always were. Bad enough when you were doing little girls in alleys and anyone with a watch, but now you've taken out an entire fucking city, and I don't know that there's even a level in Hell for you for that --"

There was. I could have told him that. Instead, I interrupted -- "Those people were not innocents." It would seem cowardly to say that while not meeting the boy's eyes, so I made the effort. "Invading Lior was an act of war. They came to torment and kill innocent civilians. If they had not made that move, they would not have walked into that trap."

I saw metal fingers clench; Ed was trembling. "Is that supposed to make it all right somehow?" he raged. "Soldiers or civilians, they were still my people! And most of them had no control over where they were going or what they were doing, they were innocent pawns!"

"They ceased to be innocent when they wore the blue uniform." I closed my eyes; the light coming off of Edward was unbearable. "As you ceased to be innocent when you took that watch and became an attack dog for your military."

There was a long silence, and then footsteps as Ed approached. I opened my eyes to see Edward just a few feet away, burning me with his gaze. "I stopped being innocent long before that," he said quietly. "But I would never have done what you did, not in a thousand years."

"So." So the boy hated me. Well, he had justification for that. If there was one thing I was good at understanding, it was hate. There was no point in trying to justify my actions; we would never come together on this issue. Never should. "Why?"

"Why'd I save you? Two reasons." The boy was clearly making an effort to push back some strong emotion; how uncharacteristic of him. "One, because it's what Al would have wanted. I don't know what the fuck he saw in you, you bastard, but he wouldn't have wanted to let you die there in the sand, and he wouldn't have turned you over to the soldiers, either. He's just that kind of an idiot."

Oh yes. I had a good idea of just how much of an idiot kind, soft-hearted Alphonse Elric was. I couldn't forget the way Al had pushed himself into the fight between myself and Kimbley, trying his best to stop us, to end the violence; his interference had only made things worse, but the important thing was that he tried. "And?"

"And the second reason is that I want some goddamned answers!" Ed hissed, and leaned over me; teeth bared and eyes flashing. "All I saw was that burst of light. Al was in that city, you bastard, and now he's gone, I can't find him anywhere, all I found was your worthless hide --"

Ed continued ranting for a bit, but I was more worried about the implications of this. All the memories from that point on were too fuzzy. Too patchy. But I thought I remembered --

" -- And also," Ed said, snapping my attention back as he moved his hand to his thigh, pulling something out from where it had been lying against his skin. Ed shoved it in my face, and it made me almost ill to have it so near -- red and terrible, terrible -- " --I want to know what in hell is this!"

I stared. The light hurt my eyes, but I couldn't stop. It was beautiful, there could be no doubt about it; seductively beautiful. A perfectly spherical gem, as round as a glass ball, but with angular facet lines tracing over the surface like an aster. Through its surface and over every line the red light flickered and danced, glowing like a banked coal. In the very heart of the gem there was one flaw, shaped like a hook; the hook to snare the heart of the unwary man who stared too long into its depths. I pulled my eyes away with a shiver. Was this what I had created?

"I would think you would know just as well as I," I said quietly. "Is it not what you were searching for?"

"What good does it do me now?" Edward raged, fire in his eyes and fury shaking his limbs. "What use is it to me if he's not here? I wanted this for him! It was going to be ours! What am I going to do if he isn't here, it's worth nothing, it's just a piece of worthless trash --"

Ed choked on his own emotion, shuddering fiercely; his metal hand clenched at the floor of the cave until rock crumbled in his grip. But not that rock, I noted; even in the midst of his fury, Ed held it carefully, cradled against his skin. It seemed that even now the Stone seduced him.

Or was it that --

I closed my eyes abruptly, the only distance I could put between us. "I don't remember," I said.

"What?"

"I don't remember," I said again, and it wasn't entirely a lie, not with my memory blown to pieces like it was. "Making the Stone... or what happened to Alphonse."

"If he was in the city when it blew --!"

"He was already dying."

A sudden movement, and an impact that resolved almost immediately to pain -- I opened my eyes to see Edward's face, twisted by fury and grief, inches from my own. The metal hand clenched at my throat, and the jointed elbow leaned hard on my collarbone. "How," Edward choked out. "How is that even possible, he was -- how could you, he trusted you, you bastard -- that can't be, he either lived or died, he -- I'm going to fucking crush your throat --"

"Not because of me," I interrupted, more because I didn't want Alphonse's trust in me to be betrayed, even in Edward's memory, than because I cared about the crushing hand. "The Crimson Alchemist entered the city; we fought. Your brother attempted to intervene in the fight, and Crimson turned on him."

"No," Ed whispered, his hand going slack from the shock.

"It was his habit," I said quietly, distant with the memory, "to play with those he killed, when he could, to grant them deaths as lingering and painful, and frightening, as he could devise. He attacked Alphonse; I struck him down. He refused to die alone. I don't know how, but he transmuted your brother, turned him into a time bomb --"

"No," Ed cried out, and I winced as the metal fist thumped unconsciously against my chest. "Why wasn't I there? I could have turned him back, I could have stopped -- Why didn't you fix him?" the boy demanded, unreasonably. "You were there! Didn't you care enough?"

"I did not know how."

"It's not that hard, you fucking bastard, you had hooked up to you the biggest alchemical battery, alchemists would kill -- have killed -- did kill for! You couldn't manage such a basic --"

"I did what I could to give him time. I could not stay; the military was already entering the town." I didn't tell Alphonse's brother exactly what I had done to try and reverse the transmutation. I didn't tell him what happened after that. It was not entirely a lie; only a lie of omission.

"So he might have gotten out!" Edward was clearly grasping at straws. "Someone from the military might have found... That asshole Colonel was around, Armstrong, if they found him they could fix him up right quick... maybe they took him out again oh my God if you managed to kill them too I swear I will strangle you with my own hands --"

That Edward was willing to let me live despite the deaths of a thousand of his countrymen but willing to murder over the deaths of two was not an inconsistency worth pointing out to him. After all, I had sustained my own righteous rage during the long nights not with the thought of crumbling Ishvar, but my brother's drying eyes in the sand.

Edward was sitting back now, head bowed and shoulders shaking; the boy released his grip and sank back, rocking on his heels and crossing his arms over his chest. He still clutched the Stone to his chest, cradling it against his skin, and it was as much from the blinding light of the thing as from the display of emotion that I had to shield my eyes.



The day crept by painfully slowly; the patch of sunlight travelled the wall, then began to fade from the cave. I propped my back against the stone wall and tried to will my arm back to life. I wasn't even sure at first that it was mine; it was plain and bare, stripped of the devilish markings that I had accustomed myself to seeing there, and I felt no connection to it. But there it was; and when I bent all my will to it, it finally managed a twitch, and sent back the first faint tingles of life.

Save for my left arm, everything else seemed to be in working order, although weak. That was a good sign, because a rather pressing problem was beginning to grow on me. I had taken nothing since the water last night, but that was catching up to me now.

Carefully, I braced myself against the stone wall and pushed -- and nearly fell back down, as another obstacle presented itself.

"Where are my clothes?"

"You're sitting on'em," Ed told me, looking up from whatever he was drawing in the sand. Maps, from what I could see, though of what I didn't recognize. The Ishvarians were not fond of using the birds-eye perspective that the Amestrians adored; it was presumptuous to view the world as if one were God.

"What?"

"Used them to make the mattress, and the blanket. I can't make fabric out of nothing, you know. Oh, don't give me that look," Ed scowled at me. "They were in rags anyway, and I had to use 'em once anyway to rig up a travois to carry you. You're damn heavy, you know that, you bastard?"

I stared at him. "What am I to wear?"

"How should I know?" he said irritably. "I had to use my own shirt for a carry-net. What does it matter? There's nobody here but you and me, and I've already seen what you've got."

I glared, but there was not very much I could say to that. As humiliating as the entire experience was, he had saved my life, and cared for me when I had not cared for myself, and everything he had done was necessary for that. But still -- "I didn't ask you to bring me with you." My dead weight must have dangerously slowed his own flight from the military -- because he would not have wanted to be caught with the Stone in his possession, no.

He glared back, just as fiercely. "You're an ungrateful prick, too. I can always leave right now, if you like. See how well you get along without me. It'd be a useless load off my back, that's for sure."

He'd made the threat before, and made no more move to act on it now than before, no more than any of his other threats. I was beginning to suspect that there was a third motive to saving me that he had not confessed; Edward had never been alone before in his life, not for more than a few hours or days at a time. He might hate me, glare, curse, kick, swear, and threaten, but he would not leave, and he would not harm me. He needed me as badly as I needed him.

It felt very strange to be needed again. For anything. I pushed to my feet on the second try, ignoring Edward's stare, and made my way to the mouth of the cave.

It was a relief to see the sky again.



~tbc


Still need a title. Herongale, know any poems about deserts?

Comments

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

Edward had never been alone before in his life, not for more than a few hours or days at a time. He might hate me, glare, curse, kick, swear, and threaten, but he would not leave, and he would not harm me. He needed me as badly as I needed him.

omg. *wibbles* Hurts like truth...

If I pointed out all the other awesome bits of the fic I'd end up copy-pasting everything, so I'll just say this chapter is generally awesome and fantastic and leave it at that. ^^

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'm glad you liked that part! And, y'know, the rest of it too. :)

[tir-synni.livejournal.com]

Now I'm really curious. What happened to Alphonse? What is Ed going to do with the stone? How are those two going to deal with each other? *pokes* I just found this, and I'm already hooked. More, please. *^_^*

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

The first two questions will be answered in time. The last one... well, even I don't know for sure. ^_^;

[asidian.livejournal.com]

...I keep thinking to myself "The more I read of this, the more it -hurts- me." And then I come back for more. ;_;

The line about Ed never having been alone is just painful- because it's -so true-. *eyes you warily* And if he is just grasping at straws, or if the stone isn't any use to get Al back... I'm going to just... lie down for awhile. And never get up. ;_;

On a less emotional note (^^), it's -really- interesting to watch this come along. Not only did the switch to first-person go really smoothly, but it's fun watching you juggle parts around and put them in different orders. Like you're tugging it just a bit this way, and just a bit that way, and what was already good before comes sliding into place. If that makes sense. ^^;;

One nitpick, though, as I'm still on the lookout for pronoun-ish things: "He clapped my hands and placed them on the sides of the bowl"

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Oops. Nitpick corrected!

And if he is just grasping at straws, or if the stone isn't any use to get Al back... I'm going to just... lie down for awhile. And never get up. ;_;

*looks away, whistling*

it's fun watching you juggle parts around and put them in different orders. Like you're tugging it just a bit this way, and just a bit that way, and what was already good before comes sliding into place.

*tears at hair* It's like wrestling with half a dozen monkeys! It just DOES not want to come together.

[celes-grant.livejournal.com]

I really like how it's from Scar's perspective. His quiet musings in his head... rawr. MORE *fidgets*

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

I'm still dubious as to the Scar voice, but yeah.

YOUR ICON IS THE CUTEST THING EVER

[celes-grant.livejournal.com]

o.o. It's not mine (hence I didn't make it). I dunno where I got it from (MSN..? it's ben so long). But it is cute ^^; (argh I'm such a freaking art theif...) thanks. *startled slightly*

[jade-pen.livejournal.com]

I swear, Sloth-sama, every time I read this story, I like it more and more. And each time you add something new, you give me something to gnaw on for my own Ishbalan mythos.

Case in point: "It was presumptuous to view the world as if one was God." I'd never think of it... but now that it's been raised, I find myself agreeing with the point. You don't mind if I borrow that idea, do you? ^_^;

Mrm... Much improved this time around: not sure if I'd be able to offer any real suggestions for improvement this time around or not, truth be told.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was fond of that little tidbit. It's the same sort of reasoning as to why the Muslim cultures don't like representations of people, animals, and especially not God. I don't know if there's actually any religion that disapproves of birds-eye maps, though.