(no subject)

[mikkeneko]

Getting towards the end of this, believe it or not. Hopefully, one or two more sections.



Eventually, Ed came out of the cave, expression sullen, and carrying the food from before. He squatted beside me on the sand, squinting in the sun, and dropped it with a dramatic thump beside my foot.

"Look, either you're going to eat, or I'm going to hold you down and force-feed you," he announced. "It's up to you."

I ignored him, concentrating on flexing my arm. I could get it to bend at the elbow, now, and the fingers would move all together, if not individually. The faintest tingle of life was coming back into it.

"If it bothers you that much, just don't think about it!" he said, exasperated. "Look, okay, humans can't eat grass and wood. It's too tough. But everything that's in those plants is in grain and fruit too, just in a different order. There's nothing unnatural about it. Every plant pulls stuff out of the ground and puts it together in a certain way. It's the same food, it just got here a different route. Okay?"

"You still don't understand." The quiet words startled me; I hadn't meant to say them aloud.

"What am I not understanding?" Ed half-shouted, before flinching and glancing around as if looking for eavesdroppers.

I dropped my arm onto my knee, and stared up at the setting sun. "You've seen it," I said at last. "The fifth laboratory. The creatures in black. The chimera. Lior. How can you still refuse to see what alchemy really is?"

Ed stood up, and crossed his arms over his chest; I saw his eyes narrow. "I think you're the one who isn't getting it," he said. "I've used alchemy since I was a kid. I've seen it hold back a flooding river from a town or heal an injured kid. It's pulled gold out of coal, water out of sand, food out of starvation, shelter out of rubble. You're the one who's got a problem with alchemy, and you've only ever used it to kill and destroy. Maybe alchemy is what you make of it, have you ever thought of that?"

I didn't answer.

But, eventually, I did eat.



Night falls cold on the desert, with the moon slowly waxing towards full. There was no fire; any burnable material in the region, Edward needed to convert into food. The cave provided shelter from the bitter night winds, but held a damp chill of its own.

I was not tired; no more so than I had been all day. Weak, but I felt no urge to sleep, not now. I settled into the sand-and-cloth mattress, under the rough blanket, and watched the traces of blue-white light reflect off Edward's automail. He sat propped up against the opposite wall, legs tucked against his chest and forehead resting on his knees.

I heard a long, shivering breath, and then a sigh. This was ridiculous.

I sat up, and turned to look at him in the dim light. "You're cold."

Edward started; he must have thought I was asleep. "What's it to you?" he snapped. "A little cold won't kill me."

His stoicism was an admirable trait -- but sleeping bare-chested in the desert night was a sure invitation to illness. And that would turn into a disaster. I closed still-numb fingers on the edge of the blanket, and pushed it aside. "Come here."

He froze, facing in my direction. "What?"

"This is the only blanket. You and I are the only ones here." I waited.

He hesitated, indecisive, but a breeze shuffled over his bare skin and he shivered again. "Fine. You asked for it."

He scuttled across the cave floor and ducked under the edge of the blanket, wrapping it tightly around himself and pulling it almost completely off. "Geez. I thought deserts were supposed to be hot." Another shiver, then he relaxed.

I could feel the coolness of his skin, still, the chill of automail. The blanket was thin protection against that cold. As he wriggled around, trying to get comfortable while staying at the very edge of the blanket, I rolled over and put my arm across his shoulders.

He tensed again. "What are you doing?"

I considered. "For saving my life, body heat is the least I have to offer." I waited, then added, "It is equivalent trade."

It's not even equivalent exchange; it's just the right thing to do.

The whisper echoed sibilantly, and it was my turn to shiver. Ed seemed to accept this half-assed reason, however. He flopped onto his side, and scooted backwards until his back was tucked against my front. When he was arranged to his satisfaction, pulling the blanket over him, he sighed in happiness. "I guess this is okay."

I wasn't so sure. His warmth pressed trustingly against my front, even as the bite of his automail discouraged close contact. His hair, coming out from the rough braid all over, itched against my chest, maddeningly so as he breathed in and out. That he still had his pants on was the only solace I could find.

A deep sigh, and his breathing slowly evened out as the boy dropped off into sleep. His hands, curled protectively against his stomach, slowly relaxed; enough that the moonlight glinted off something red.

I didn't sleep that night.



He was up and out again the next day. After managing a drink from the stream, I moved out to sit under the rocky bluff and watch the sky. It was the same sky as my home, high and wide and blue; the land, too, was the same as the open spaces of my childhood.

But this was not my home. Lior had not been my home, though in a delusion I'd believed it was. It didn't matter, since both cities were gone now; crumbled and burned and compressed into a fraction of red light. There was nothing left of the home I had once knew, and all the proud cities of the East were no more than lumps of rock under the dunes. Who could say, now, the difference between the scattered stones that had been the temple, or the highway, or the endless fields of grave markers?

I had thought I would find comfort, or at least solace from that knowledge, if I balanced the scales of justice. No. Honesty. If I achieved my vengeance. My revenge. For blood and fire in the streets of my home, for my brother's broken body, made pathetic in his madness. I'd thought -- if I could complete his last work --

A snatch of voice from childhood came into my head, and I spoke it softly aloud.

Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay of that colossal wreck,
Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

"What did you just say?" A voice sounded from above me, and I jumped; I had not heard the shuffle of footsteps in sand.

Edward was looking down at my from the top of the bluff; he was empty-handed, so I had no idea what it was he'd gone looking for. Or perhaps he hadn't found anything.

He jumped down beside me, and dusted off his pant legs. "It sounded like a song or something. Nice."

Reluctantly, I said, "It's a poem from my own language."

"Really?" He grinned. "I didn't know you were a poet."

I looked at him disdainfully. "I did not write it. It's taught to children."

"It's pretty. What does it mean?"

I didn't feel up to translating. I looked away. "It tells about the inevitable decay. We are only mortal, and no matter how ambitious our works, when we pass on, they too will die in time. Nothing remains eternal save for the will of the divine."

He was staring at me with an unfathomable expression. I looked back at him. "What?" I finally said.

"I hate you," he sputtered, and stomped back into the cave.



That night, he came under the blanket without waiting for an invitation from me. Again, his small body wriggled for a comfortable position against mine, and again, he held the Stone clutched to his chest like a child's comforting toy.

Again, I lay awake for a long time, and wondered how much longer I could lie to him.

And to myself, as well.



On the fifth day, he insisted on a bath.

"It's wasteful," I told him. "This is not a Western city."

Ed rolled his eyes. "How many times do I have to tell you? I can make more. If I have to go one more day without washing the filth off my skin, I'm going to go insane."

At least he had the sense to do it in sections, using no more water than he had to. He transmuted a basin underneath the spring, to catch the water before it sank back into the ground. He even spared a bit of the blanket to make a washcloth, and stripped down to his skin in the cave, washing standing up.

I should not have looked. The forced intimacy of the cave, of the nights sharing warmth, were bad enough, for my body and the state of my soul. I should have averted my eyes; I should have purged my thoughts and cleansed my spirit.

I should have died in Lior.

I looked.

He was frighteningly, compellingly attractive. For all his small size and years, his body had the definition of an adult. His pale, Westerner skin was badly burned and cracked by the desert sun, but it had the beginnings of an adaptive tan to it. The automail arm and leg, glinting white and gold in the intense sunlight, attracted rather than repelled; the same as his coloring, which should have been foreign and alien. They were brands, marking him with sin, signing him as unforgiven.

I understood about brands.

I did manage to look away; the image of him seared my eyes. It hardly mattered, since he continued to make happy, relieved noises as he splashed, and while I could shut my eyes, I could not shut my ears.

"Your turn, you bastard."

I opened my eyes. "What?" He was clothed again, as much as he ever was, skin scrubbed pink and hair still dripping. He had a feral grin. "No."

"Yes. You stink and I'm sick of it. If I'm going to sleep with you, you are getting a bath, period. Don't your people ever bathe?"

I glared. "Don't insult my people," I said, with a hint of a rumble to my voice. "We are not barbarians. Of course we clean ourselves, but survival is more important than sensibilities."

"Geez, sorry." Ed waved the apology aside impatiently. "Fine, call it a matter of survival. If you don't clean up, I'll kill you myself."

I stared steadily at him, until he began to fidget; however, he showed no signs of backing down. "Fine."