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mikkenekoGetting somewhere now. I blame ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ciceqi. *yawn* Not that it's really her fault, but it's always fun to blame other people. While I'm at it, pellaz and kaltia, this fic is also your fault; it's supposed to go in the Imus Domum universe. It doesn't have a nifty title yet though.
rating: pg
pairing: none
warnings: angst, alchemy stuff pulled out of my... air
The field of chimera study had advanced quite a lot in the last ten years. A decade ago, it would be considered impressive simply to create a chimera that was viable, a perfect blend of two or more creature. The development of a chimera that could speak and understand human words was hailed as a marvel; less publicly lauded was the discovery that to make a talking chimera required that one of the organisms be a human being. Even less discussed was the discovery that all such chimeras experienced such suffering and despair that they invariably killed themselves, and less yet the discovery that only hybrids made with young children survived.
Ten years, Ed reflected bitterly, and things just didn't fucking change. Hoping for better results, people made the same mistakes again and again -- so many children, lost to some desperate alchemist's twisted rationalization that scientific progress was somehow more valuable than their lives. The same sick sad story, played out over and over again, promising bright young lives ending in premature suffering and death; sacrificed on the altar of scientific research.
Ed knew better than to waste his time or his spirit working up fury against these alchemists. He was no better, now was he?
"Ah, yes, you must be the Fullmetal Alchemist," greeted the officer in charge, snapping him a salute. Edward returned it half-heartedly, hid mind already moving down the familiar tracks, losing itself in the technical details and the little rituals of this process which he had already done -- how many times by now? Too many. Too bloody many.
"Major... Barton, was it? Yes, I came on the first train as soon as I received the notice. What can you tell me about this facility?"
It was small talk; he already knew the details. Always the same. Some State Alchemist, desperate or crazy or just too cold for human feeling any more, had set up an unofficial chimera blending facility in the basement of a local, abandoned church. He'd been taking children off the streets to use in his experiments; in a city this size, there were far too many refugee children and war orphans for such activities to be noticed.
That was, until the alchemist had made a mistake -- or gotten careless, and the child he pulled off the corner and brought back to the lab was not an abandoned orphan, but the prized young son of a well-respected merchant couple in the town.
Their desperate search for their son had led the investigation right to this facility, and Ed was glad of that in the abstract, but a cold part of him really, truly wished that their son had been one of the chimera who died on creation, or who were killed in indiscriminate horror when the investigation team had broken in the basement.
Because now he had parents in the antechamber grieving and crying and so fucking hopeful that he could feel their presence burning in his mind even here. He wanted them gone; taken back home or to the station or at least they could stay out of his bloody way, because the last thing he needed was to deal with this.
"This way, Sir," the officer told him courteously, and he snapped out of his thoughts long enough to give a curt nod, like he'd really been paying attention. He played back the man's last few words in his mind as he followed him inside, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything... but he couldn't concentrate on plans, not just yet. The impending conversation preyed on his mind. Damn, how was he going to handle this?
He hadn't yet found a satisfactory answer when the heavy locks clicked, and the officer pulled open the steel door with a wrench and stood aside, waiting for him to go in. He repressed his sigh till nobody could see, and stepped through the door.
Clearly the military had already swept this place clean; it had the look and layout of a drying lab, but it was bare of everything except a table covered with documents, and a few chairs piled into the corner. A few black-uniformed soldiers littered around, but Ed's attention was drawn immediately to the civilians in the room.
The man kept his hand on the shoulder of the woman sitting in the chair; obviously his wife. Where he was tall and solid, she was thin and ruffled; wavy black hair and a pleated blue dress that neatly matched her husband's finely-tailored suit coat. One slender, white-knuckled hand clenched and unclenched around a matching handkerchief, far too ragged now to be fine.
"Who are you?" the man demanded abruptly, his voice hoarse and gravelled, worn down to the very nub of civility.
"My name is Edward Elric." Stepping forward, Ed pulled his watch out of his pocket and opened his palm towards them; so much easier just to show the proof than argue with them. "Major Barton informed you that I was coming, did he not?"
"You're the Fullmetal Alchemist?" the woman interrupted with amazement, her head coming up to reveal tearful, gray-blue eyes. "How is that possible? You're so young!"
Ed ignored that with the weary ease of long practice. "My condolences on this terrible tragedy, Mrs... Conner. I'm terribly sorry about your son." And why did he have to apologize for that madman's actions? What reflected on one alchemist, reflected on them all; and the sin committed by any man in the army weighed on every last soldier in a blue uniform. "I have a few questions I need to ask you. I'll try to be brief."
The woman started to rise; Ed waved her back, and she sank mutely back into her seat. One of the black-clad soldiers jumped to fetch a chair for him; before Ed had finished pulling out his notes, it was already settled. With slight misgivngs, he sank down into the chair facing the couple, ignoring the way the man towered over him.
"I need you to describe your son for me," he began, flipping with ease to the page left blank. "Please be as specific about the details as possible. For the seperation process, it's very important that this information be accurate."
The alchemist's research notes, or what was left of them, had been sent ahead, and met Ed at the station. Descriptions of the animals used in the chimeras, of the alchemical processes, the timings and components used, the degree of the angles, even an estimate of the mass lost to steam evaporation. The animals themselves were fully accounted for, down to every last hair and tooth. The only hole in the data was the unpredictable human element, the data on the human material used in the composition.
"Describe..." the man said hesitantly. "Well, he... he's eight years old -- eight years and two months, actually. His birthday was August 8 1911, his blood type is..." He looked down at his wife for confirmation. "Type A?"
"Type A," she nodded. "At his last doctor's visit, he was eighty-three pounds... I don't believe he could have added more than a few inches since then." Ed's pen scratched the paper, and her hand went up to clutch at her husband's, on her shoulder. "He's a healthy boy, very active... he likes to play baseball --"
"Mrs. Conner --" Ed put his hand up to his head, as a sharp pain flared to life between his eyes. By all that is holy, he does not need to hear this. "I don’t need that kind of trivial information. Stick to the facts, please."
He was met with a stony silence, and sighed as he put his pen back to the paper. "You were saying... his height was?"
Some of the details he needed, of course, they wouldn't have; no non-alchemist would know them. And most of the details they had, he didn't want. He filled in his last blank and closed the notebook, standing up. "Thank you," he said.
"Mr. Elric," the man began, hesitantly, but hope was quickly overtaking wariness in his face. "He... will... will our son be all right?"
All right. How to answer that. "Mr. Conner." Ed closed his eyes, too weary to look at their faces. "Mrs. Conner. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to consider your son dead as of this moment."
The lady went white. "But... I thought you said... there's a process? To seperate them, to fix..."
"There is a process, but it is not... reliable" he explained, relunctantly. "I'll do everything I can, but the likelihood of a successful recombination is... not high. It's better not to get your hopes up," he adds, uselessly.
They don't say anything. She clenched her husband's hand, tight enough that no blood flowed. Before the painful silence could stretch on too long, he slid the notebook under his arm, nodding to the officers standing nearby, listening in. "All right, Major Barton," he said, keeping his voice cool and steady. "Show me to the lab."
More tomorrow... it's actually written in bits and patches, but not ready yet.
ciceqi. *yawn* Not that it's really her fault, but it's always fun to blame other people. While I'm at it, pellaz and kaltia, this fic is also your fault; it's supposed to go in the Imus Domum universe. It doesn't have a nifty title yet though.rating: pg
pairing: none
warnings: angst, alchemy stuff pulled out of my... air
The field of chimera study had advanced quite a lot in the last ten years. A decade ago, it would be considered impressive simply to create a chimera that was viable, a perfect blend of two or more creature. The development of a chimera that could speak and understand human words was hailed as a marvel; less publicly lauded was the discovery that to make a talking chimera required that one of the organisms be a human being. Even less discussed was the discovery that all such chimeras experienced such suffering and despair that they invariably killed themselves, and less yet the discovery that only hybrids made with young children survived.
Ten years, Ed reflected bitterly, and things just didn't fucking change. Hoping for better results, people made the same mistakes again and again -- so many children, lost to some desperate alchemist's twisted rationalization that scientific progress was somehow more valuable than their lives. The same sick sad story, played out over and over again, promising bright young lives ending in premature suffering and death; sacrificed on the altar of scientific research.
Ed knew better than to waste his time or his spirit working up fury against these alchemists. He was no better, now was he?
"Ah, yes, you must be the Fullmetal Alchemist," greeted the officer in charge, snapping him a salute. Edward returned it half-heartedly, hid mind already moving down the familiar tracks, losing itself in the technical details and the little rituals of this process which he had already done -- how many times by now? Too many. Too bloody many.
"Major... Barton, was it? Yes, I came on the first train as soon as I received the notice. What can you tell me about this facility?"
It was small talk; he already knew the details. Always the same. Some State Alchemist, desperate or crazy or just too cold for human feeling any more, had set up an unofficial chimera blending facility in the basement of a local, abandoned church. He'd been taking children off the streets to use in his experiments; in a city this size, there were far too many refugee children and war orphans for such activities to be noticed.
That was, until the alchemist had made a mistake -- or gotten careless, and the child he pulled off the corner and brought back to the lab was not an abandoned orphan, but the prized young son of a well-respected merchant couple in the town.
Their desperate search for their son had led the investigation right to this facility, and Ed was glad of that in the abstract, but a cold part of him really, truly wished that their son had been one of the chimera who died on creation, or who were killed in indiscriminate horror when the investigation team had broken in the basement.
Because now he had parents in the antechamber grieving and crying and so fucking hopeful that he could feel their presence burning in his mind even here. He wanted them gone; taken back home or to the station or at least they could stay out of his bloody way, because the last thing he needed was to deal with this.
"This way, Sir," the officer told him courteously, and he snapped out of his thoughts long enough to give a curt nod, like he'd really been paying attention. He played back the man's last few words in his mind as he followed him inside, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything... but he couldn't concentrate on plans, not just yet. The impending conversation preyed on his mind. Damn, how was he going to handle this?
He hadn't yet found a satisfactory answer when the heavy locks clicked, and the officer pulled open the steel door with a wrench and stood aside, waiting for him to go in. He repressed his sigh till nobody could see, and stepped through the door.
Clearly the military had already swept this place clean; it had the look and layout of a drying lab, but it was bare of everything except a table covered with documents, and a few chairs piled into the corner. A few black-uniformed soldiers littered around, but Ed's attention was drawn immediately to the civilians in the room.
The man kept his hand on the shoulder of the woman sitting in the chair; obviously his wife. Where he was tall and solid, she was thin and ruffled; wavy black hair and a pleated blue dress that neatly matched her husband's finely-tailored suit coat. One slender, white-knuckled hand clenched and unclenched around a matching handkerchief, far too ragged now to be fine.
"Who are you?" the man demanded abruptly, his voice hoarse and gravelled, worn down to the very nub of civility.
"My name is Edward Elric." Stepping forward, Ed pulled his watch out of his pocket and opened his palm towards them; so much easier just to show the proof than argue with them. "Major Barton informed you that I was coming, did he not?"
"You're the Fullmetal Alchemist?" the woman interrupted with amazement, her head coming up to reveal tearful, gray-blue eyes. "How is that possible? You're so young!"
Ed ignored that with the weary ease of long practice. "My condolences on this terrible tragedy, Mrs... Conner. I'm terribly sorry about your son." And why did he have to apologize for that madman's actions? What reflected on one alchemist, reflected on them all; and the sin committed by any man in the army weighed on every last soldier in a blue uniform. "I have a few questions I need to ask you. I'll try to be brief."
The woman started to rise; Ed waved her back, and she sank mutely back into her seat. One of the black-clad soldiers jumped to fetch a chair for him; before Ed had finished pulling out his notes, it was already settled. With slight misgivngs, he sank down into the chair facing the couple, ignoring the way the man towered over him.
"I need you to describe your son for me," he began, flipping with ease to the page left blank. "Please be as specific about the details as possible. For the seperation process, it's very important that this information be accurate."
The alchemist's research notes, or what was left of them, had been sent ahead, and met Ed at the station. Descriptions of the animals used in the chimeras, of the alchemical processes, the timings and components used, the degree of the angles, even an estimate of the mass lost to steam evaporation. The animals themselves were fully accounted for, down to every last hair and tooth. The only hole in the data was the unpredictable human element, the data on the human material used in the composition.
"Describe..." the man said hesitantly. "Well, he... he's eight years old -- eight years and two months, actually. His birthday was August 8 1911, his blood type is..." He looked down at his wife for confirmation. "Type A?"
"Type A," she nodded. "At his last doctor's visit, he was eighty-three pounds... I don't believe he could have added more than a few inches since then." Ed's pen scratched the paper, and her hand went up to clutch at her husband's, on her shoulder. "He's a healthy boy, very active... he likes to play baseball --"
"Mrs. Conner --" Ed put his hand up to his head, as a sharp pain flared to life between his eyes. By all that is holy, he does not need to hear this. "I don’t need that kind of trivial information. Stick to the facts, please."
He was met with a stony silence, and sighed as he put his pen back to the paper. "You were saying... his height was?"
Some of the details he needed, of course, they wouldn't have; no non-alchemist would know them. And most of the details they had, he didn't want. He filled in his last blank and closed the notebook, standing up. "Thank you," he said.
"Mr. Elric," the man began, hesitantly, but hope was quickly overtaking wariness in his face. "He... will... will our son be all right?"
All right. How to answer that. "Mr. Conner." Ed closed his eyes, too weary to look at their faces. "Mrs. Conner. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to consider your son dead as of this moment."
The lady went white. "But... I thought you said... there's a process? To seperate them, to fix..."
"There is a process, but it is not... reliable" he explained, relunctantly. "I'll do everything I can, but the likelihood of a successful recombination is... not high. It's better not to get your hopes up," he adds, uselessly.
They don't say anything. She clenched her husband's hand, tight enough that no blood flowed. Before the painful silence could stretch on too long, he slid the notebook under his arm, nodding to the officers standing nearby, listening in. "All right, Major Barton," he said, keeping his voice cool and steady. "Show me to the lab."
More tomorrow... it's actually written in bits and patches, but not ready yet.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 03:40 am (UTC)Ed seems like such a bastard in this fic, really callous to the parents, but through the POV you get to see how he's feeling about the whole thing, and how he can't let himself feel too much. Poor guy. *Pets*
It's better not to get your hopes up," he adds, uselessly.
They don't say anything. She
'Added' and 'didn't' respectively.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 11:04 am (UTC)Jeez, does Ed really seem like that much of a jerk? ^^; I meant him to come off as jaded, but actually my worry was that he would seem too polite and formal to be our Ed.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 02:22 pm (UTC)Ed is very . . . jaded. Scarily jaded. "He has gone where fierce indignation can lacerate his heart no more," sort of jaded. Interesting change.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-04 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-04 10:02 am (UTC)