Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Plastic Reminiscence ❯ Plastic Reminiscence ( Chapter 1 )

[Title] Plastic Reminiscence

[Author] Deathkun

[Rating] PG 13 for bad words and imagery

[Disclaimer] All disclaimers apply

 

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“Fullmetal,” Roy said, words carefully measured as he narrowed dark eyes at the shadowed figure surrounded by bright midday light.

 

The figure made an inconsequential sound, face turned to stare placidly outside the large window of the small, alpine smelling room.

 

Roy felt confined, preferring to stand in the whitewash frame of the door instead of stepping onto the smooth wood and into the claustrophobic world of stacked books and shelves filled with memoirs and other insignificant memorabilia. There were pinwheels and paper cranes, red pails of chalk, marbles, pens, feathers, beads, all scattered on the dusty bookshelves, each catching the sunlight filtered through the window where Edward sat. Multicolored speckled light glanced off the floor and onto the ceilings and walls, and Roy felt that stepping into that room of glass memories would bring about some sort of divine retribution. It was Edward's sanctuary of sorts, with one window out and a doorway narrowed by plastic reminiscence.

 

“Fullmetal,” He repeated, a little louder this time, and he watched the speckled light shake minutely with the sound.

 

Please, turn around. Please, Fullmetal, turn around, “I can't leave until you say something, you know,” Roy added after a few moments, his voice still calm and guarded. No matter how much he wanted to, he could not bring himself to beg. His mouth and mind were not trained for begging.

 

The boy turned his head slowly, hair rimmed white with sunlight, and the scowl on his face was so familiar that Roy wondered why he was even stuck in this place at all. It was all hopeful thinking, however, no matter how well Edward could copy his past expressions.

 

“That's a lie, and you know it,” Edward answered roughly. Roy squinted in the overpowering white of the window, but could not make out much of anything else on the boy's face, only the down turned mouth and flashing canines.

 

“You lie all the fucking time,”

 

“Not lie. Manipulate, Fullmetal. There is a difference,” Roy said, standing with his back to the boy and hands clasped there as well. Edward had to squint to discern the broad blue shoulders of his superior, framed with blinding white light from the window in front of where Roy stood.

 

Edward flailed for a moment, but quickly regained his mental footing, “It's all the same damn thing,

“You've lied to us from the very beginning, when you made us get on that train. From then on we were always on your damned leash,”

 

“I never asked for you to save those passengers, Fullmetal,” the dark haired figure quipped smugly. Edward raged, hands clenched so tight that the sound of creaking metal screeched jaggedly into Roy's ears, “Now, if there isn't anything else for you to tell me, would you - “

 

He did not get to finish his sentence, the sudden slam of the door cutting between his words.

 

“If there isn't anything else, Fullmetal, I'd like you to leave,”

 

“If there isn't anything else,”

 

Roy blinked, black eyes sliding to his side to study the musty bookshelf next to him, “I'm not lying this time,”

 

“Winry already got a conversation out of me today,”

 

“That's not what Pinako told me,” He replied, vaguely, stepping into the room and disrupting the swirling, dappled scintilla of colored light. Roy's gloved finger slid itself across the shelf, leaving a trail of bright mahogany finish on a dull and grayed background.

 

Edward huffed, but the tone was odd, forced, “It was more than one sentence,”

 

“But was it more than ten words?”

 

“Get out of my room. I don't need anything,”

“If I had added `please' it would have been,”

 

Roy nodded, fingers reaching to trace the assorted items stuffed deep into the back of the shelf, black and obscure in the blinding light, “I hear that you have been eating more,”

 

Edward shifted, turning full around to rest his hand behind him on the window sill. The down turned mouth disappeared, his face obscured by long white fringed bangs and deep shadow. Roy felt the eyes on him, pricking and pinching on his skin like sand as he searched the shelf impassively. The gaze was dry and piercing, and Roy for one clear moment understood what exactly had been bothering him about Edward ever since that day.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I've been eating,” the voice was muffled, small. The suffocating light seemed to drown out the sound.

 

And the air was thick with electrified molecules and smoke, a tell-tale sign of a large scale transmutation. There was another smell besides the sharp clean scent that preceded lightning, something that to Roy was all too familiar.

 

The underlying stench of burning protein.

 

“Fullmetal -

 

What did you do?”

 

“Like I said, I found him, found his body inside the Gate. Remember?”

 

“I don't know, I don't know, I don't know,” the figure was slumped inwards, shoulders jerking with suppressed tears or anger. Roy did not know which way to react, either, as he stepped forward and stopped as the sticky feel of blood pulled at the bottom of his boots.

 

“Where is he?”

 

“He gone, but he'll be back,”

 

“Fullmetal…”

 

“He's here, I have him, he's here,” the boy's voice was strained and low, and the way he had draped his upper body over the form convulsing slowly in the middle of the transmutation circle caused his coat to block the sound.

 

Black eyes could see the slim legs, could see the pulsing red welts and bulbous growths of a failed transmutation dot the ripped skin.

 

Edward's hand groped outward suddenly, feeling the ground behind him without turning to look.

 

“I'll bring him back,” Edward lifted his head to grin, and Roy again could discern the smile upon the featureless face hidden in shadow.

 

The hope in his voice, the annoyance, the smile, the scowl, were all emotionless and false.

 

“Fullmetal -” Roy began, but stopped as his wandering fingers caught on the inside edge of a hidden jar and it fell forward with a loud sound of shattering glass and scattering pebbles.

 

Edward reacted in an instant. The empty, languid feel of the room broke apart with the glass jar, dappled reflected light swinging in long glowing tracks around the room, red and yellow and green and white, “Get the fuck out!”

 

The boy seemed to have materialized next to him, bounding across the small room in three long leaps, and hand reaching to grab Roy's still wrist. Both Roy and Edward blinked and stopped, a few seconds of shocked stupor as neither of them felt the hand and wrist connect.

 

“God damn it, Colonel,” Edward muttered. It was the first coherent thing he had said once the military had started arriving, the keening sound of braking cars trickling in from outside the warehouse.

 

Roy kneeled down on one knee, the thick fabric of his uniform sucking the blood on the floor slowly into the weave, “Yes?”

 

“I have half an arm,” and, in a moment of terrible timing, his red cloak fell away to reveal a half-realized limb where his automail once was, long bone and tendon sharp and splintered at the end.

 

The hand he had reached out did not exist, Edward's forearm ending in a clean stump and black stitches.

 

He hadn't let Winry get close to him after the incident.

 

And now, Roy could see everything. Edward's face was painfully clear without the sun framing it, his yellowed hair jagged, tangled and unkempt. The skin was pallid and greasy, bluish bruises of tiredness underneath his wide eyes, black pupils small against golden irises.

 

He smelled like sweat and sunlight.

 

One of the bookshelves Edward had rushed passed fell, the jarring noise and clattering items snapping them both out of their sudden stillness.

 

Roy immediately retracted his gloved hand, stepping backward jerkily into the white framed doorway. He wanted to say something, but the words stuck uncomfortably inside his throat.

 

All for the better, possibly, he wasn't sure what words would manage to spill out.

 

His eyebrows furrowed, lips partially open and teeth clenched to stop unnecessary sentiment. Black eyes traveled everywhere besides the boy's face, seeing the room in quick, minute portions. The frantic travel stopped on a bright purple stain of light, lying still on the wooden floor as the rest of the dappled light continued to move anxiously inside the room.

 

Outside the window, Winry's wind chimes clanged hollow and tuneless.

 

Edward kept muttering under his breath as he held his half arm out, shadowed eyes searching the ground hurriedly. His other hand was positioned under the figure's head, fingers cradling it against his chest as the black, dripping hole that served as its mouth expanded with every shuddering breath. The almost silent gasping began to gain tone, becoming a low keening wail deep in the thing's throat.

 

It sounded like it was crying, to Roy, like a small child, hurt, lost. The empty warehouse echoed the desperately sad noise. For some reason, his mind vehemently refused to connect the red streaked, pulsing thing to Alphonse.

 

“Fucking Colonel!” Edward snapped Roy out of his unashamed study of the body, eyes wild and half-limb outstretched. The boy's voice rose with a sudden edge of panic, “Give me that bag over there,”

 

Roy got up quickly, as Edward returned his attention to his creation, leaning forward and whispering words into the clammy white skin of the thing's cheek.

 

The bag was small, heavy with what seemed like pebbles.

 

Realization hit Roy hard.

 

“Red stones,” The dark-haired man said softly, narrow eyes centered on the maroon stone on the floor. More were spread over the shelf, spilled out of the glass jar he had shattered.

 

Edward growled, stepping forward and using his flesh hand to push Roy fiercely against the rough blue chest of his uniform. The man took one step back, but didn't move from his place in the doorway, “You can't, Fullmetal,

 

A homunculus is not Alphonse, no matter how much it looks like him.

 

“Alphonse's dead, Fullmetal. His soul transmutation imploded, you both knew it could have happened. It was only a matter of time,

 

“You ran out of time,”

 

“You lie,” Edward repeated, pushing Roy again harshly and this time causing the man to falter ungracefully into the hallway, “You always fucking lie,”

 

“I'm sorry for your loss,”

 

“You didn't even give me a chance, I was just on your fucking leash,” he continued, following Roy into the hallway and eyes dark with anger, “How the hell would you know how it was going to be?”

 

Impossibly, truly angry.

 

“We could have died on that train. We could have messed up and everyone on that train could have died!”

 

Roy smirked, “Only if I say so, Fullmetal,”

 

The boy's teeth clenched harshly, enamel screeching, “How the fucking hell would you have known?

 

“You didn't even give us a chance!”

 

“It took about seven men to restrain the Fullmetal Alchemist. The failed illegal human transmute was done away with cleanly and the incident has been covered up. There were no additional witnesses…”

 

Hawkeye looked up from her transcription, “Fuhrer, you do not mention what was done with Ed…” she faltered cleanly, regained herself modestly, “with the criminal,”

 

Roy kept his gaze outside the window, the midday sun bright and the grass too green. The smell of burning protein had stuck on the coat of his uniform, his pants were stained with crusted blood and both were still at home, quarantined in the washing machine.

 

The wailing had been so loud when he burned it…alive, or whatever it was at the moment.

 

Fullmetal had been too quiet.

 

“Fuhrer?” Hawkeye inquired again.

 

“Liza,” He turned to her, hand ruffling through his black hair, “I trust you to come up with something,”

 

“Yes, Fuhrer,”

Roy stood straighter, set his shoulders and eyes meeting Edward's fixedly, “How do you know it wouldn't have?”

 

“Because I'm Edward Elric,” he answered smoothly, “and nothing will stop me,”

 

The boy turned and slammed the door, and Roy could hear the rocking of a thousand useless memorabilia shake on their shelves. The hallway felt emptier, or maybe that was just him feeling unbelievably hollow, as he also turned and walked away.

 

Because he is Edward Elric and nothing will stop him.

 

Roy wondered why he didn't feel even the slightest doubt that Edward would never ever stop.

 

Edward woke up, but still felt like he was dreaming. A soft cool breeze ruffled past the open window next to the bed, the white cotton drapes fluttering slowly like melancholy ghosts. He gave the open window an annoyed glance. Much too early for sunlight, he thought, and rearranged himself accordingly, lifting himself up from his stomach and letting himself fall down on his side again with a satisfying creak of bed springs.

 

He exhaled, loudly, eyes sliding close again in half conscious bliss.

 

A crescendo of wind chime mirrored a sudden gust, a sudden weight and scrape of bed springs.

 

“Brother,” warm, warm hands on his shoulders. Two hands curled underneath his own chin, own fingers cold and sweaty on his own palms.

 

“Wake up,”

 

No, Edward thought, curling into himself.

 

 

He might wake up again and everything would simply be plastic reminiscence.