Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction / Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ The Unforgivable Sin ❯ Chapter 11 ( Chapter 11 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Once again I must insert a spoiler warning. A lot of stuff comes to light in this chapter (which, unfortunately, consists of one big long conversation…bleh), so be prepared to learn about stuff that hasn’t been revealed yet on American television.

Chapter 11

Both of us wanted to get away from Lior as soon as possible, so I didn’t object at all when Ed stopped by the hotel to check out. We met Lieutenant Colonel Hiroto on the steps as we were leaving, and he didn’t look very happy when Ed told him we were leaving.

“But the thief!” he protested. “He still needs to be captured and brought to justice!”

“He has been captured,” Ed replied irritably. “You’ll find him in the temple’s ballroom, though I don’t suggest you move him until you consult an alchemist who’s knowledgeable about binding transmutations. His accomplice is unconscious nearby. In the meantime, my subordinate has had a rough time during his stay here.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be escorting him back to Central City, where he can rest and receive the best medical attention. You can forward your report to my office there.”

Hiroto’s scowl deepened, but he said nothing further, and Ed stepped past him with his hand still gripping my shoulder, steering me to the cab he had rented while I had been packing.

No more trains were stopping at Lior City that night, but there would be one in the nearest town’s station at two in the morning according to Ed, and he obviously wanted to catch it. So we spent the midnight hours in silence while the cab bounced steadily forward over the rough desert road, and I soon dropped to sleep despite the constant jostling.

When Ed shook me awake, the cab had stopped, idling on the curb of an otherwise empty street. My head had stopped throbbing, but the pain persisted in the form of a dull headache, and that combined with my exhaustion made me hardly aware of my surrounding as Ed ushered me through the station and onto the train. The last thing I heard as I curled up on the seat was the mournful call of the whistle, and then I returned to sleep.

* * *

The next time I awoke, I once again found myself staring at the ceiling of a hospital room, a view that was becoming far too familiar. I didn’t move at first, letting perception and memory catch up to my consciousness. Gradually I realized that I had only one eye open; the other was swollen shut. Also, my head was pounding again, as if someone were swinging a hammer against the inside of my skull.

But I ignored the pain, focusing instead on the events of the past couple of days as they returned to me. I didn’t remember waking up and coming to the hospital; Ed must have had an ambulance bring me. But everything else was there, crystal clear. Too clear. I wanted to forget it all. But even as that wish entered my mind, I dismissed it. There was no forgetting what had happened. This was the consequence of my sin, and I had to live with it.

“Hey!” cried a nearby voice, causing me to wince as the throbbing in my head increased. “He’s awake! Hey, Ryou, are you all right?” Malik’s concerned face stuck itself into my field of vision.

“Can’t you talk a little quieter?” I whispered in response, noticing for the first time how dry my throat was. “My head’s killing me.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Malik’s volume was considerably lower, and he looked slightly embarrassed as he sat down beside my bed. “So, what all happened? Ed brought you back from Lior in a right state yesterday, and he hasn’t been talking to me or Isis about anything.”

“Yesterday?” I asked. “How long have I been out?”

“According to Ed, since the night before last. It’s almost noon today,” Malik answered. “Hey, you’re probably pretty hungry; when’s the last time you’ve eaten?’

“Um…” I tried to remember, but couldn’t, and I gave up with a shrug.

“Well, wait here, and I’ll get you something to eat!” he said, jumping up enthusiastically and nearly bumping into a nurse on the way out of the room.

The lady shook her head at his lack of apology and walked to my bedside. “Think you can sit up, Major?” she asked.

With a little effort, I managed to do so, though the act sent my head reeling. She then proceeded to give me the usual cursory health check, taking my temperature and blood pressure and shining a little light into my eyes and mouth. She had just finished and left when Malik returned bearing a bowl of tomato soup and a couple rolls, along with a glass of water.

“So, what’s the story?” he asked once again as I dug in. “Did you catch that thief guy that everyone says was so dangerous? Is that how you got all beat up?”

“Well…” I took a gulp of water to stall. After all, I didn’t want to talk about it, not right now, and I doubted Malik would understand my story at all. Sure, he knew about my attempt to resurrect Akira, and he had been there the first time Greed showed his face to me, but I doubted he had ever heard of Homunculi, much less knew that they existed. “I-it’s kind of complicated…” I said when I could no longer gulp down water.

“And it’s military business,” Ed said from the doorway. “Nothing you need to know about.”

Malik turned around to scowl at him. “I think Ryou can talk to me if he damn well wants to, Shorty.”

“He can,” the Colonel replied, giving no sign that he had noticed the slight on his height except for a small twitch near his eye. “But not about this case. It’s been marked confidential, and you’re just a civilian. And I need Ryou to give me the full report now.” He raised his eyebrows at my friend.

Malik continued to scowl, but he got the hint. “I’ll see you later, then,” he said to me as he got up to leave. “If certain short Colonels will let me.” He trotted quickly past Ed and out the door.

Ed made a face at his back before shutting the door, and then he walked over and took the same seat he had occupied. I leaned back against my pillows and stared at the food in front of me, no longer quite so interested in eating. How in the world was I going to explain myself? What excuses could I possibly make now?

“Ryou,” he began, and his tone wasn’t accusatory and cold, as I had expected, but warm, and even sympathetic. “Who did you try to resurrect?”

My head snapped around, and I looked at him wide-eyed. He knew. There was no excuse-making now; my secret was out in the open. It wasn’t did I try, but who. No room for misjudgment, no way to convince him otherwise. Who did you try to resurrect? “H-h-how?” I asked, my voice sounding small. “How do you know about that?”

“It’s obvious to those who know what to look for,” he answered, a mixture of pain and sympathy in his golden eyes. “And even if I didn’t know before now, that Homunculus…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. “So…who was he? Or rather, who was he supposed to be?”

I bit my lip so hard that a trickle of blood ran down my chin. Right now I was wishing I were somewhere else, anywhere else, that I didn’t have to be here, answering these questions, talking about the one thing I regretted most. But I had no choice, so I took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped the blood off my face, and answered, “M-my brother. He should have…he was supposed…it was my twin, Akira.”

Ed merely raised an eyebrow, and I turned to stare at the opposite wall, which was much easier to look at, and forced myself to plow on. “H-he was the older one, and my best friend. He encouraged me to keep studying alchemy, even after our father told me to give it up.” I paused long enough to draw in another shaky breath. “He died in the accident.”

“Serra’s Point?” Ed asked. I nodded, and he continued, “That makes sense; it wasn’t your legs that you lost in that catastrophe, it was your brother. No wonder you never wanted to talk about it.”

“That’s not quite true,” I corrected, still refusing to look at him. “I did lose my right leg in that wreck. But my left…”

“Was lost during the transmutation process,” he finished for me, his tone growing suddenly cold and angry. “Tell me something, Ryou. What the hell made you think you could pull something like that off? How could you possibly believe that you could succeed at resurrecting someone? Look at me, damn it!”

“I-I-I don’t know!” I cried, cringing, cringing back even as I turned back to his furious face. “I-I was too y-young to know any better! I-I thought…I thought that maybe no one had done it because no one had tried! That…that…”

“That because you were so good at illusions, the most difficult branch of alchemy, your skills and your theories were superior to everyone else’s? Even though you were just a child?” Ed’s anger didn’t abate, and I felt the strong urge to transmute a hole in the ground underneath me and drop into it, just to get away from that golden glare. “Weren’t you the arrogant little bastard?” he continued mercilessly. “How old were you? Thirteen? Fourteen?”

“Fifteen. I was fifteen at the time. And yes,” I admitted, pulling my knees up, wrapping my arms around my legs, and burying my face in them. “I was arrogant. I believed I could do anything. That’s what my mother always told me.”

A full minute ticked by with neither of us speaking. I didn’t dare look up; the fury that ruled Ed’s face scared me too much. I was almost sure that when next he spoke, he would be informing me that I was going to jail, awaiting a court martial, spending the rest of my life in prison. Yet when he finally did speak, the anger in his voice was gone, replaced by a weariness that I couldn’t begin to fathom.

“What did he call himself? The Homunculus, I mean.”

I looked up at him again and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The anger had indeed vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and the look of sympathy was back in place on the Colonel’s face. “Greed,” I said quietly. “He called himself…Greed.”

“Greed,” Ed repeated with a small chuckle. “You know, that actually makes me feel a bit better about this mess.”

“Sir?” I replied blankly. Why in the world would my mistake make him feel better?

“Greed,” he explained as if it should be obvious. “If Wrath made the mistake of recruiting him, then I don’t have to worry much about his revenge plots. Greed cares only about himself, and he’ll do anything to get what he wants. Getting all in Wrath’s way in the process.” Ed looked thoroughly happy at the prospect.

That answer was just as confusing as his good mood. “H-how could you know that?” I asked.

The smirk on Ed’s face dropped away, replaced with the weariness from before. “This isn’t the first time I have fought Homunculi, Ryou. Surely you’ve figured that out by now.”

“Y-yeah,” I answered, trying to remember what Greed had told me back in Lior. “He said…Greed said…that you’d fought them before. That you…even made…a Philosopher’s Stone.”

“Oh, he did, did he? I imagine Wrath told him part of that story. But it’s not quite true; I’m not the one who made the Philosopher’s Stone. I had been seeking it for a long, long time, and a man called Scar dropped it into my lap.” He signed and ran a hand through his bangs. “Is that what they want from you now? To make another Philosopher’s Stone?”

“Greed does. Wrath…he only wants revenge on you.”

“That’s no surprise. Wrath has been trying to kill me for years; I’m used to it by now. I just wish he didn’t drag you into it.” He stood up and walked around my bed to stand at the window and stare out at the heavy gray sky beyond. “So…what do you plan to do? Try for the Philosopher’s Stone?”

I leaned back and stared at ceiling in contemplation. I didn’t know what to do. So much had happened…so much had come to light…and everything was still so confusing. A madman with the face of my brother, seeking an artifact that I had long believed never existed. So he can become human and die, I thought. Such a course seemed fruitless to me; why seek life only to die? The thought only confused me further. And then there was the Philosopher’s Stone itself, research that was forbidden, taboo. Just as much as human transmutation. “Should I?” I asked at last. “They call it the devil’s research. And I think…I think he only wants to die anyways.”

“And well he should.” Ed turned to give me a sharp look. “You’ve made a mistake, and now you have to correct it.”

“Are you saying…” I swallowed in an effort to get rid of the lump forming in my throat. “…that I should kill him? But…”

“No buts,” he interrupted, walking back around my bed. “Greed is an artificial being with no soul, and he doesn’t belong in this world. You must remove him. But you don’t need the Philosopher’s Stone for that; there are easier ways to get rid of Homunculi.”

“Then why haven’t you killed Wrath?” I pressed. “Or is it impossible for you? Greed said you weren’t the one who created him…”

“No,” he answered, slumping into his chair and running both hands over his face. “I didn’t. I created another. But that’s not why I can’t kill Wrath.” He took his hands away and looked at me again. “It’s rather complicated, but I’ll try to explain. Homunculi don’t have souls.”

“I know.”

“But do you know why they can still function, have some semblance of life?”

I shook my head, unease creeping up inside me. I already didn’t like the path this was taking.

“It’s because they use the lives of others.” Ed suddenly looked old, far older than his thirty years. “It’s the Philosopher’s Stone, or rather an incomplete prototype of it. Human lives are needed to make it, many human lives. That’s why it’s known as the devil’s research. These prototypes…they’re small, and they look like glowing red rocks, but that’s the source of the Homunculi’s power. They eat those rocks, and carry them around inside their bellies, feeding off the lives of the people who were used to make them. You have to make them cough up those rocks. Then you can kill them.”

Horror and disgust washed over me with such power that I felt like throwing up. My God…I had no idea…no wonder…it’s forbidden. I swallowed again, harder, and clenched my hands into fists in an effort to stop the shaking. “How…” I whispered hoarsely, my throat very dry. “How do you…make them cough it up?”

“The bones of the being they were supposed to be.” Ed’s eyes bored into me, now filled with an intensity that scared me as much as his words. “It’s their weakness; they become immobile if they get near the bones of the person who should have been resurrected. And if you get the bones close enough, they’ll start coughing up the red stones. That binding circle that I used on Greed back in Lior helps as well. It’s the only thing, besides the bones, that can bind them.”

“So…you’re telling me…I have to go back to Serra’s Point…and dig up my brother’s bones?” I felt sick again, and only through massive effort did I keep back the bile that rose in my throat.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s the only way to stop him. And Ryou…he has to be stopped.”

“So…” This explanation was doing nothing to lessen my confusion; in fact, I felt more bewildered than ever. “Why can’t you kill Wrath?”

“Wrath has no left over body,” Ed answered, his gaze shifting back out the window, where rain had now begun pouring down. “The woman who created him had given birth to a stillborn child. She couldn’t handle it, so she tried to transmute him back to life, using his body as the base instead of a mix of chemicals. So you see, Wrath has no weakness. It was used to create him.”

“Oh…” I frowned. “So why does he hate you so much?”

“That’s a long story, and a confusing one,” he answered. “To sum it up, he wants my body. He thinks that if he kills me, he can take my body and become human that way. But that’s a story for a different time.”

“Right,” I said, more than happy to drop it. I had too many other questions without going on that tangent. “So…how could you tell? That I had tried human transmutation, I mean?”

“I was wondering when you’d get around to that,” Ed said as his lips turned up in a half-hearted attempt at a smile. “Do you remember the day you tried to resurrect your brother?”

“Huh?” I answered, taken off guard by the abrupt change in subject. “Well…yeah. How could I forget?”

“Then you remember what happened in the middle of the transmutation. You remember what you saw.”

“Yeah…” His words sent me hurtling back to that night, the one night I had tried for almost two years to forget. “It had gone smoothly at first. I thought it was working. But then…” I stopped to draw in a shuddering breath. “Then…something changed. The light…it stopped shining. But the wind continued, worse than before. It was…I was terrified. And then…something started happening to my leg. It…it…”

“Disappeared,” Ed finished for me. “Like something was eating it away.”

“Yeah. And…and when I looked up, I saw a gate.” Terror rose in me once again at the mere memory of the unearthly structure. “It was huge…and…frightening. I…I don’t know why. But then…then it….”

“Opened,” Ed finished once again. “What did you see beyond it, Ryou?”

“I…don’t really know. It was more like I felt what was beyond. I felt…I felt like all the knowledge in the world, in the universe, was being crammed into my head, all at once. I…I really don’t remember what happened after that. The next I knew, the transmutation was finished, and…and…Akira wasn’t…instead of him, there was a monster.”

Ed nodded. “I know,” he said softly. “But back to the gate. You said you felt like all the knowledge of the universe was being crammed into your head. And that’s the truth; it really was.”

“Huh?” The expression was becoming a litany for me.

“That’s why you can perform alchemy without using a circle. That knowledge is still in your head, Ryou. It tells you how much energy you need and what to do with it, so you have no need of the circle. And there’s much more than that, lying dormant inside you, ready to be called upon when it’s needed.”

I took a moment to let his words sink in. They sounded utterly absurd, but I knew them to be true. It was a gut feeling, and it scared me for some reason. “So…” I said after a minute. “You’ve also seen beyond the gate?”

“Yes, I have,” Ed answered, pain filling his eyes as he continued to stare out the window. “My brother and I…we lost our mother at a young age, and naturally we wanted her back. I was twelve when we tried to resurrect her; he was eleven.” He looked back at me. “But that’s another story for another time. Meanwhile, do you have anything else you want to know?”

I shook my head as exhaustion suddenly took hold of me. All I wanted to do now was go back to sleep, escape the troubles the world had thrown at me.

“Great,” Ed said, standing up again. “Most of this conversation is between you and me, so if you don’t want to mention it to anyone else, you don’t have to.”

“But the report!” I protested.

“Your transgressions aren’t of any consequence to the report,” Ed replied smoothly. “What Mustang doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” He smirked a little. “Serves him right for sending me the full Lior report before you left. I bet he laughed it up, knowing that you’d be thrown in jail the second you stepped into town.”

“He’d do that?” I asked in utter confusion.

“Oh, beyond a doubt,” Ed said, pulling his coat off the back of his chair and slinging it across his shoulders. “It’s his way of testing you, seeing how you’d react in such a situation.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said dryly.

“You do that. See you around, Major.” Ed walked from the room, and Malik jumped back in before he could close the door.

“So what was all that about?” he asked, coming over to sit in the same chair Ed had used.

I shook my head and looked the other way, unwilling to relive the worst moments of my life for the second time that day. “It’s nothing important, Malik,” I said as exhaustion dragged my eyelids shut. “I just want to rest for now.”

There was a short silence, and I could almost hear his thoughts battling each other. “Okay,” he said finally, and I sighed in quiet relief. “I’ll…I’ll be back tomorrow. That’s when the doctor says you can go home.”

“Thanks,” I said as I heard the chair scrape back.

“Yeah,” he said. “See ya.”

Then the door closed, and I was alone with my thoughts. But even they didn’t sustain me for long, and I fell back into a deep sleep.