FMA Fanfic: Unconditional – Twelve
Unconditional – Twelve.
by arcanewinter. R 3748 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Greed swore he’d never be like her, but he can no longer afford to play games.
These characters do not belong to me. I do not profit from this. [...]
The door of the small shack opened at his knock. Though at first the alchemist’s face was suspicious, and careful, her eyes widened with eagerness to see him. She stepped aside, and Greed passed the threshold, leaving the war-torn landscape behind him. This town–whatever it had been called–would have been in better shape if it hadn’t resisted the titans of Amestris, but Greed knew their loss was in his favor. The battle-scarred streets, wherever Amestris had wrought them, were his new playground. Misery was his chosen company. And he had many missed opportunities to atone for.
“I’ve been studying,” she said, her voice a little off-tempo, as though it’d been days since she’d used it. “I took all the books from my teacher’s old house.”
He took the shaded glasses from his face and set them on the desk. His eyes always put them in the right frame of mind.
She was sixteen.
“And did you find what you were looking for?”
“I found rules.” Her mouth tightened. She sat down heavily at the desk and ran a finger over the open book there before she pushed it away. “I found dead-ends and false promises. It’s impossible.”
“It is forbidden,” he corrected mildly. He pulled the manuscript from under his arm and set it before her. It was all in his own handwriting. “But not impossible.”
Her brow furrowed, and she snatched up the pages, flipping them with satisfying quickness despite her obvious lack of rest. “What is this?”
“A way to bring them back.”
“But at this cost?” She lifted her eyes to him. She was lost. She wanted, and yet she hesitated. Humans were so selectively protective of each other.
He bent down, crouching at her side, his face close to hers. Her gaze followed him faithfully, and she waited, even as his silence stretched.
“Your parents must miss you,” he said, finally, his expression more of a mask. “What would they say if they knew you could, but you wouldn’t?”
“But they wouldn’t want me to–”
“It doesn’t matter who you use–it could be murderers, or the incurable, or even the soldiers who took everything to begin with.”
And there it was–the spark, the flare, the look in a human’s eye when she’s justified everything Greed’s name stood for.
He rose, but he kept close, his mouth at her ear as his hand cupped her cheek. She was so young, so impressionable. But she was also talented, and capable of terrible things to ease her suffering. “You let me know what you need. Next time.”
Taking his shaded glasses, he withdrew, leaving what had become the Flame Alchemist’s legacy with her.
* * *
At the very edge of the ruined town was a house he’d taken as his temporary home, and just beyond its door, when he was sure it had closed behind him, he dropped into a chair.
He’d finally done it. He’d spent weeks struggling to put down the words she was studying now. It wasn’t that he had any difficulty with the concept, or its explanation, but that so many pages of detailed theory and methodology required him to spend an increasing amount of time recalling a life he’d never lived. Some nights had truly frightened him. It was all so close to him. He was staring that life in the face as a matter of course, and it was no longer as caged as it had once been.
But Roy Mustang would never have passed on such knowledge. At least there was that. He would never have deceived and tempted and tricked like Greed had done, not for his own gain. The girl would never see her parents again, nor would she create any new companions for Greed: when she had created the Stone, he would take it from her. That was how this worked.
And this was what he should have been doing all along. Hughes had been right about that, at least: they’d been living a fantasy. What were they going to do when their finite supply of stones ran out? What would they live off of, then? Their trust? Their affection? How would those things help when they were starving for strength, when they were yet again attacked by soldiers or alchemists and they had no means of recovering?
They’d been trying to live like humans. And Greed had been foolishly naive, but at least he hadn’t fallen for it–not like Envy had.
Angrily, he took up the journal–a new one–from the table at his side and added to the entry that outlined his progression with the girl. There were other accounts, other hopefuls, but she had been the most devastated among them. The others weren’t ready yet. But she was; he had a feeling.
His eyes settled on the date as he flipped to the next blank page. His mood lost some of its toughness.
There were others he was hopeful for, too, others he wouldn’t dare write about. He believed–had to believe–that one day, the switch would flip again, and Envy would be his once more. And maybe Envy would be disappointed in him for choosing this path after all, but Envy had left him. What else did he have?
For all Greed’s hope, though, Hughes himself could screw everything up, namely by getting himself killed (again). Greed had no idea where Hughes had gone or what he’d been up to for the past month or so, but he could bet he wasn’t playing if safe. Maybe Hughes would rather be dead again, or maybe he’d forgotten what he was, despite how well he covered it, but either way Greed didn’t trust him not to be an idiot.
Especially not tomorrow.
Tomorrow, Greed knew exactly where he’d be, and it was the riskiest, stupidest place to sit out in the open. And if Greed wanted to maintain any hope of seeing Envy again, he would have to keep vigil.
He closed the journal and shoved it into the pocket of his coat. His work here was done for the time being, having pushed himself for this deadline, and he had a long distance to travel if he was going to make it in time.
* * * * *
It was just after dawn when he arrived at the edge of Central. He’d managed to ride along on the top of a train most of the way, but it was too risky taking it directly into the heart of the city. That trek he would make by more conventional means, namely, by rooftop. Far easier to escape that way when necessary.
He knew his physical dread as he neared the cemetery was largely baseless: he would have to be much closer to feel the effects of his mortal counterpart, and he’d been here before to obliterate their last-standing comrade. But it was different this time, and just knowing the grave was there, and who lay in it, already unsettled him.
Or maybe it was the prospect of seeing Hughes again that made him sick.
But as his long shadow threaded through the graves along the cemetery’s edge, he found himself almost relieved when Hughes came into sight. And just as recklessly as Greed had expected, he was sitting against the grave stone of his wife, which also happened to be the stone that bore Hughes’ name.
He must have been perfectly ill to be so close to the remains.
Ill and stupid. He hadn’t even adopted a disguise, and Greed would be surprised if he were even able to get up without crawling away first.
Greed glanced to the tree he’d intended to wait behind, but it looked like watching from here wouldn’t be enough. Greed wouldn’t get to him in time if they were surprised.
Sighing, he dusted off his long, rather dramatic jacket, wishing it hadn’t been so torn up from his in-transit exit of the train. But it would have to be presentable, and he left his cover to approach his once-companion, ever alert for soldiers, alchemists, or the damnable combination thereof.
“Don’t think I’m here for your sake,” Greed announced. He wanted that to be clear.
But despite the ambivalence in his voice, Hughes smiled. It was weak–he was weak, but the bastard smiled to see him.
“I wouldn’t expect you to be,” he said. “Not after what I said.”
Greed tried not to look surprised. He half-expected more obstinacy, more fury, but this was almost an apology.
“I’m glad to see you, Greed.”
Greed glanced around him suspiciously as though he’d find some other creature of that name.
“And not Roy?” he questioned. “Greed?”
Hughes glanced away. Greed thought for a moment that he would avoid the question, but he was wrong.
“If it’s not there, it’s not there.”
“Good,” Greed answered. “And you should be glad to see me. What were you going to do if anyone found you here? Do you think they’d go easy on you because you think–” he stopped. Hughes was trying; he would try. “Because you’re one of them again?”
“I know it was a risk. But I–” He frowned, turning his face almost completely aside. “I really wasn’t prepared for this. I really thought that . . . we’d have time. I wanted her to know I didn’t forget about her.”
Except that you did. For like, thirty years.
Greed sighed, turning to sit on the next grave stone over. He supposed he knew how he felt, on some level. Admitting that, though, was more than he was willing to do, especially when he still had work to do, and destruction to guide.
“And I’m sorry,” Hughes added. He waited until Greed finally met his eyes, however skeptically. “I shouldn’t have let you be the one to find out. You did me a favor, and I took out my anger on you.”
Greed fidgeted, lowering his eyes to study the grass, a little newer where Hughes sat. This was all true, and Hughes should be sorry, but Greed wasn’t accustomed to anyone coming out and saying that. He needed to get Hughes off the subject.
“So what happened to her?”
There. That’d work.
“Pneumonia,” he answered. “Complications.” Hughes’ voice remained strong, but he’d begun to study his hands. On one of them he’d fashioned a wedding ring, and it was only now that Greed noticed the necklace wrapped around his fist, the trigger that had set all this in motion. “I did some research, like I should have done to begin with. It wasn’t difficult.”
“Well, that’s good,” Greed mumbled. Or was it bad that it had been easy? Should Hughes be glad to find out sooner? Or later? Shit.
“What about you?”
“Huh?”
“How did you find out? You said you asked someone.”
Greed frowned with the memory, glancing away. “That crazy blond that kept–”
“Hawkeye?” Hughes didn’t even have the strength to sit forward from the stone, but his eyes were intense as they found Greed.
“Yeah, why?” Was there someone else Greed knew who might have kept in touch with these people?
“So–” Hughes shifted. “So she knows that–”
“She knows what happened to Envy,” Greed suggested quietly. He was pretty sure that’s what Hughes was getting at, though not from that angle.
“I see.” Hughes toyed for a moment with the necklace before he looked over again. “And . . . what did she say to you?”
“I told you what she said to me.”
“No, I mean . . .” Hughes’ jaw tightened. He was weighing his words. “She knew Roy.” His eyes meandered back to Greed almost hesitantly.
Greed shrugged. He pushed himself from the gravestone and dropped himself unceremoniously next to Hughes, his back to the same stone. “She didn’t want anything to do with him, actually.” The timber of his voice lifted with the jab.
“But–why?”
Greed shrugged again, his attention wandering over the nearby graves. “He was supposed to save this country. And instead he sacrificed the lives of thousands for one man alone.”
“But that’s not fair; if it was for me–”
“It was for himself.” Greed frowned sternly, turning to eye Hughes. “Trust me, it’s my specialty.”
Hughes did not appear to believe him–or maybe he did and didn’t want to.
But something else had begun to trouble him, and from his sudden shortness of breath, or perhaps his sudden panic, Greed could tell it had everything to do with sitting six feet above his remains. It had finally got to him.
And yet, so long as Greed was there, weakness was the only real consequence. No, what was alarming Hughes was the loss of his mortal cover. It was being stripped from him in waves desperately followed by its replacement, their competition racing over his surface.
Greed sighed at his needless struggle. “Just let it go if you can’t keep it.”
“No!”
The contempt in his voice immediately sparked Greed’s temper. What was so wrong with Envy’s appearance? What was wrong with Envy at all?
“Shit.” Hughes reached for the top of the headstone. He was trying to get up, trying to escape–only now–from the source of his weakness. All the rest, he could bear; all the rest, he could stomach, but not looking like what he was?
I don’t think so. Greed reached for his shoulder and returned him the few inches to the ground, then shifted to sit across his lap, holding him firmly against the stone. What remnants of Envy remained deserved more respect than this.
Hughes struggled, but it was only his voice that had the real strength to oppose him, and his glare, first purely green, then sharply violet. “Let me up!”
For a staggering few seconds Greed realized how unprepared he was to see Hughes’ face as its guise failed completely.
He thought he’d been fine. He’d spent weeks without him, he’d made plans and followed through on them, he was self-sufficient and alone and it was fine.
But this was Envy’s face, which he’d seen every night for so many years, and which he hadn’t seen since the night he never saw this coming. It was Envy’s face, with eyes just like his, with skin just like his. Envy.
Envy, looking so offended, so betrayed, so angry. Just to look like this?
“Why are you so ashamed of us?” Greed pressed, his voice suddenly unreliable.
Hughes had given up his struggle, but his eyes were still intensely defiant.
“You should know why.”
“Tell me anyway!”
“Think about it! Why’s my body rotting in the ground next to my wife’s? Because one day I got too close to the truth and Dante sent it here. She took everything from me, and she made me into the thing that murdered me! I was her puppet! I was used!”
“So blame her, she was a bitch! We set off on our own!”
“To do the very same things! There was no change!”
“We were friends–”
“Everyone has friends! Do you think that redeems you?”
Greed grit his teeth. It did. It did redeem them; they were homunculi, for God’s sake. And they’d done what none of the others could be expected to do: they were partners, they were loyal, they were inseparable. Greed trusted Envy not to harm him, and it was more than he could say about Hughes. “Look, maybe we did some pretty shitty things by your standards, but never to each other. Envy would never have said those things to me.”
There was a silence between them as Hughes failed to respond, the hardness gone from his eyes. Greed would have been glad for it, but he knew it was the crack in his voice that had done it, and that, he wished he could take back.
Greed bowed his head, regretting his honesty. He’d meant to hurt Hughes with it, not himself. But the harsh truth of it was that Envy had cared about him, cared what affected him and how, cared where he was and what he wanted, and there was no one else who would. And sitting in front of him was everything Envy was–his body, his face, his hands, even his voice, at times–but not Envy, never Envy, never again.
Hughes’ words were quiet, understated with surprise.
“You loved him.”
Despite his effort to control them, Greed couldn’t keep his breaths coming one after the other. He released Hughes’ shoulders to set his hands on either side of his face, hating the indulgent gesture, but unable to stop himself. He tried to suppress Hughes’ words, tried not to commit them to any memory at all, but they’d already found him, they’d already taken hold of him. He was slipping. He set his forehead against him, tender through its roughness, through its brevity, before he forced himself to stand.
He pulled Hughes up with him and took his hands, unable to look at him as he pulled him away from the grave, walking blindly backward to afford Hughes some distance from it.
He waited until he could feel the transformation before he released Hughes’ hands. They were far enough away. Hughes could stand on his own again. He could bury Envy again.
“I think he lov–”
“Shut up!” Maybe Hughes was telling the truth, maybe he could tell, but it didn’t help Greed now. Only the scheming in his journal would help him now. “Just shut up about it.”
Hughes did. His face was blank. He seemed lost.
“I’ve got work to do,” Greed announced. “Are you done here?”
“Yeah.” Hughes still watched him carefully. Differently.
“Start looking out for yourself, then. I won’t be around.”
He backed up a pace before turning and making his departure. Maybe it hadn’t been wise to come here, but he’d get over this, too. He’d put everything behind him, inevitably.
“Why not?”
He stopped. Hughes was quite a ways behind him now.
“Why not what?” He turned to face him.
Hughes approached, his eyes following a line of graves before he raised them to Greed again.
“Why won’t you be around?” He stopped a few feet in front of him. “Why don’t you stay?”
Stay. He stared at him blankly, knowing Hughes had a brain in his head but unable to confirm it. “Why? Same reasons as before? Look where that got me.”
Hughes bowed his head, brow furrowed. “Look . . . I know neither of us is what the other wants. But you’re all I’ve got.” He looked up again. “I’m all you’ve got.”
Then I’m fucked. “Yeah? What about your kid? You still have her.”
Hughes’ eyes widened briefly. His mouth tightened, and he shook his head. “I can’t. I know I can’t. Even Gracia . . .” He drew a breath, slow and even, controlled. “How would I explain myself?”
Greed studied the ground. Should he give in? Should he take what he could get and stay? He was considering it; he hated that he was considering it. But what else did he have? Was he really cut out for Dante’s methods? Would his remorse become less of a challenge with time?
Did he want it to?
“All right,” he answered, pausing. “I’ll stay. But I have to take care of something first. Where will I find you?”
Hughes brought his hand up to scratch the back of his head. Envy used to do that. Or did Hughes do it first? “I found a house. In Central.”
“Hiding in plain sight,” Greed murmured.
“Something like that.”
He told Greed the address. It was much more complicated than ‘the old train station on the hill,’ and rolling his eyes slightly, Greed pulled out the journal to write it down.
He could feel Hughes’ eyes on him. His recitation fell quiet.
Greed looked up, meeting his gaze coolly.
I have my limits. Know them.
After a second, Hughes finished, and Greed scribbled down the rest. He shoved the journal back into the pocket of his coat. “I’ll meet you tomorrow night. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Hughes smiled, or tried to. “Yeah.”
Green began to turn, but he stopped halfway before he even knew why. He looked over Hughes’ face before he spoke, his tone as mild as he could make it.
“Happy anniversary.”
Hughes nodded solemnly, and Greed continued on his way.
* * * * *
The train could only take him so far, but even on foot he made good time on his return to this forgotten corner of Amestris’ expansion. Amestris was brutal, but careless: once it got what it wanted, it didn’t know what to do with it.
He found the house again, barely more than a room. Surely she had moved since he left, surely she had slept, or eaten, or thought of other things, but she sat again at the desk as though no time had passed.
Greed’s only indication that he’d really left at all were the few half-drawn arrays on the floor. She’d been practicing, but she’d never completed any of them.
He crouched at her side, as he’d done just yesterday. Her eyes remained on the pages in front of her, hard, but unfocused.
“Do you really want to see your parents again?” he asked.
Her lip trembled before her mouth tightened and grew still.
“More than anything.”
“Then this is as close as you’ll get.”
‘Kind’ was a relative word for it, but he’d cocked the gun before he’d entered, and she felt it less than she’d have felt his claws.
Why he still fired it with the Shield past his wrists, he couldn’t be sure. But he knew it had something to do with the familiarity of the sound of it, and of her blood as it pooled beneath her head.
He took the manuscript from the desk and set a match to it, dropping it in the dirt outside to watch that no phrase, no illustration remained.
At the edge of town, he noticed, someone watched: a vagabond, or a bereft villager, covered in a hooded cloak to shield against the dust of ruins.
Perhaps he’d heard the shot. Perhaps he knew her.
But he’d never fall victim to her desperate need to regain what she’d lost.
Greed kicked at the ashes, watching their flurry for any remaining scraps of knowledge and crushing anything that came close.
The figure moved on. Greed did the same, putting the town and its potential behind him.