Fullmetal Alchemist: "The Spider's Web" (5/?)
Author: crazybeagle
Characters: Alphonse, Edward, Mustang, OC's
Genre: Suspense, Drama, H/C
Rating: T
Summary: Two weeks after the Promised Day, the largest organized crime family in Amestris kidnaps Alphonse, to punish the brothers for a double murder that they can't remember committing.
Disclaimer: But alas, not mine.
Al had no perception of time in this place. The pills had blessedly taken the edge off the pain, and he'd been able to get at least some sleep. But some time later when those had worn off, he'd woken up, nauseated and teeth on edge, to find everything exactly the same as it had been. With the exception of Marie's presence.
Nighttime, then?
Al had no idea, but he was grateful she'd left the lights on when she'd gone. It was freezing, though, or maybe that was his starved body's inability to keep warm on its own. The concept of temperature was somewhat foreign to him, at any rate-he didn't trust his own perceptions of it. But cold was cold. He shivered, and attempted to wriggle a bit under the covers to get warm, but even that small motion made the edges of his vision go grey when his arms tugged against the ropes. He promptly gave over the attempt, staring at the plastered ceiling and trying very hard to think of nothing else until exhaustion overcame physical discomfort.
Wasn't easy, though, even without the physical aspect of it. Objectively, the place looked benign enough-it didn't appear to be a prison, but rather some kind of large, abandoned police office. Of course, he could be wrong, it wasn't like he'd seen all that much of it. The true threat of this place-the factor that simultaneously infuriated and terrified him, and made his pulse quicken and breath catch the second he'd realized that Marie had left-was the factor of the unknown. He was completely at the mercy of a force that had already been more than happy to demonstrate its cruelty to him and could very well do the same or worse to Ed, a force that he otherwise knew nothing about aside from the supposed notoriety and might of the family name. Just what kind of power did the Valeras have, that they could be so smug in their assurance that they could get away with what was about to be a double kidnapping right under the military's noses?
Well, the homunculi had had that kind of power.
But these were humans.
And what did they want, anyways? Marie was a distinctly, willfully unhelpful information source in that regard, which Al found ironic considering that the only bit of information she had let slip was a murder accusation.
This was making his head hurt.
Eventually, though, weakness of the body won out over restlessness of the mind, and the next thing he knew, Marie was there again, touching his shoulder lightly. "Alphonse?"
"Huh?" He blinked up at her. Her hair was damp from a shower and pulled back into a messy copy of her sister's impeccable bun, and she'd changed into a sort of black cotton shift that looked slightly too small for her. He wondered if she'd had to borrow it from Vivian-they were both small women, but Marie had a curvier, less compact build than her sister, who seemed to be made entirely of slender, vicious angles. The fabric stretched snug across Marie's chest and stomach as she leaned over him, a loose curl or two working itself free of the knot on top of her head and falling around her shadowy eyes. She looked as though she'd slept badly.
"I have food for you," she said quickly as she tugged the blanket off of him, voice full of an odd eagerness that unnerved him. It was almost manic. "And more painkillers if you want them." Nervous fingers darted out and tugged at a corner of his shirt, still the thin hospital-regulation scrubs he'd been wearing for the past few weeks. "Pity they wouldn't let me find you some new clothes before they bound your arms up like this," she was saying, words still tumbling out at an unnecessarily rapid pace. "You'll catch your death of cold, thin as you still are…. I'll see if I can get you some sweats, or at the very least an extra blanket-"
Al cut her off. "What's going on?"
She seemed to deflate. Her shoulders slumped. "Let's just get you ready for the day, okay?"
"You owe it to me to be honest here." He didn't mean it to sound cruel, but he sure as hell meant it.
She opened her mouth, closed it again. She wouldn't look at him, but he could see her jaw working. Then, barely audibly, "My uncle's coming to speak to you today."
His mouth suddenly felt very dry. "Oh." His heart sped up a bit. Well, at the very least, after today he'd know why he was here.
If there was an "after."
…
He was barely able to eat any more today than he had the night before and could barely manage to gulp down the water required to take the pills, his stomach was wound up so tightly. Marie chastised him for it, laying a hand on his shoulder, which he hadn't realized was trembling-his whole body was-and told him that that was probably due to low blood sugar in addition to the fact that it was chilly today. Or maybe, he couldn't help thinking with some bitterness, it's because I'm afraid your uncle the mob boss is going to kill me and I'm doing a terrible job hiding it.
She wrapped him in the wool coat before she left, as well as the blanket, and propped him up against the wall. "He'll be here soon," she said over her shoulder as she left the cell, as if that was some kind of reassurance.
Al closed his eyes, tried to take a steadying breath. Whatever happened, he thought, his goal was to make it through the day. Ed would be here by tonight. And while that thought sickened him, it was also the only thought that kept him sane in the hours-long wait that followed.
By the tail-end of the wait, though, impossibly, he'd dozed off, because it was Vivian's sharp voice that jolted him back to alertness, causing him to bump his head hard against the brick wall behind him.
"Stellar first impression to make on the most powerful man in Amestris, Alphonse," she sneered from the other side of his bars. He blinked the sleep from his eyes, and saw that she was as impeccably dressed as the day before though all in white this time. A thin, bearded, gray-haired man in a dark three-piece suit was clutching her elbow, as if for support.
"Alphonse Elric," the man said, raising a bushy eyebrow. His voice was easy, genial, his city accent even stronger than Vivian's. Nothing about it suggested the frailty that was causing him to cling to his niece's arm so tightly. "Peter Valera. I believe I owe you an explanation."
"Yes." The word was out of Al's mouth before he could stop it.
Valera grinned. It was wolfish, and suddenly Al understood where Vivian had gotten it from. And he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was in trouble.
Two minutes later, a folding chair had been set up, facing the bed and about five feet away from it, by none other than Silas, who had been following along behind Valera and Vivian in the hall. Al's breath caught at the sight of him. But he merely smiled, inclined his head at Al, and set up the folding chair, before taking up some sort of guard post outside the cell, with his back turned towards them facing the hall. Vivian helped Valera stumble into the cell and lowered him slowly into the chair, and it wasn't until they were seated across from one another that it struck Al just how ill the man looked. His cheekbones stood out sharply under sallow, yellow-tinged skin, his eyes sunken and hollow. Vivian hovered for a few seconds after he was situated, but Valera waved her away, knobbly wrist sticking out beneath the cuff of his suit.
"I fetch your cane and leave it with Silas," she said, turning to leave, shooting him a last concerned glance.
"Fine, fine," he said, impatiently, before turning back to Al. Apparently a little hurt at the dismissal, Vivian let the cell door slam behind her on the way out.
Valera turned back towards him, thick brows drawn together, scrutinizing him. "I saw you once," he said, at last. "In Central, when I was there on business. It was from a distance, but at seven feet tall, you were a bit hard to miss."
Al said nothing.
He looked intensely curious now. "Now as I'm sure you know, Alphonse, I have top-notch intelligence forces at my command, who look out for the good of my business. But in the process of going through their reports, I find out more than a little bit of everything that goes on in this country." He leaned forward a bit. "Now I can't say that I know all the specifics regarding your particular situation, but I'd wager that I know enough. And while I highly doubt I'd make the same decision in your position, I can respect it." His voice grew softer. "It'd be a shame to watch your brother grow old and die without you, wouldn't it?" He fell silent again, turning that appraising eye on him once more that made Al shiver harder.
His brows shot up again. "Are you cold, Alphonse?"
Al nodded, minutely, because he figured that would be a better response than no, you just freak me out.
"Hm." And then Valera was reaching into his breast pocket with spindly fingers, and drawing what looked like small, clear glass cylinder out of it. He held it out for Al to see. "Well we can fix that." Al looked at the thing. He realized, with a little thrill of fear, that the thing was some kind of syringe, full of colorless liquid.
"Do you know what this is?" The question didn't sound inherently threatening.
"No, but I bet you're gonna tell me, aren't you?"
Valera looked genuinely startled at that. And damn it, why did Brother's tendency to mouth off to all the wrong people at all the wrong times have to rub off on him now?
And then Valera was laughing. A deep, delighted sound, his head thrown back. When he looked back at Al, that wolfish grin was planted firmly back in place, and Al's skin prickled. "And they told me your brother was the smartass," he said.
Valera flicked the syringe around between his fingers, and Al suddenly couldn't take his eyes off the thing. "You're right though, I will tell you." He pointed the syringe needle-first in Al's direction. "This right here is the second-greatest accomplishment of my nephew, the late bio-alchemist Anthony Valera."
"I don't know who that is," Al said slowly.
"Yes, yes you do." And all traces of humor were suddenly gone from Valera's face. "Because you, Alphonse, you and your brother are the reason he's dead." His eyes were hard. Al saw grief there.
And, beneath it, unmistakable rage.
"How is that possible if we've never met him?"
"Two years ago," Valera said, steadily, eyes never leaving Al's. "Crystal Ford. A little town thirty miles east of here. A young doctor by the name of Arthur Newbury. Yeah, you've met him alright. Your brother arrested him in on charges of murder and illegal alchemical experimentation on human subjects."
Huh?
The Newbury case? The name brought back vague memories-reports of people in the town dying of some mysterious, untraceable illness, their young doctor apparently unable to save them-the parcels of top-notch alchemical equipment that Ed had found on the doorstep of the doctor's home, express-shipped from Betterton-the doctor himself, handsome, dark-haired, maybe in his mid-twenties, but with a look of utter desperation and pain on his face as he stood in his own lab and leveled a handgun at Ed's chest-the resigned slump of the doctor's body as Al had scooped him up and carried him under one arm from the flames that were fast engulfing his clinic, knowing he'd earned himself a one-way ticket a Central prison cell.
"Arthur Newbury was Anthony Valera?" Al blinked. The Colonel had certainly never mentioned that to them, if he'd even known. "I didn't-"
"Really?" Valera looked a little startled again. "In that case, no wonder you're confused right now. You have your commander to blame for that. Of course, we, ah, persuaded the press to keep the Valera name out of the Newbury case, but…" His eyes narrowed. "I'm sure the military was in an uproar over it. In fact, I know they were. Frankly, I'm very surprised you and your brother never learned just who you'd caught."
Al was shaking his head. It made sense, though, that Mustang-and probably Hughes, for that matter-would try to keep Brother well out of the way of the entanglements of organized crime, to protect him, to protect them both from something so vast and deadly when they had another mission to accomplish. And he was grateful for that.
"Last I heard about your nephew, though," Al said, "he was in Central doing a life sentence. I never heard that he died."
Valera ignored that. He held up the syringe. "Do you know what this is now?"
And Al did know. "That's what he was using to kill all those people, isn't it?"
Valera nodded once, eyes focusing on the syringe with a gleam that could only be called pride. "It's brilliant, really. Completely untraceable. In a matter of weeks to a matter of days, depending on the victim's overall state of health, they start to die." He cracked a smile. "Of apparently natural causes. From what I understand, it causes fever, delirium, and the eventual failure of the vital organs, over an extended period of time. And to all but perhaps a fellow bio-alchemist, the cause of death would appear to be nothing more than a sudden, unfortunate illness." He tapped the syringe lightly against his arm. "This, Alphonse, is how I've been eliminating the most dangerous of my competitors for the past year and a half now."
"Are you a bio-alchemist?"
Valera shook his head. "I'm not an alchemist at all. But I have many in my employ. Dozens, who have been able to take the prototype that Anthony sent to me and replicate it."
"So he was working for you?" Al asked, suddenly feeling ill. "All those people…" Had their deaths merely been test-runs?
Valera suddenly looked thoughtful, staring down at the syringe. "Yes and no," he said. "I funded his research, and gave him the freedom to do as he pleased with it, provided he reported all of his progress back to me." He paused. "It was his dream to have a lab of his own. He was a good kid." For a moment, it seemed as though Valera had forgotten Al was there.
"Anything in particular he was researching?" Al ventured after a moment. Aside from serial killings…
And then Valera's head snapped up. His eyes were murderous. "Well you would know, wouldn't you," he spat, "if you and your brother hadn't burned down his lab along with all his notes and research."
tbc~
Characters: Alphonse, Edward, Mustang, OC's
Genre: Suspense, Drama, H/C
Rating: T
Summary: Two weeks after the Promised Day, the largest organized crime family in Amestris kidnaps Alphonse, to punish the brothers for a double murder that they can't remember committing.
Disclaimer: But alas, not mine.
Al had no perception of time in this place. The pills had blessedly taken the edge off the pain, and he'd been able to get at least some sleep. But some time later when those had worn off, he'd woken up, nauseated and teeth on edge, to find everything exactly the same as it had been. With the exception of Marie's presence.
Nighttime, then?
Al had no idea, but he was grateful she'd left the lights on when she'd gone. It was freezing, though, or maybe that was his starved body's inability to keep warm on its own. The concept of temperature was somewhat foreign to him, at any rate-he didn't trust his own perceptions of it. But cold was cold. He shivered, and attempted to wriggle a bit under the covers to get warm, but even that small motion made the edges of his vision go grey when his arms tugged against the ropes. He promptly gave over the attempt, staring at the plastered ceiling and trying very hard to think of nothing else until exhaustion overcame physical discomfort.
Wasn't easy, though, even without the physical aspect of it. Objectively, the place looked benign enough-it didn't appear to be a prison, but rather some kind of large, abandoned police office. Of course, he could be wrong, it wasn't like he'd seen all that much of it. The true threat of this place-the factor that simultaneously infuriated and terrified him, and made his pulse quicken and breath catch the second he'd realized that Marie had left-was the factor of the unknown. He was completely at the mercy of a force that had already been more than happy to demonstrate its cruelty to him and could very well do the same or worse to Ed, a force that he otherwise knew nothing about aside from the supposed notoriety and might of the family name. Just what kind of power did the Valeras have, that they could be so smug in their assurance that they could get away with what was about to be a double kidnapping right under the military's noses?
Well, the homunculi had had that kind of power.
But these were humans.
And what did they want, anyways? Marie was a distinctly, willfully unhelpful information source in that regard, which Al found ironic considering that the only bit of information she had let slip was a murder accusation.
This was making his head hurt.
Eventually, though, weakness of the body won out over restlessness of the mind, and the next thing he knew, Marie was there again, touching his shoulder lightly. "Alphonse?"
"Huh?" He blinked up at her. Her hair was damp from a shower and pulled back into a messy copy of her sister's impeccable bun, and she'd changed into a sort of black cotton shift that looked slightly too small for her. He wondered if she'd had to borrow it from Vivian-they were both small women, but Marie had a curvier, less compact build than her sister, who seemed to be made entirely of slender, vicious angles. The fabric stretched snug across Marie's chest and stomach as she leaned over him, a loose curl or two working itself free of the knot on top of her head and falling around her shadowy eyes. She looked as though she'd slept badly.
"I have food for you," she said quickly as she tugged the blanket off of him, voice full of an odd eagerness that unnerved him. It was almost manic. "And more painkillers if you want them." Nervous fingers darted out and tugged at a corner of his shirt, still the thin hospital-regulation scrubs he'd been wearing for the past few weeks. "Pity they wouldn't let me find you some new clothes before they bound your arms up like this," she was saying, words still tumbling out at an unnecessarily rapid pace. "You'll catch your death of cold, thin as you still are…. I'll see if I can get you some sweats, or at the very least an extra blanket-"
Al cut her off. "What's going on?"
She seemed to deflate. Her shoulders slumped. "Let's just get you ready for the day, okay?"
"You owe it to me to be honest here." He didn't mean it to sound cruel, but he sure as hell meant it.
She opened her mouth, closed it again. She wouldn't look at him, but he could see her jaw working. Then, barely audibly, "My uncle's coming to speak to you today."
His mouth suddenly felt very dry. "Oh." His heart sped up a bit. Well, at the very least, after today he'd know why he was here.
If there was an "after."
…
He was barely able to eat any more today than he had the night before and could barely manage to gulp down the water required to take the pills, his stomach was wound up so tightly. Marie chastised him for it, laying a hand on his shoulder, which he hadn't realized was trembling-his whole body was-and told him that that was probably due to low blood sugar in addition to the fact that it was chilly today. Or maybe, he couldn't help thinking with some bitterness, it's because I'm afraid your uncle the mob boss is going to kill me and I'm doing a terrible job hiding it.
She wrapped him in the wool coat before she left, as well as the blanket, and propped him up against the wall. "He'll be here soon," she said over her shoulder as she left the cell, as if that was some kind of reassurance.
Al closed his eyes, tried to take a steadying breath. Whatever happened, he thought, his goal was to make it through the day. Ed would be here by tonight. And while that thought sickened him, it was also the only thought that kept him sane in the hours-long wait that followed.
By the tail-end of the wait, though, impossibly, he'd dozed off, because it was Vivian's sharp voice that jolted him back to alertness, causing him to bump his head hard against the brick wall behind him.
"Stellar first impression to make on the most powerful man in Amestris, Alphonse," she sneered from the other side of his bars. He blinked the sleep from his eyes, and saw that she was as impeccably dressed as the day before though all in white this time. A thin, bearded, gray-haired man in a dark three-piece suit was clutching her elbow, as if for support.
"Alphonse Elric," the man said, raising a bushy eyebrow. His voice was easy, genial, his city accent even stronger than Vivian's. Nothing about it suggested the frailty that was causing him to cling to his niece's arm so tightly. "Peter Valera. I believe I owe you an explanation."
"Yes." The word was out of Al's mouth before he could stop it.
Valera grinned. It was wolfish, and suddenly Al understood where Vivian had gotten it from. And he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was in trouble.
Two minutes later, a folding chair had been set up, facing the bed and about five feet away from it, by none other than Silas, who had been following along behind Valera and Vivian in the hall. Al's breath caught at the sight of him. But he merely smiled, inclined his head at Al, and set up the folding chair, before taking up some sort of guard post outside the cell, with his back turned towards them facing the hall. Vivian helped Valera stumble into the cell and lowered him slowly into the chair, and it wasn't until they were seated across from one another that it struck Al just how ill the man looked. His cheekbones stood out sharply under sallow, yellow-tinged skin, his eyes sunken and hollow. Vivian hovered for a few seconds after he was situated, but Valera waved her away, knobbly wrist sticking out beneath the cuff of his suit.
"I fetch your cane and leave it with Silas," she said, turning to leave, shooting him a last concerned glance.
"Fine, fine," he said, impatiently, before turning back to Al. Apparently a little hurt at the dismissal, Vivian let the cell door slam behind her on the way out.
Valera turned back towards him, thick brows drawn together, scrutinizing him. "I saw you once," he said, at last. "In Central, when I was there on business. It was from a distance, but at seven feet tall, you were a bit hard to miss."
Al said nothing.
He looked intensely curious now. "Now as I'm sure you know, Alphonse, I have top-notch intelligence forces at my command, who look out for the good of my business. But in the process of going through their reports, I find out more than a little bit of everything that goes on in this country." He leaned forward a bit. "Now I can't say that I know all the specifics regarding your particular situation, but I'd wager that I know enough. And while I highly doubt I'd make the same decision in your position, I can respect it." His voice grew softer. "It'd be a shame to watch your brother grow old and die without you, wouldn't it?" He fell silent again, turning that appraising eye on him once more that made Al shiver harder.
His brows shot up again. "Are you cold, Alphonse?"
Al nodded, minutely, because he figured that would be a better response than no, you just freak me out.
"Hm." And then Valera was reaching into his breast pocket with spindly fingers, and drawing what looked like small, clear glass cylinder out of it. He held it out for Al to see. "Well we can fix that." Al looked at the thing. He realized, with a little thrill of fear, that the thing was some kind of syringe, full of colorless liquid.
"Do you know what this is?" The question didn't sound inherently threatening.
"No, but I bet you're gonna tell me, aren't you?"
Valera looked genuinely startled at that. And damn it, why did Brother's tendency to mouth off to all the wrong people at all the wrong times have to rub off on him now?
And then Valera was laughing. A deep, delighted sound, his head thrown back. When he looked back at Al, that wolfish grin was planted firmly back in place, and Al's skin prickled. "And they told me your brother was the smartass," he said.
Valera flicked the syringe around between his fingers, and Al suddenly couldn't take his eyes off the thing. "You're right though, I will tell you." He pointed the syringe needle-first in Al's direction. "This right here is the second-greatest accomplishment of my nephew, the late bio-alchemist Anthony Valera."
"I don't know who that is," Al said slowly.
"Yes, yes you do." And all traces of humor were suddenly gone from Valera's face. "Because you, Alphonse, you and your brother are the reason he's dead." His eyes were hard. Al saw grief there.
And, beneath it, unmistakable rage.
"How is that possible if we've never met him?"
"Two years ago," Valera said, steadily, eyes never leaving Al's. "Crystal Ford. A little town thirty miles east of here. A young doctor by the name of Arthur Newbury. Yeah, you've met him alright. Your brother arrested him in on charges of murder and illegal alchemical experimentation on human subjects."
Huh?
The Newbury case? The name brought back vague memories-reports of people in the town dying of some mysterious, untraceable illness, their young doctor apparently unable to save them-the parcels of top-notch alchemical equipment that Ed had found on the doorstep of the doctor's home, express-shipped from Betterton-the doctor himself, handsome, dark-haired, maybe in his mid-twenties, but with a look of utter desperation and pain on his face as he stood in his own lab and leveled a handgun at Ed's chest-the resigned slump of the doctor's body as Al had scooped him up and carried him under one arm from the flames that were fast engulfing his clinic, knowing he'd earned himself a one-way ticket a Central prison cell.
"Arthur Newbury was Anthony Valera?" Al blinked. The Colonel had certainly never mentioned that to them, if he'd even known. "I didn't-"
"Really?" Valera looked a little startled again. "In that case, no wonder you're confused right now. You have your commander to blame for that. Of course, we, ah, persuaded the press to keep the Valera name out of the Newbury case, but…" His eyes narrowed. "I'm sure the military was in an uproar over it. In fact, I know they were. Frankly, I'm very surprised you and your brother never learned just who you'd caught."
Al was shaking his head. It made sense, though, that Mustang-and probably Hughes, for that matter-would try to keep Brother well out of the way of the entanglements of organized crime, to protect him, to protect them both from something so vast and deadly when they had another mission to accomplish. And he was grateful for that.
"Last I heard about your nephew, though," Al said, "he was in Central doing a life sentence. I never heard that he died."
Valera ignored that. He held up the syringe. "Do you know what this is now?"
And Al did know. "That's what he was using to kill all those people, isn't it?"
Valera nodded once, eyes focusing on the syringe with a gleam that could only be called pride. "It's brilliant, really. Completely untraceable. In a matter of weeks to a matter of days, depending on the victim's overall state of health, they start to die." He cracked a smile. "Of apparently natural causes. From what I understand, it causes fever, delirium, and the eventual failure of the vital organs, over an extended period of time. And to all but perhaps a fellow bio-alchemist, the cause of death would appear to be nothing more than a sudden, unfortunate illness." He tapped the syringe lightly against his arm. "This, Alphonse, is how I've been eliminating the most dangerous of my competitors for the past year and a half now."
"Are you a bio-alchemist?"
Valera shook his head. "I'm not an alchemist at all. But I have many in my employ. Dozens, who have been able to take the prototype that Anthony sent to me and replicate it."
"So he was working for you?" Al asked, suddenly feeling ill. "All those people…" Had their deaths merely been test-runs?
Valera suddenly looked thoughtful, staring down at the syringe. "Yes and no," he said. "I funded his research, and gave him the freedom to do as he pleased with it, provided he reported all of his progress back to me." He paused. "It was his dream to have a lab of his own. He was a good kid." For a moment, it seemed as though Valera had forgotten Al was there.
"Anything in particular he was researching?" Al ventured after a moment. Aside from serial killings…
And then Valera's head snapped up. His eyes were murderous. "Well you would know, wouldn't you," he spat, "if you and your brother hadn't burned down his lab along with all his notes and research."
tbc~