Fic for Gluttony
So I saw that Gluttony was bleching after more Hagaren fic, particularly of the long, Ed-less, and gen variety. And well, I might as well start posting this sucker - it's 15,000 words UND COUNTING already, and it's not like it's going to finish itself automagically :D
Title: Memento Mori (Part 1 of godknowshowmany)
Words: 2155
Genre: Angst/drama, Al-centric
“Again.” His master says, and stretches her arms out.
Alphonse pulls himself off the ground with a groan, feeling the pain in every bone in his body. How does she manage to even make his hair hurt, he wonders? Hair isn’t supposed to have feeling in it. He charges again and gets knocked into a bush for his efforts.
“Hell.” He curses under his breath, and flails desperately to extricate himself. The brambles claw at him viciously and draw small stripes along his cheeks as he flounders about, marking him small and weak and pathetic. Cat scratches, from the mother to her kitten.
The master towers over him suddenly and the sun disappears behind her looming visage, like some sort of heathen goddess looking down upon her supplicants. Her eyes are polished stones and they shine down at him with a fervent light, hard and horrible against the baby blue of the midday sky.
“Is that all you got?” She demands, slapping her hand firmly against the side of her leg. “It’s too slow!”
“I’m sorry, master.” He apologizes automatically, for the hundredth time, maybe thousandth. Her fury is endless, like a great force of nature, but he recognizes it for what it is - unbridled frustration, lashing out through any means it can. She doesn’t know how to explain this any better and it’s offending her sensibilities. His brother is like this too, hates to be misunderstood, and he pictures what Ed would look like hissing frantically back at her, waving his hands at her criticism. He just lies there and takes at she continues to spit at him, lets the words wash around him and disappear into static.
“You’re still thinking too much.” She says finally, eyes growing kinder, and he switches his brain on again for the meat of the discussion. “You act like you’re just watching yourself go through the motions. It has to be automatic.”
He nods carefully and files this bit of information away in his head, back with the rest of her complaints about his rigidity. This too, is nothing he hasn’t heard before.
“And you’re swinging too low. You’re down here.” She reminds, bending down to squat at his level. “You have to aim up.”
“Alright.” He nods, though he still doesn’t get it. Intellectually, he recognizes he is on a much lower level than she is. His body just punches down on its own, and his brain doesn’t factor anywhere into it.
It must have been the armor. It’s the only logical conclusion. The last time he sparred with her, he was nowhere near this incompetent. The armor was taller, after all, and immensely more broad - he’s heard enough reports to know that he would have more than matched even Sieg, and that’s ignoring the additional power it reportedly had. Lieutenant Colonel Havoc says that on his own, he once took out an entire battalion of armed men. Alphonse still can’t picture it. The image is beyond him.
He sinks down into a guarded squat position, wincing as the motion causes complaint from his sore knees. There will definitely be bruises tomorrow, and stiffness in his joints that won’t go away just with a hot bath. He wipes his eyes brusquely and leaps forward at her, not giving himself time to focus on his injuries. Again, he is parried. He’s beginning to understand the master’s frustration because he is feeling it himself, every time he gets kicked over like he’s nothing more than a rusty tin can.
“I said, higher!” The master growls, and he almost manages to get his arm high enough to block her roundhouse before it beans him in the head. The world explodes into stars and it is a few long minutes of sucking swill in the ditch before he wakes up enough to compliment himself on the near-save.
The master bends over and brushes her pants off, even though they are impeccable as always. It’s her silent way of apologizing, because she’s gotten so rough.
“That’s enough for today.” She pronounces, and Alphonse’s heart sinks. He jumps to his feet immediately, trying not to wobble too much, and stares at her angrily. He knows what he must look like, but he shakes his head anyways, and balls his hands into fists.
The master is not stupid. Her eyes narrow.
“Alphonse…”
“Please.” He begs, wiping the sweat from the side of his face. The bramble-scratches itches cheerily along his cheek and he rubs that too, feels it burn. Cheek of steel he tells himself firmly, and puts all of his energy into looking upset. “I’ve almost got the hang of it, honest.”
He squares his shoulders, and gives her his very best puppy-dog eyes.
“Please?”
“…very well.” She agrees reluctantly, and sinks down into a defensive position, obviously no longer willing to come at him herself. He grits his teeth and flies at her, forgetting everything but the feeling of motion.
He wonders if he’ll piss blood, again.
----
His urine is, in fact, normal-colored that evening, but his body is not - dark blue and black splotches pepper his torso and cover his limbs, like some sort of bizarre accident victim. The master has left him alone for the better part of the day, like she usually does when he’s pressed her into going too far, and he’s glad for the breathing space. It will take at least a couple of days for his muscles to recuperate, during which time he fully intends to spend holed up with his research. This way, at least he won’t have her up in the library nagging at him.
Which of course, was the point of the sparring in the first place. If you were going to get beat up, might as well be beaten to one’s advantage.
He takes another look at his face in the vanity mirror and sticks his tongue out at himself in satisfaction, amused at very idea of a “useful” beating. He prods at a stray bruise and is surprised at his own pained expression, as his purplish cheek is unusually tender. He thinks he remembers his brother doing exactly the same thing after being creamed in some street fight (where and why, he doesn’t know), and the sheer absurdity makes him laugh. It’s a bruise - of course it hurts. He makes a mental note to massage them later, that generally seems to make them heal faster.
He swivels this way and that, admiring the way his hair spills around his battered shoulders, perfect strands of dusty gold framing a less-than-perfect expanse of blue-and-purple skin. What kind of hair did his brother have, he wonders? He hasn’t cut his since the day he learned what had really happened to them, just like his brother hadn’t since the day they transmuted their mother. (Or so Winry tells him. He doesn’t remember that himself, of course, but it’s an interesting sentiment.) He likes the idea of his brother doing something so flamboyantly symbolic; it fits with his exhibitionism and his unerring, almost terrifying, determination. He wouldn’t have left it straight like this, though, he would have made it his own personal cross to bear…the sort of thing nobody could mistake for pure carelessness. Like his coats, which Auntie Pinako has a couple of: brilliant, notice-me color, blazoned with a stylized symbol of their desperation. Al has considered wearing a flamel like that himself, actually; he only doesn’t because the Stone is no longer the treasure he’s looking for.
What was it? Pinned up? Parted? Ponytail? He pulls the edges of his own hair forward where he can see them better, but the answer refuses to come. He can’t imagine pigtails, and anything more elaborate would just be improbable. His brother wears his heart on his sleeve, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely impractical. Nor that his fashion sense is entirely lacking. His brother wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with “girly” sorts of hairstyles, and that meant French twists were right out, as were chopsticks, hairpins, and twist ties. He would have looked good with his hair up, though - Winry had always joked that they were the only boys who looked as good with an up-do as she did.
Rat-tail? Top knot? Damn it, he can’t remember.
He goes to his desk drawer and opens it with shaky hands, yanks out the envelope hiding there with a panicked sort of urgency. There isn’t much inside - a few sheets of paper, a couple grainy photographs - but their sheer presence makes his rattled nerves start to settle. They are physical objects under his fingertips, and the weight of the paper is comforting. He spreads them out on the desktop and goes through them all individually in the unhurried manner of ritual, runs his eyes over each bit of evidence in turn. There is an expense slip with his brother’s signature scrawled on it, a piece of notebook with a half-drawn array on it. He mentally completes the rest of it in his head and envisions the staff it would make. What was Ed drawing this for? A walking stick? A weapon? It was in the master’s attic, so maybe it was just practice - lord knows he’s traced enough useless arrays himself. The next few pages are parts of a mission debriefing, smuggled to him by Lieutenant Ross, and he marvels at the angular messiness of his brother’s awful handwriting, and the strange dents here and there in the surface of the page. Bolt-marks, left by an automail hand. The report is professional but incredibly boring, and he only skims the actual content, not particularly interested in reading it again. Something about pirate activity in the eastern harbor, with very little information about how they were actually “suppressed”; Al suspects the unedited version would be a lot more interesting. Though there is an addendum at the bottom that reads, “In conclusion, the Colonel is advised a long walk off a short pier”, which he finds greatly amusing. It’s very much like his brother, getting in that one last, childish shot.
He moves onto the pictures and flips through them as well, racking his brain at each separate photograph, but as usual nothing surfaces. A mineshaft and smiling workers, with a sign marked “Youswell Labor Coalition, 1914”. A tiny girl, arms wrapped firmly around a shaggy sheepdog. Pictures of deserts and skylines and people he has never seen, and he stares at them all because they are part of the evidence, not because he has any particular attachment to the images. The Fullmetal Alchemist, righter of wrongs, savior of townships, birther of babies: these are all the things that his brother was, not anything his brother is. Sometimes, he even wonders how real it all was to begin with - or if the legend just picked up speed and became a person on its own. People love a champion, after all. Maybe his brother just provided the name.
And then there is the special picture, the one he likes the best, the one he always saves for last. There aren’t many pictures of the two of them together - his brother didn’t want any record of the armor on film - but this one was obviously candid, and they are facing the camera at an odd angle, posed as if startled. The expression on his brother’s face is absolutely livid, and he wonders who got beaten for taking this. Probably someone from the Lieutenant Colonel’s office. The background certainly looks like it could be Central.
He bends closer and runs his eyes around the heart-shaped curve of his brother’s face, the harsh angles of the strange armor seated next to him. Had he really been that large, or was his brother just that much smaller in comparison? Was his armor actually that pointy? He tries to remember what it was like to clank around with so much implied death, but as always it is completely impossible. Had he ever he run into people, in that spiky suit? What did they say? And the lines, etched into the corners of his brother’s face…more than the wider features, those damn lines let him know that his brother had aged. His eyes were so passionate, but the rest of him looked exhausted, and Al wonders how Ed could burn so incredibly hot on such very little fuel. Possibly he had collapsed immediately after this was taken, and Al had carried him home in the broad hands of the armor, all that anger transferred instantly into sleeping. Working hard and playing hard; he likes to think that his brother had lived like that.
Lives, he corrected himself. That he lives like that. He traces his fingers over the edge of Ed’s coat and notices the hairstyle, poking casually over one shoulder.
Braided ponytail.
He runs a hand through his hair, and idly considers how long it will be before he can try that himself.
---
Title: Memento Mori (Part 1 of godknowshowmany)
Words: 2155
Genre: Angst/drama, Al-centric
“Again.” His master says, and stretches her arms out.
Alphonse pulls himself off the ground with a groan, feeling the pain in every bone in his body. How does she manage to even make his hair hurt, he wonders? Hair isn’t supposed to have feeling in it. He charges again and gets knocked into a bush for his efforts.
“Hell.” He curses under his breath, and flails desperately to extricate himself. The brambles claw at him viciously and draw small stripes along his cheeks as he flounders about, marking him small and weak and pathetic. Cat scratches, from the mother to her kitten.
The master towers over him suddenly and the sun disappears behind her looming visage, like some sort of heathen goddess looking down upon her supplicants. Her eyes are polished stones and they shine down at him with a fervent light, hard and horrible against the baby blue of the midday sky.
“Is that all you got?” She demands, slapping her hand firmly against the side of her leg. “It’s too slow!”
“I’m sorry, master.” He apologizes automatically, for the hundredth time, maybe thousandth. Her fury is endless, like a great force of nature, but he recognizes it for what it is - unbridled frustration, lashing out through any means it can. She doesn’t know how to explain this any better and it’s offending her sensibilities. His brother is like this too, hates to be misunderstood, and he pictures what Ed would look like hissing frantically back at her, waving his hands at her criticism. He just lies there and takes at she continues to spit at him, lets the words wash around him and disappear into static.
“You’re still thinking too much.” She says finally, eyes growing kinder, and he switches his brain on again for the meat of the discussion. “You act like you’re just watching yourself go through the motions. It has to be automatic.”
He nods carefully and files this bit of information away in his head, back with the rest of her complaints about his rigidity. This too, is nothing he hasn’t heard before.
“And you’re swinging too low. You’re down here.” She reminds, bending down to squat at his level. “You have to aim up.”
“Alright.” He nods, though he still doesn’t get it. Intellectually, he recognizes he is on a much lower level than she is. His body just punches down on its own, and his brain doesn’t factor anywhere into it.
It must have been the armor. It’s the only logical conclusion. The last time he sparred with her, he was nowhere near this incompetent. The armor was taller, after all, and immensely more broad - he’s heard enough reports to know that he would have more than matched even Sieg, and that’s ignoring the additional power it reportedly had. Lieutenant Colonel Havoc says that on his own, he once took out an entire battalion of armed men. Alphonse still can’t picture it. The image is beyond him.
He sinks down into a guarded squat position, wincing as the motion causes complaint from his sore knees. There will definitely be bruises tomorrow, and stiffness in his joints that won’t go away just with a hot bath. He wipes his eyes brusquely and leaps forward at her, not giving himself time to focus on his injuries. Again, he is parried. He’s beginning to understand the master’s frustration because he is feeling it himself, every time he gets kicked over like he’s nothing more than a rusty tin can.
“I said, higher!” The master growls, and he almost manages to get his arm high enough to block her roundhouse before it beans him in the head. The world explodes into stars and it is a few long minutes of sucking swill in the ditch before he wakes up enough to compliment himself on the near-save.
The master bends over and brushes her pants off, even though they are impeccable as always. It’s her silent way of apologizing, because she’s gotten so rough.
“That’s enough for today.” She pronounces, and Alphonse’s heart sinks. He jumps to his feet immediately, trying not to wobble too much, and stares at her angrily. He knows what he must look like, but he shakes his head anyways, and balls his hands into fists.
The master is not stupid. Her eyes narrow.
“Alphonse…”
“Please.” He begs, wiping the sweat from the side of his face. The bramble-scratches itches cheerily along his cheek and he rubs that too, feels it burn. Cheek of steel he tells himself firmly, and puts all of his energy into looking upset. “I’ve almost got the hang of it, honest.”
He squares his shoulders, and gives her his very best puppy-dog eyes.
“Please?”
“…very well.” She agrees reluctantly, and sinks down into a defensive position, obviously no longer willing to come at him herself. He grits his teeth and flies at her, forgetting everything but the feeling of motion.
He wonders if he’ll piss blood, again.
----
His urine is, in fact, normal-colored that evening, but his body is not - dark blue and black splotches pepper his torso and cover his limbs, like some sort of bizarre accident victim. The master has left him alone for the better part of the day, like she usually does when he’s pressed her into going too far, and he’s glad for the breathing space. It will take at least a couple of days for his muscles to recuperate, during which time he fully intends to spend holed up with his research. This way, at least he won’t have her up in the library nagging at him.
Which of course, was the point of the sparring in the first place. If you were going to get beat up, might as well be beaten to one’s advantage.
He takes another look at his face in the vanity mirror and sticks his tongue out at himself in satisfaction, amused at very idea of a “useful” beating. He prods at a stray bruise and is surprised at his own pained expression, as his purplish cheek is unusually tender. He thinks he remembers his brother doing exactly the same thing after being creamed in some street fight (where and why, he doesn’t know), and the sheer absurdity makes him laugh. It’s a bruise - of course it hurts. He makes a mental note to massage them later, that generally seems to make them heal faster.
He swivels this way and that, admiring the way his hair spills around his battered shoulders, perfect strands of dusty gold framing a less-than-perfect expanse of blue-and-purple skin. What kind of hair did his brother have, he wonders? He hasn’t cut his since the day he learned what had really happened to them, just like his brother hadn’t since the day they transmuted their mother. (Or so Winry tells him. He doesn’t remember that himself, of course, but it’s an interesting sentiment.) He likes the idea of his brother doing something so flamboyantly symbolic; it fits with his exhibitionism and his unerring, almost terrifying, determination. He wouldn’t have left it straight like this, though, he would have made it his own personal cross to bear…the sort of thing nobody could mistake for pure carelessness. Like his coats, which Auntie Pinako has a couple of: brilliant, notice-me color, blazoned with a stylized symbol of their desperation. Al has considered wearing a flamel like that himself, actually; he only doesn’t because the Stone is no longer the treasure he’s looking for.
What was it? Pinned up? Parted? Ponytail? He pulls the edges of his own hair forward where he can see them better, but the answer refuses to come. He can’t imagine pigtails, and anything more elaborate would just be improbable. His brother wears his heart on his sleeve, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely impractical. Nor that his fashion sense is entirely lacking. His brother wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with “girly” sorts of hairstyles, and that meant French twists were right out, as were chopsticks, hairpins, and twist ties. He would have looked good with his hair up, though - Winry had always joked that they were the only boys who looked as good with an up-do as she did.
Rat-tail? Top knot? Damn it, he can’t remember.
He goes to his desk drawer and opens it with shaky hands, yanks out the envelope hiding there with a panicked sort of urgency. There isn’t much inside - a few sheets of paper, a couple grainy photographs - but their sheer presence makes his rattled nerves start to settle. They are physical objects under his fingertips, and the weight of the paper is comforting. He spreads them out on the desktop and goes through them all individually in the unhurried manner of ritual, runs his eyes over each bit of evidence in turn. There is an expense slip with his brother’s signature scrawled on it, a piece of notebook with a half-drawn array on it. He mentally completes the rest of it in his head and envisions the staff it would make. What was Ed drawing this for? A walking stick? A weapon? It was in the master’s attic, so maybe it was just practice - lord knows he’s traced enough useless arrays himself. The next few pages are parts of a mission debriefing, smuggled to him by Lieutenant Ross, and he marvels at the angular messiness of his brother’s awful handwriting, and the strange dents here and there in the surface of the page. Bolt-marks, left by an automail hand. The report is professional but incredibly boring, and he only skims the actual content, not particularly interested in reading it again. Something about pirate activity in the eastern harbor, with very little information about how they were actually “suppressed”; Al suspects the unedited version would be a lot more interesting. Though there is an addendum at the bottom that reads, “In conclusion, the Colonel is advised a long walk off a short pier”, which he finds greatly amusing. It’s very much like his brother, getting in that one last, childish shot.
He moves onto the pictures and flips through them as well, racking his brain at each separate photograph, but as usual nothing surfaces. A mineshaft and smiling workers, with a sign marked “Youswell Labor Coalition, 1914”. A tiny girl, arms wrapped firmly around a shaggy sheepdog. Pictures of deserts and skylines and people he has never seen, and he stares at them all because they are part of the evidence, not because he has any particular attachment to the images. The Fullmetal Alchemist, righter of wrongs, savior of townships, birther of babies: these are all the things that his brother was, not anything his brother is. Sometimes, he even wonders how real it all was to begin with - or if the legend just picked up speed and became a person on its own. People love a champion, after all. Maybe his brother just provided the name.
And then there is the special picture, the one he likes the best, the one he always saves for last. There aren’t many pictures of the two of them together - his brother didn’t want any record of the armor on film - but this one was obviously candid, and they are facing the camera at an odd angle, posed as if startled. The expression on his brother’s face is absolutely livid, and he wonders who got beaten for taking this. Probably someone from the Lieutenant Colonel’s office. The background certainly looks like it could be Central.
He bends closer and runs his eyes around the heart-shaped curve of his brother’s face, the harsh angles of the strange armor seated next to him. Had he really been that large, or was his brother just that much smaller in comparison? Was his armor actually that pointy? He tries to remember what it was like to clank around with so much implied death, but as always it is completely impossible. Had he ever he run into people, in that spiky suit? What did they say? And the lines, etched into the corners of his brother’s face…more than the wider features, those damn lines let him know that his brother had aged. His eyes were so passionate, but the rest of him looked exhausted, and Al wonders how Ed could burn so incredibly hot on such very little fuel. Possibly he had collapsed immediately after this was taken, and Al had carried him home in the broad hands of the armor, all that anger transferred instantly into sleeping. Working hard and playing hard; he likes to think that his brother had lived like that.
Lives, he corrected himself. That he lives like that. He traces his fingers over the edge of Ed’s coat and notices the hairstyle, poking casually over one shoulder.
Braided ponytail.
He runs a hand through his hair, and idly considers how long it will be before he can try that himself.
---