Title: Pay Up
Word count: 698 (so you can guess why the max. 500 bugged me)
Series: Manga
Characters: Edward, chimeras
Summary: Never say ‘never again’, sooner or later it will come back to haunt you.
Warnings: Post-series, dark theme
Rating: PG
A/N: I had to cut into this to get it down to 500 for the
fma-fic-contest, wasn't completely happy with that, so here is the uncut version
Whether it was some stubbornly clinging naïveté that even Briggs hadn’t cured him off or just plain thoughtlessness he wasn’t sure. When they’d planned this project, neither one had apparently foreseen this possibility, not until it became reality less than fifteen minutes ago.
Useless idiot.
Their payment to all and the world had been a straightforward plan as only Elrics could come up with: learn enough to topple the principles which governed the one-way biological chimera transmutations and then reverse it. It was a good plan, he’d thought at the time: simple and theoretically fail-safe. A long-term challenge, he thrived on those, usually.
For one shameful moment Ed wished that Heinkel hadn’t gone ahead to meet his contact, who knew someone who could get them across the border with Creta ‘without waiting forever on fancy paperwork, real cheap at that and no questions asked.’ Or likewise that Darius hadn’t stayed on for another week or so in West City enjoy all good things civilization had to offer. Because if either of his bodyguards had been at his side, he might have been able to back out of the distasteful task he was faced with. However, he was disgusted with himself for even thinking such cowardly thoughts. He’d hoped he’d grown out of the habit of foisting his problems off onto others. Suck it up and clean up the mess, Elric.
Right, he could do this. Scratch that, he had to do this. There was no humane alternative, simply because his and Al’s research was only on the rails for three years now and that was hardly enough to form mere hypothesises, let alone achieve results or a feasible solution for this type of situation. Maybe, hopefully, in another two to seven years, most likely, after thorough testing it could become an option (though in this case, even that would have been a longshot.) They’d anticipated both the years that were to be spent as well as coming across complications, it was only reasonable, inevitable, and they were young, they had time.
However the only still breathing blasphemy against nature in the now abandoned of other living things lab that stared up at him with huge, luminous eyes, snarling in fear and yowling in agony didn’t have that kind of luxury. It had another unbearable week and a half left at most.
Just from the past nine minutes in which Ed had first found its documentation and then observed it, he could tell the reshaping of most organs had been botched. The coughed up blood, pronounced emaciation and apparent inability to shift from its animal form were clear indicators. It was both a small miracle and a curse that the tiny fox chimera had survived to this day (according to its file - now bunched up in Ed’s quivering right hand - four days into its new coexistence, before it had just been a wild fox…and a little boy whom no one would miss.)
This pitiful creature, previously one of many Cretan war orphans, couldn’t be much older than Edward’s own still lisping little tyke. Perhaps his senior by a year or two.
Too late. Helpless. Again.
In animal terror the chimera bit down on the first hand he reached into the cage, but when petted with the other hand on its head and talked to soothingly, the young, traumatised boy took over and desperately snuggled into Ed’s gentle administrations. The still young man swallowed hard, steeling his resolve. There was no other way. Even if he took the little thing out of here and treated it well for those remaining few days, each breath its shuddering body drew would still be an relentless torture.
Did Scar feel this way with her?
His left hand, now bearing bite marks but released from previously tight jaws clenched around a surgical knife.
I will never forget.
The kit was completely unaware and didn’t register any pain beyond its own excruciating existence. It only breathed a sigh of relief - unnervingly, not unlike a sleepy toddler - when its strained heart stopped beating after the steel tool entered it. Edward didn’t move from his spot, nor stopped petting its soft head until rigor mortis set in.
A/N: If you're wondering how this happened with that prompt, I can only say I obviously immediately thought of Scar, which led me to Nina, which is how I ended up exploring Ed & Al's travel/chimera project.
So, yay for sudden inspiration (which almost never happens to me, hence why this was written off the bat, even though some of you are still owed fic. ^^; )