(no subject)
Title: Suffering Youth
Author: jaceekei
Recipient: bob_fish
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Olivier Armstrong, Alex Louis Armstrong
Summary: Olivier Armstrong is sixteen in a family of ageless traditions and expectations to which she doesn't necessarily wish to conform. Sixteen is Olivier's year of being alone, of venturing out of the mansion, of learning the intricacies of the world and having knowledge forced upon her.
Notes: Title comes from the Benjamin Haydon quote, "Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence," which I thought pretty much sums up key facets of Olivier's philosophy.
It is Olivier's sixteenth birthday, and whereas Alex will officially be named the intended heir to the Armstrong estate, she is presented with an Armstrong heirloom: a sword, crafted by one of her many famous ancestors. Olivier has not been foolishly hoping to be named heir, because even at sixteen she entertains none of the fancies of girls her age and has always known that, despite her superiority to Alex, the estate will be passed down through the male progeny.
She has not allowed herself to hope, but as her hand closes over the cool hilt of the sword she makes a promise to herself that will prove as cutting and unforgiving as the glinting metal. Olivier swears she will sit at the head of the Armstrong family, and that it will be defended by her strength of will before she will allow it to crumble from Alex's weakness and overt dependence on interlocked geometric figures. As she pulls the sword from its cushioned resting place, she catches Alex's eye, and with a practiced swing brings the sword slicing through the air to point at him, sitting across the table from her. He tries to hide the stiffening of his muscles, the widening of his eyes, but Olivier knows her brother well, too well for his show of unaffectedness to fool her. She smirks in response, sheathing the sword, and repeats her internal promise as Alex stands and begins to shout about how proud he is of his eldest sister. He makes a move at his shirt front, as if he intends this to be the premiere of the move she has caught him practicing so many times in front of his mirror, but at the last moment he aborts the gesture, perhaps feeling he is not yet built strongly enough to justify the display, and not yet brave enough to meet Olivier's high expectations.
---
At sixteen Olivier declares her intent to join the military forces of Amestris upon her next birthday, a year earlier than the move would be expected of her. Not one of the members of her family are surprised, for Olivier has squandered little time in lazing about the Armstrong estate, enjoying the luxuries provided by her name and fortune while she is still young enough for age to be an excuse. She is not like her three sisters, who at their various ages seem content with rich fabrics and idle time. Both Strongine and Amue seem as intent as young Alex at perfecting their physical forms, and neither has showed a vested interest in the world outside of the manor. And Catherine, though still a child, appears to be following in their footsteps.
Olivier tries to engage with Catherine, tries to relate to her, tries to mold her into a sister she'll one day be proud to have, but all Catherine wants to do is play with Alex. Olivier dismisses it as bad taste and stops trying.
Instead, Olivier ventures out of the mansion, having learnt all she feels she can from the vast libraries inside its walls, having become as strong as the hammer and anvil of her combat instructor's blows against the hard marble floor can make her. She visits the National Central Library and reads about her country, about the Ishvalans and their monotheistic religion, about the prophets of Wellsley who predicted the end of the world, only to have their own brought to a swift close when the disruption caused by their prophecies necessitated military intervention. She reads the few books she can find about Xing and Drachma and Aerugo and the states that lie beyond even their borders, doing her best to comprehend the nations of people contained within her own country as well as those without.
After all, Olivier has never been one to aim low, and figures that leading the Armstrong family would be a perfect platform for leading the people of Amestris.
---
Sixteen is the first time that Alex saves her life. It will not be the only time that he does so throughout the years, but over the passing of time it will happen infrequently enough that she will find herself always as surprised as the first time, and the long intervals between will mean that her slightly positive shift of opinion of him will never last very long.
The streets of Central are not always as safe as the government would have its citizens believe, but to Olivier this means very little. Having spent the past hours -- and in fact weeks and months -- reading about the world, she has begun to believe that she understands it, that she has progressed beyond the inherited naivete of being rich and brilliant, and can now comprehend what it is to be a typical citizen of Amestris. She has allowed herself to forget, while reading the observations of wealthy intellectuals on poverty, that, although she does not require or relish her rich garments in the same fashion as her sisters, she still wears them in her travels throughout the city.
At sixteen, Olivier is a formidable enough fighter in armed combat to best opponents her superior in both size and experience, but she is also young, and like all young people she is overly attached to novelty. Fooling herself into thinking she understands the world is not Olivier's only self-deception at sixteen, for she has also let her dependence on her sword, the most important gift she has ever received (and her favorite), to pass unnoticed by her usually critical self-evaluations. To admit that she has come to rely on a weapon and thereby neglected her unarmed training would be to admit to a softening as offensive to her as Alex's weakness, all the worse in that it is her own shortcoming. Olivier is too mature for sixteen, yet she is still young, still fallible, still yet to be confronted with any serious failure. She has never made a mistake as large as the two she makes when she's sixteen: to think herself seasoned and capable in the streets of Central. To her, it is no matter that the National Central Library forbids civilians from carrying weapons within its stacks, no matter that she does not wear her sword on the Central streets as she does in the halls of the Armstrong estate.
The six men that set upon her are used to taking advantage of the mistakes of the privileged. They are not used to the ferocity of an Armstrong, perfected as it has been by generations. But not being used to something is not the same as being unprepared for it, and she has just incapacitated her fourth target when there is an echoing click, the crackling sound of guns being cocked in stereo.
Olivier is sixteen, learning what it is to be wrong and simultaneously the value of pride in combating terror. With a disinterested gesture she sweeps her long hair back and straightens into the familiar posture of a soldier and an Armstrong. Her eyes glint dangerously at her attackers over her raised chin, and for a moment of horrible youthful optimism -- that kind that strikes even the most pragmatic when there's nothing left to keep the iron in their backbones -- she thinks they will relent in the face of four downed comrades and torrential determination.
But her attackers are not sixteen, and they are well-versed in the consequences of leaving a witness alive. There's a crack of a gun being fired and she finds herself horrifically, morbidly fascinated by how loud it is, how the noise seems to vibrate through the cells in her body. The shock of it throws her off her feet and she is sure that, at sixteen, Olivier Armstrong is dying. But the ice that runs through her veins is backed by Armstrong steel, and she raises her head for a perversely necessary last glance at her killers.
It is hard to process their faces, mainly because she cannot see them. Instead, they appear to have transformed into a wall of rock the color of the sidewalk, marred with the patterns of transmutation. It is a wall that she cannot comprehend until she catches a sparkle in the corner of her eye and connects it with the upheaval that caused her collapse -- not, in fact, the blow of a weapon, but instead the ground literally being ripped from her feet. There is a flash of white, and then her view is further blocked by the white fabric of a button-down shirt as it falls onto her head and gets tangled around her neck. Though muffled, she can hear Alex's deep voice bellowing, "How dare you attack my dearest sister!" His voice cracks on "dearest," and "sister" consequently emerges slightly hesitantly, as if Alex is worried that puberty will ruin his public debut.
One of the men scoffs, something about a kid playing at alchemy, and Olivier can practically feel Alex swelling, complete with blatantly obvious flexing gestures.
"I am Alex Louis Armstrong and my elegant and effective alchemical technique has been passed through the Armstrong line for generations!"
Under the confines of the shirt, Olivier rolls her eyes at the slightly mangled familiar phrases, remembering Alex trumpeting them back at their father from a variety of contorted positions, believing the exercise to be one on maintaining composure and pride in compromising situations. Olivier knows that it was really his willingness to take orders being tested. She struggles to pull the shirt off her head to better assess the situation, but the buttons have caught in her hair and she finds herself untangling knots while the sounds of brutal combat reach her ears. As much as Olivier wishes to exact her own pound of flesh from her assailants and prevent Alex from receiving credit for the victory, she is grudgingly forced to admit that she'd be more of a hindrance than a useful combatant.
She hears and feels the by-now familiar thud of a body hitting the pavement, followed by the quick slaps of running feet on the hard panels of the walkway. She has made enough progress in untangling herself to see that a fifth man has joined his unconscious comrades in a crumpled heap on the pavement, and to catch a fleeting flash of fabric as the tail of the sixth attacker's cloak whips around the corner.
Alex kneels beside her as she ruthlessly rips the last knot out of her hair. Finally free of the constraint of the shirt, Olivier pushes herself to her feet, glaring at Alex.
"You let him get away," she yells in her most authoritative voice. Her brother stumbles to his feet and backs away from the fire in her eyes.
"Sister! I had to make sure you were uninjured! The grief I would feel if you were harmed --"
"Would only further display how weak you are," she finishes for him savagely, ignoring his shocked stare. "What about all the injuries he will cause as a free man?"
Alex is fourteen, and already thoroughly muscled, both taller and wider than his sister. He is fourteen and is also far more susceptible to foolish mistakes. Perhaps this is why is jaw sets, and why he leans down to throw Olivier over his shoulder as if he intends to carry her home.
When he finds himself bruised and alone in the center of the street, watching Olivier's back as she stalks her way home, Alex is surprised at his lack of surprise, and thinks he is only just now beginning to understand the truth about his sister.
Olivier is sixteen, strong as stone and cold as ice, and her implacable resolve will change the nation. Whether it wants to change or not.
Author: jaceekei
Recipient: bob_fish
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Olivier Armstrong, Alex Louis Armstrong
Summary: Olivier Armstrong is sixteen in a family of ageless traditions and expectations to which she doesn't necessarily wish to conform. Sixteen is Olivier's year of being alone, of venturing out of the mansion, of learning the intricacies of the world and having knowledge forced upon her.
Notes: Title comes from the Benjamin Haydon quote, "Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence," which I thought pretty much sums up key facets of Olivier's philosophy.
It is Olivier's sixteenth birthday, and whereas Alex will officially be named the intended heir to the Armstrong estate, she is presented with an Armstrong heirloom: a sword, crafted by one of her many famous ancestors. Olivier has not been foolishly hoping to be named heir, because even at sixteen she entertains none of the fancies of girls her age and has always known that, despite her superiority to Alex, the estate will be passed down through the male progeny.
She has not allowed herself to hope, but as her hand closes over the cool hilt of the sword she makes a promise to herself that will prove as cutting and unforgiving as the glinting metal. Olivier swears she will sit at the head of the Armstrong family, and that it will be defended by her strength of will before she will allow it to crumble from Alex's weakness and overt dependence on interlocked geometric figures. As she pulls the sword from its cushioned resting place, she catches Alex's eye, and with a practiced swing brings the sword slicing through the air to point at him, sitting across the table from her. He tries to hide the stiffening of his muscles, the widening of his eyes, but Olivier knows her brother well, too well for his show of unaffectedness to fool her. She smirks in response, sheathing the sword, and repeats her internal promise as Alex stands and begins to shout about how proud he is of his eldest sister. He makes a move at his shirt front, as if he intends this to be the premiere of the move she has caught him practicing so many times in front of his mirror, but at the last moment he aborts the gesture, perhaps feeling he is not yet built strongly enough to justify the display, and not yet brave enough to meet Olivier's high expectations.
---
At sixteen Olivier declares her intent to join the military forces of Amestris upon her next birthday, a year earlier than the move would be expected of her. Not one of the members of her family are surprised, for Olivier has squandered little time in lazing about the Armstrong estate, enjoying the luxuries provided by her name and fortune while she is still young enough for age to be an excuse. She is not like her three sisters, who at their various ages seem content with rich fabrics and idle time. Both Strongine and Amue seem as intent as young Alex at perfecting their physical forms, and neither has showed a vested interest in the world outside of the manor. And Catherine, though still a child, appears to be following in their footsteps.
Olivier tries to engage with Catherine, tries to relate to her, tries to mold her into a sister she'll one day be proud to have, but all Catherine wants to do is play with Alex. Olivier dismisses it as bad taste and stops trying.
Instead, Olivier ventures out of the mansion, having learnt all she feels she can from the vast libraries inside its walls, having become as strong as the hammer and anvil of her combat instructor's blows against the hard marble floor can make her. She visits the National Central Library and reads about her country, about the Ishvalans and their monotheistic religion, about the prophets of Wellsley who predicted the end of the world, only to have their own brought to a swift close when the disruption caused by their prophecies necessitated military intervention. She reads the few books she can find about Xing and Drachma and Aerugo and the states that lie beyond even their borders, doing her best to comprehend the nations of people contained within her own country as well as those without.
After all, Olivier has never been one to aim low, and figures that leading the Armstrong family would be a perfect platform for leading the people of Amestris.
---
Sixteen is the first time that Alex saves her life. It will not be the only time that he does so throughout the years, but over the passing of time it will happen infrequently enough that she will find herself always as surprised as the first time, and the long intervals between will mean that her slightly positive shift of opinion of him will never last very long.
The streets of Central are not always as safe as the government would have its citizens believe, but to Olivier this means very little. Having spent the past hours -- and in fact weeks and months -- reading about the world, she has begun to believe that she understands it, that she has progressed beyond the inherited naivete of being rich and brilliant, and can now comprehend what it is to be a typical citizen of Amestris. She has allowed herself to forget, while reading the observations of wealthy intellectuals on poverty, that, although she does not require or relish her rich garments in the same fashion as her sisters, she still wears them in her travels throughout the city.
At sixteen, Olivier is a formidable enough fighter in armed combat to best opponents her superior in both size and experience, but she is also young, and like all young people she is overly attached to novelty. Fooling herself into thinking she understands the world is not Olivier's only self-deception at sixteen, for she has also let her dependence on her sword, the most important gift she has ever received (and her favorite), to pass unnoticed by her usually critical self-evaluations. To admit that she has come to rely on a weapon and thereby neglected her unarmed training would be to admit to a softening as offensive to her as Alex's weakness, all the worse in that it is her own shortcoming. Olivier is too mature for sixteen, yet she is still young, still fallible, still yet to be confronted with any serious failure. She has never made a mistake as large as the two she makes when she's sixteen: to think herself seasoned and capable in the streets of Central. To her, it is no matter that the National Central Library forbids civilians from carrying weapons within its stacks, no matter that she does not wear her sword on the Central streets as she does in the halls of the Armstrong estate.
The six men that set upon her are used to taking advantage of the mistakes of the privileged. They are not used to the ferocity of an Armstrong, perfected as it has been by generations. But not being used to something is not the same as being unprepared for it, and she has just incapacitated her fourth target when there is an echoing click, the crackling sound of guns being cocked in stereo.
Olivier is sixteen, learning what it is to be wrong and simultaneously the value of pride in combating terror. With a disinterested gesture she sweeps her long hair back and straightens into the familiar posture of a soldier and an Armstrong. Her eyes glint dangerously at her attackers over her raised chin, and for a moment of horrible youthful optimism -- that kind that strikes even the most pragmatic when there's nothing left to keep the iron in their backbones -- she thinks they will relent in the face of four downed comrades and torrential determination.
But her attackers are not sixteen, and they are well-versed in the consequences of leaving a witness alive. There's a crack of a gun being fired and she finds herself horrifically, morbidly fascinated by how loud it is, how the noise seems to vibrate through the cells in her body. The shock of it throws her off her feet and she is sure that, at sixteen, Olivier Armstrong is dying. But the ice that runs through her veins is backed by Armstrong steel, and she raises her head for a perversely necessary last glance at her killers.
It is hard to process their faces, mainly because she cannot see them. Instead, they appear to have transformed into a wall of rock the color of the sidewalk, marred with the patterns of transmutation. It is a wall that she cannot comprehend until she catches a sparkle in the corner of her eye and connects it with the upheaval that caused her collapse -- not, in fact, the blow of a weapon, but instead the ground literally being ripped from her feet. There is a flash of white, and then her view is further blocked by the white fabric of a button-down shirt as it falls onto her head and gets tangled around her neck. Though muffled, she can hear Alex's deep voice bellowing, "How dare you attack my dearest sister!" His voice cracks on "dearest," and "sister" consequently emerges slightly hesitantly, as if Alex is worried that puberty will ruin his public debut.
One of the men scoffs, something about a kid playing at alchemy, and Olivier can practically feel Alex swelling, complete with blatantly obvious flexing gestures.
"I am Alex Louis Armstrong and my elegant and effective alchemical technique has been passed through the Armstrong line for generations!"
Under the confines of the shirt, Olivier rolls her eyes at the slightly mangled familiar phrases, remembering Alex trumpeting them back at their father from a variety of contorted positions, believing the exercise to be one on maintaining composure and pride in compromising situations. Olivier knows that it was really his willingness to take orders being tested. She struggles to pull the shirt off her head to better assess the situation, but the buttons have caught in her hair and she finds herself untangling knots while the sounds of brutal combat reach her ears. As much as Olivier wishes to exact her own pound of flesh from her assailants and prevent Alex from receiving credit for the victory, she is grudgingly forced to admit that she'd be more of a hindrance than a useful combatant.
She hears and feels the by-now familiar thud of a body hitting the pavement, followed by the quick slaps of running feet on the hard panels of the walkway. She has made enough progress in untangling herself to see that a fifth man has joined his unconscious comrades in a crumpled heap on the pavement, and to catch a fleeting flash of fabric as the tail of the sixth attacker's cloak whips around the corner.
Alex kneels beside her as she ruthlessly rips the last knot out of her hair. Finally free of the constraint of the shirt, Olivier pushes herself to her feet, glaring at Alex.
"You let him get away," she yells in her most authoritative voice. Her brother stumbles to his feet and backs away from the fire in her eyes.
"Sister! I had to make sure you were uninjured! The grief I would feel if you were harmed --"
"Would only further display how weak you are," she finishes for him savagely, ignoring his shocked stare. "What about all the injuries he will cause as a free man?"
Alex is fourteen, and already thoroughly muscled, both taller and wider than his sister. He is fourteen and is also far more susceptible to foolish mistakes. Perhaps this is why is jaw sets, and why he leans down to throw Olivier over his shoulder as if he intends to carry her home.
When he finds himself bruised and alone in the center of the street, watching Olivier's back as she stalks her way home, Alex is surprised at his lack of surprise, and thinks he is only just now beginning to understand the truth about his sister.
Olivier is sixteen, strong as stone and cold as ice, and her implacable resolve will change the nation. Whether it wants to change or not.