Nightmare Ch. 15
Anton hooked the chain around his neck. He shuddered at wearing the thing once again, seeing it as it rested against his bare chest. The medallion didn’t look like anything special, just a gold medallion on a thick gold chain. It stood out more on his fair skin than silver probably would have, but he hadn’t been the one to create it, so the choice of how noticeable it would be had been up to Dante. With the piece of tooth Envy had retrieved from Anton’s bedroom, she had made it to look as it did. To Anton, it still felt like a dog collar.
He wondered if anyone would be able to tell, not about the medallion. That was easily hidden beneath a military uniform. He wondered if they would see that he hadn’t slept, didn’t look as immaculate as usual, and looked like the weight of the world had been put back on his back.
No, not the weight of the world, just the weight of Gregor.
A small part of him wanted to laugh at that, remembering how he’d been so bitter at and embarrassed by his brother he’d made fun of him to friends in his early adolescent years. Almost immediately, the feeling faded and he practically kicked himself. If he was so easy to still make fun of, why had he tried to bring him back?
Anton almost went to touch the medallion, but thought better of it. He was long since past sentimentality. Still, he couldn’t help but let his mind wander when the necklace shifted beneath his shirt.
“Thank you, Mrs. Swanson,” Anton said, looking up at his neighbor.
“Think nothing of it,” she said, packaging up the last of the food.
“I’ll bring these back over as soon as we’re done,” Anton said.
She smiled and handed the ten-year-old a muffin. “Here you are. Why don’t you eat this now? Before supper.”
Anton tried to argue, but knew better; it was hard to get a full meal, even when Mrs. Swanson prepared it, with Gregor eating with him. He thanked her and took a bite out of the top with a smile. Blackberry, with extra sugar sprinkled on the cap of the muffin. “Are you sure you can’t make muffins with just the tops?” he asked, not for the first time. “It’s the best part.” Particularly with the care that Mrs. Swanson took that Anton’s mother couldn’t even dream of on something so simple as a sweet.
Mrs. Swanson just smiled and began dishing out supper for herself and her daughter Julia. The woman knew by now that Anton would not stay to eat with them and didn’t ask. There wasn’t any point in it. Mrs. Swanson was good enough to cook their food for them so they didn’t have to eat it straight out of a can or have Anton risk cooking on his own. There was no reason in the boy’s mind why they should have to go without much of their own meal as well.
He’d only just finished eating the top of his muffin when he heard Julia telling Gregor not to do something. Before Anton could make it into the other room, there was a howl from his older brother.
“He tried to eat the bookends!” Julia told Anton and her mother.
“The bread was hard, Anton,” Gregor said as he spit out a piece of broken tooth, still holding the plaster bread loaf that supported some of their books. The boy picked up the tooth chip from the ground and put it in his pocket. “My tooth.”
“It’s okay, Gregor,” Anton reached up and rubbed over his brother’s shaven head-after Gregor had resorted to eating his own hair once, their mother had decided it was best just to shave it off. “It’s okay. The tooth fairy will come. We’ll put this under your pillow tonight, and she will leave you something.”
“Chocolate?” Gregor asked, eagerly. All thoughts of being upset were lost at that. “Lots of it?”
“Maybe some chocolate,” Anton said. He still had some left from a party in school, so he knew he could put it under his brother’s pillow.
Gregor smiled, his front tooth now slightly chipped. It was only noticeable if you looked, but it wouldn’t matter.
Anton had to force a smile because he knew that his mother would find out, most likely by Gregor telling her, and Anton would pay for it. He hadn’t watched his brother well enough. He took him out of their house and didn’t watch him. Anton hoped his mother wouldn’t hit his chest again. It was still bruised from last time when his teachers called her up at school for falling asleep in class. It didn’t matter then that he hadn’t been able to sleep because she and the man she’d brought home had been so loud that he couldn’t rest. Anton should have just done better, been better. Then and now.
He saw the look of pity in Mrs. Swanson’s eyes as he left the apartment, arms laden with food that Gregor practically tackled him for.
Jean Havoc shouted out so loudly he actually managed to startle Olivier. “Haha!” he half-laughed, half-spoke. “He’s been pardoned! The furher pardoned him!”
Olivier took a deep breath and looked at her younger lover. “Who was pardoned?” she asked.
“The boss!” He grinned over at her. “And all the reasons, his age, his immaturity, his lack of supervision, they all work for Al too.”
Despite her “ice queen” reputation, the kind of joy on Jean’s face was contagious and she managed a small smile, regardless of her own feelings for those who tried human transmutation. “Let me see it, to see if we can draft something up for the brother.”
Jean paused at that, and Olivier felt her tone might have been caught even if her face had still been wearing the tiny smile. “You need to meet them,” he said, the broad smile quickly fading. “You’d understand better.”
“They were children when they performed human transmutation. I understand that much,” she said. “I’ve heard the stories.”
“No,” Jean said. “You’re helping them, but you’ve never met them. There’s a reason those of us who know them all are willing to do so much for them and the chief. They made a mistake and they’ve made up for it.”
Olivier sighed. She enjoyed Jean for his enthusiasm, but she still had her doubts. She knew enough about alchemy from her family background, even if she didn’t practice the science herself. To perform human transmutation was an unforgivable act, and now that she knew exactly what it created, it seemed more so than ever before. And yet, it seemed many had forgiven the Elrics. She simply had difficulty finding out what kind of circumstances would bring a person to consider playing God.
“Oh God,” Anton said, holding his arm to his nose to block out the awful smell. “Gregor?” The thirteen-year-old yelled as he tried to tuck in his shirt. “Gregor!” He followed the smell. It was like vomit intensified with strong liquor-he was familiar with the smell in smaller doses from his mother.
“Anton?” Julia asked as she came into the room, holding her still-unbuttoned shirt over her nose.
“He got into the fridge,” Anton said as he ran to his brother. “Mom had just stocked up on food and her own… things.” He could see there were about twenty bottles of liquor now gone. “Julia, get help!” He tried to resuscitate his brother, to clear his throat and airways. He checked for a heartbeat, despite the vomit that lay on the floor and covered his brother.
He had been getting his first chance to feel Julia’s breasts and hadn’t checked to see if everything was locked. He hadn’t watched over Gregor and nothing he did could bring him back.
“I forget what his brother had,” Lear said as he fine-tuned some automail. “It was something with two names… Can you hand me that wrench?”
Winry immediately responded and handed over the tool. “So, he was sick?”
“Mental disorder or something like that,” Lear said. “Gregor was about twenty years older than Anton. Is that right, Dad?” Dominic only grunted in return. “He was slow, about like dealing with a large five-year-old. And his appetite… damn, the man could eat. The thing… whatever it was he had… Prada-William… No, that isn’t it.” He turned the bolt in the automail and tested the arm’s movement.
“Prader-Willi,” Dominic said quietly as he tested a shoulder and arm replacement he was working on. “Meant his brain didn’t shut off when he was full. He never felt full his whole life.”
“That’s right,” Lear said, shaking his head. “Gregor died after he got a hold of the entire icebox and the liquor that their mom kept there. Overeating and alcohol poisoning.”
“That’s terrible,” Winry said, while at the same time, she couldn’t shake the stories that Ed and Al had told her about the homunculus who ate everything. If Anton had performed a human transmutation to bring his brother back, would the homunculus have been exactly what Ed and Al described?
“The night he got hurt, when you had to fit him up for automail, Dad,” Lear said. “The guy that found him like that just left him here. Was really rude to me.”
“I am just grateful he found Anton at all and bandaged him up,” Dominic said. “He was a good kid. I don’t care what you say about him now. He was a good kid.”
Winry knew better than to argue with the man.
“You know, if you combined what you are studying in those books in the right way,” a middle-aged woman in the library said, “you could be doing something bordering on illegal.”
“Lucky for me I know what I’m doing,” the fourteen-year-old responded back, walking out the door. He didn’t expect the woman to follow him. Hell, he hadn’t expected her to know that he’d figured out that the books had the necessary pieces to perform human transmutation.
“Do you now?” she asked. “So you know the components of the human body?”
“Water, 35 liters. Carbon, 20 kilograms. Ammonia, 4 liters. Lime, 1.5 kilograms. Phosphorous, 800 grams. Salt, 250 grams. Saltpeter, 100 grams. Sulfur, 80 grams. Fluorine, 7.5 grams, iron, 5 grams, silicon, 3 grams, and trace amounts of 15 other elements,” Anton said. “But I know that because I’m an alchemist, not because I want to do anything with that information.”
“I’m sure,” the woman said.
“I have found it, Sensei,” a young woman’s voice said. Anton looked her up and down, strong body, odd braided hair, and an eagerness to please the stranger, obviously her teacher. The young woman showed her teacher a drawing of a form of Ishballan alchemy. Anton didn’t recognize the symbol, but knew the style.
“Well,” he said. “Good luck studying what those Ishballans have already abandoned.”
“Good luck doing what you know you shouldn’t,” the woman said. “But you should be wary. They don’t always come back the way you’d expect. Sometimes, certain things are enhanced.”
Anton left, though it struck him that there had never been anything like what the young woman found in the library before save for the most basic items on Ishballan alchemy. He knew. He spent every waking hour in the library trying to find out about human transmutation. Even before his obsession, the library had been the one escape for him. He wondered how it got there and why the woman would bring her student to a little town known more for automail than alchemy to do research. Their library was good because there was money here, but their library was nothing compared to Eastern Headquarters or Central.
“Anton,” the teen looked and saw Dominic stepping from his shop. “Come here for a minute.” He brought out a canvas bag. “Had a guy trying to sell parts to us. Actually thought these would be incentives or something.” Dominic saw the logo for an automail part company.
“Obviously, he didn’t know you do things from scratch.” Anton put his books into the bag and thanked the older man.
“Listen, Anton, we’re having a birthday party for Lear next week, why don’t you come by?”
“I’ll see,” Anton said, but he knew he wouldn’t. Lear was a year younger than him and in a totally different crowd. Or, well, he had a crowd, where Anton kept to himself most of the time. “Bye Dominic, and thanks.”
Roy was sitting on the back porch with Ed when he saw Havoc coming up through the backyard with a rather fierce yet beautiful blonde. There were enough similarities that Roy realized this had to be the Major General that Havoc had left Roy’s service for. His dark eye watched her appraisingly, and he knew that in Havoc’s place, he’d have done the same damned thing.
Of course, in his position, he found that he wasn’t thinking about her in that way, at least was hardly doing so. And yet, a single look at Ed had him wanting to behave like a show pony-at that thought, he disgustingly made a mental crack about being Mustang the show pony. He sometimes wondered if his mind hadn’t completely abandoned him.
“Well, to what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from my former subordinate?” Roy asked, grinning when he saw the sheepish expression on Havoc’s face.
“About that, Chief,” Havoc said, “I’m really sorry. I should have told you.”
Roy shook his head and tossed a stray piece of mulch at the lieutenant’s head. “No apologies.”
“Ow!” he said as it struck him on the forehead.
“It looks as though you have your depth perception adjusted,” the Major General said. “I was hoping you might be out of commission so that I wouldn’t have competition for my future role as fuhrer.”
Roy laughed as he recalled that he’d met her once before, years ago. “If I was confined to a wheelchair and was deaf, mute, and blind, I’d still give you competition as fuhrer.”
“Awfully big words coming from a pipsqueak like you,” she returned. She smiled. “It has been a long time since we last saw one another, Mustang.”
Roy nodded. “Major General Armstrong, I’d like you to meet Major Edward Elric,” he said, patting Ed’s hand. He only barely noticed Havoc’s eyes moving to follow that action.
Ed smiled and greeted her. There was a formality to the major general that slowly faded as she and Ed talked a bit. It was as though something had finally clicked. That sort of thing people had around Ed when they knew his reputation but couldn’t match it to him, but finally had done it.
“We have good news,” Havoc said. “Looks like Ed has been pardoned for two years.”
“Pardoned?” Ed asked, eyes wide and unsure. “For… you mean… M-m… The fuhrer?”
Havoc’s smile softened and he nodded. “For that. From him.”
“We think that the same reasons would apply to your brother,” the woman said. “So you would both be free of a mistake you made as children.”
Ed smiled, though it faltered just a little before he spoke. “I can testify, then. I can defend you. And Al. We can… We can find a way to get him free, too.”
“You don’t have to,” Roy told him. “We’ll find a way without it.”
“I told you I would do this,” Ed said and managed a more genuine smile when his eyes met Roy’s eye. “Equivalent exchange would mean you’d owe me big time.”
“Foolish boy,” the stranger from the library said. “You said you knew what you were doing, but obviously, you don’t.” She knelt beside him and used some kind of medical alchemy to treat his wound.
“Envy,” she called out. Some teenager came out of the shadows. His hair was wild and long, but spiked, and until he spoke, Anton thought he was a girl.
“What?” the teen snapped.
“Take him somewhere to get him fixed up. He’ll need automail to walk around again.”
“Why the hell not just leave him here? He made the homunculus, so why does it matter what happens to him?”
“Well, if we take care of him, there is a little thing we alchemists all believe in.” The woman paused and dressed his wounds. “Equivalent exchange.” She grabbed Anton’s face in her hand and forced him to look her in the eye. “In exchange for taking care of your wounds and treating them and dealing with the mess you’ve made, you will be loyal to me, understand?”
“I don’t know you.”
She clapped her hands and placed them against his hip, making him cry out in pain. “And here I thought you’d like to have the ability not to scar so much. Oh well, I took it back, should I un-cauterize your wounds as well?”
“N-no!” he shouted. “I’ll work for you. But I’m just a kid. I don’t know what you want.”
“Neither do I, but you’re just the right age to mold you the way I see fit.”
Ed looked over at Roy from his place at the table. There was something normal about eating at the dining table. He missed normal.
He and Al were talking about how they could get out of their charges now, and that next would be Riza and Roy-it wasn’t hard to see the affection on Al’s face when he talked about Riza. Yet, all Ed could think of was himself, about having to testify in court to save Roy. He wanted to, he did. He just was afraid of it. Actually afraid of what that lawyer might bring up, how he might react, and all for an audience.
He knew that de Havilland was close to the fuhrer. How much would he know? Would he know that his body responded toward the end of his imprisonment? That it started to become almost pleasure at times because it was the closest thing Ed would ever get to it? Would he turn it around on him?
He would surely ruin Ed’s reputation. He was pardoned, but no one in the public would ever look at him the same if they knew. Not if the papers got a hold of it. He could imagine the headlines now, “The people’s alchemist really The People Alchemist.” The thought made him sick.
Ed didn’t even realize that he had started to go stiff to the point of sliding from his wheelchair until he felt arms around him, familiar arms.
“Shh… Ed, it’s okay. I’m here.”
Ed knew he was. The problem was in trying to keep Roy there was what had put Ed here on the floor.
He didn’t know what kind of man Anton de Havilland was, but he was certain he was evil. Certain that he would ruin them all before he was done.