[fic] See Through My Eyes
Title: See Through My Eyes
Authors: mfelizandy & fractured_chaos (aka: whips_n_dozers)
Genre: Horror, possibly A/U?
Rating: Teen, for gore.
Chapter Word Count: 1500
Main Characters: Scar, Scar's Brother
A/N: A side-story, companion piece for mfelizandy's "Estvarya", and whips_n_dozers "Arcanum Paterfamilias", but can be read as a stand-alone fic.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix). Both 'Fullmetal Alchemist' and 'Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood' are produced by Funimation. Copyright for this property is held by Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix and Funimation. All Rights Reserved
Summary: A scream shattered the silence.
"See Through My Eyes"
Alchemist. He saw the demon on the rooftop an instant too late. The world roared and heaved, then slowed into terror-fueled clarity. Aware... too cruelly aware, he watched his brother step into the path of flying concrete, shielding him. Brother! The word was too slow, as he was too slow. He could only watch his brother’s body jerking and staggering against the blows that tore flesh and snapped ribs. He saw it coming, had a moment to feel dread and horror before a missile of rebar with a chunk of concrete on its tail, stabbed through the left side of his brother's abdomen. He saw him fall, pinned to the bloody ground by a lance of twisted steel, even as the shock wave broke over them.
He felt the scream. Heard it and knew it was what had clawed his throat raw. Brother! He tried to catch himself, to... there wasn’t anything he could do. He knew it, knew even as his knees gave and his hands reached, at least to touch his sibling, firstborn and wise, gentler but so strong... and dying in a gout of blood and ruined flesh. Brother! The last of his family. The word wouldn’t come out. There was no sound, no voice in him to call in desperation or grief.
A blade of metal whipped into his line of sight in slow motion. It crossed his chest, scoring a thin line just below his collarbones. Then an arm. Someone’s arm-- his arm falling across the hideous wound killing his brother, the hand dropping open to the sky in a wordless scream to God. Why? It didn’t hurt. He was dead, then. His soul had already slipped free. Something whistled and he turned toward the flickering shadow. He’d almost started to blink when the burning remains of a window shutter hit him in the face and splintered...
Silence. Awareness floated up from the depths; bits and pieces bobbing and jostling each other like corks in the temple river. Silence, and the dark. The Dreaming of God. Before sound, before light, before time itself. He floated among the corks, vaguely puzzled. Yet, he couldn’t be himself, in that far-off moment before creation. He was a created life. He could not exist without a Creator.
He gasped and jumped upright, shaking with reaction. He took a breath and gagged at the reek of burnt flesh; fell, his knees hitting a surface that gave with his weight as his stomach heaved. Warm liquid, thick and metallic, trickled down his cheeks and dripped into his mouth, gagging him still further. Other sensations returned. His face burned and there was exquisite agony behind his eyes, sharp and stabbing. Nerves screamed and twitched in his right arm, and he reached for the source of the pain. His hand grasped only empty air. It was the slick, hot liquid pouring down over his left hand that led his questing fingers to the stump which was all that remained of his right arm.
A scream shattered the silence.
"Hold still, little brother," a familiar and beloved voice spoke soft in his right ear. "It'll be over soon."
Brother.
The backs of his eyes began to itch. He blinked, and slowly the pitch dark grew fuzzy, then light. Through a white haze, he searched for his brother, found him, then knew they were dead. His older sibling knelt next to him, blood pouring from a gash in his head and into his eyes--
--His eyes! Horror tore at him as he stared at the gaping holes where his brother's eyes should have been. "What...?"
His brother smiled sadly, and laid his right hand on the younger man's ruined shoulder. "You have to live," he said. "Only you can defeat them."
“I don’t understand.”
He only smiled that sad smile.
To his horror, his brother’s right arm began to crumble. It started from his fingers, then the decay swept up his arm, taking the wrist, then the marked forearm, the elbow, the bicep, all into thin flecks and fragments that swept and swirled on a breeze that wasn’t there. Something first tingled, then stung against his raw, exposed nerves. He looked down, startled, as the flecks danced and flowed to his maimed stump. The bone extended without cracks or seams, the white flecks aligning with soft clicks instants before sinew and nerve and muscle wrapped over it. The tattooed skin crawled down over the twitching limb even as he tried to escape it, to pull it away, to give it back. “No... What is this? Stop!”
He would live. His brother’s eyes, his brother’s arm... his brother’s blood. No! But he was helpless to stop it. Blood began to pour from his brother’s right shoulder, splattering and pooling on the featureless plane. Blood poured from the holes where his brother’s wise, teasing eyes should have been. Blood spread across his abdomen.
His brother -- beloved brother with eyes full of life (Gone! His eyes are gone!) -- stood, and smiled down once more. “You have to stop them. Use my research and stop them.”
“Are you ready to pay the toll?”
He startled at the strange anechoic voice, then trembled at the form standing next to his brother. It was featureless, and as white as their surroundings. “What--” he whispered.
His brother -- older brother, firstborn, jhastovar, “Watch, baby brother, you’ve almost learned it”, stumbled toward the form, his intestines slipping past the restraint of his remaining hand. “You’ll do it, right? You won’t go back on your word?”
The featureless form laughed without humor, and he recoiled. Something primeval knew the sound, this place. Something in his soul knew, and knew that God would not retrieve it from this horror.
“I deal justly. I do not deal in lies.”
His bloodied, blinded, maimed brother (Brother!) nodded, then he cast a rueful smile back to the man kneeling in blood. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to go on alone.”
His eyes (Brother's eyes) stung. “No...” he whispered. “Don’t do this.”
“This way my death means something. There will be someone to remember, and to finish what I started. And,” his lip lifted up just a little, “apologize to Ishvarra for me, won’t you?”
“No! No.” He got up, scrambled toward them, nightmare and monster together, fell and caught himself on his brother’s hand. “No. Better we both die in Ishvarra’s hand.”
“You’ll be all right, baby brother.” That voice, the voice he loved and trusted from his first steps. “My death for your life. It’s a pretty good bargain.” His face sobered. “Stop them. It has to stop. Promise me.”
“No! I won’t accept this!”
“It is the toll he chose to pay,” the form purred. “You are the object of the bargain, not a party to it.”
He stared in terror as his brother’s body began to break apart and dissipate into the white void surrounding them.
“Stop!” He reached with the arm that wasn’t his even as the last fragments vanished.
The form without substance was suddenly in front of him. “Who... what are you?” he asked.
“I am glad you asked,” the form said. “I am ‘The World’, and I am the ‘Universe’, and I am ‘All’, and I am ‘One’, and I am ‘Truth’, and I am ‘God’, and...” the form pointed at him, “I am also, You.”
Something loomed behind him, and he unwillingly glanced over his shoulder. Where there had been only empty white void there was now an enormous black gate, massive, ancient carved stone in this place without matter or time. The looping whorls and serpentine arcs were familiar. The ground shook and a rumble more felt than heard drove him to his knees again as the leaves of the Gate ground open.
“What is this?’ He staggered back up as a single eye snapped open, filling the blackness within the Gate. “No... I don’t want this...” He turned to run, but the blackness reached out with a multitude of arms, wrapping around his waist, his arms, clawing at his face, pulling... pulling... pulling him into the darkness. “Let me go! I don’t want this!”
“Would you let your brother’s toll be in vain?” the form mocked as those enormous doors slammed shut...
...The cacophony inside his head began to blur as the last tendrils of a nightmare faded. A sharp staccato of foreign voices snapped orders around him. The stench of sickness and blood and antiseptics assaulted his nose. He caught a glimpse of a tattooed arm and he sighed in relief. "Brother..."
Horror returned in a flood as he realized the arm was attached to him. The nightmare clamor scaled up again, and shattered reality. Names and faces and symbols and formulae exploded behind his eyes... his brother's eyes. Blue eyes and yellow hair swam in his view, and fused to the shred of a memory that defied logic. Names, faces... Amestrian. Alchemists.
“You have to stop them, Brother. Use my research and stop them.”
The din within his head settled down into a cool, blue murmur. With names and faces, and the knowledge of how to destroy each and every one of them with their own weapon.
Authors: mfelizandy & fractured_chaos (aka: whips_n_dozers)
Genre: Horror, possibly A/U?
Rating: Teen, for gore.
Chapter Word Count: 1500
Main Characters: Scar, Scar's Brother
A/N: A side-story, companion piece for mfelizandy's "Estvarya", and whips_n_dozers "Arcanum Paterfamilias", but can be read as a stand-alone fic.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix). Both 'Fullmetal Alchemist' and 'Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood' are produced by Funimation. Copyright for this property is held by Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix and Funimation. All Rights Reserved
Summary: A scream shattered the silence.
"See Through My Eyes"
Alchemist. He saw the demon on the rooftop an instant too late. The world roared and heaved, then slowed into terror-fueled clarity. Aware... too cruelly aware, he watched his brother step into the path of flying concrete, shielding him. Brother! The word was too slow, as he was too slow. He could only watch his brother’s body jerking and staggering against the blows that tore flesh and snapped ribs. He saw it coming, had a moment to feel dread and horror before a missile of rebar with a chunk of concrete on its tail, stabbed through the left side of his brother's abdomen. He saw him fall, pinned to the bloody ground by a lance of twisted steel, even as the shock wave broke over them.
He felt the scream. Heard it and knew it was what had clawed his throat raw. Brother! He tried to catch himself, to... there wasn’t anything he could do. He knew it, knew even as his knees gave and his hands reached, at least to touch his sibling, firstborn and wise, gentler but so strong... and dying in a gout of blood and ruined flesh. Brother! The last of his family. The word wouldn’t come out. There was no sound, no voice in him to call in desperation or grief.
A blade of metal whipped into his line of sight in slow motion. It crossed his chest, scoring a thin line just below his collarbones. Then an arm. Someone’s arm-- his arm falling across the hideous wound killing his brother, the hand dropping open to the sky in a wordless scream to God. Why? It didn’t hurt. He was dead, then. His soul had already slipped free. Something whistled and he turned toward the flickering shadow. He’d almost started to blink when the burning remains of a window shutter hit him in the face and splintered...
Silence. Awareness floated up from the depths; bits and pieces bobbing and jostling each other like corks in the temple river. Silence, and the dark. The Dreaming of God. Before sound, before light, before time itself. He floated among the corks, vaguely puzzled. Yet, he couldn’t be himself, in that far-off moment before creation. He was a created life. He could not exist without a Creator.
He gasped and jumped upright, shaking with reaction. He took a breath and gagged at the reek of burnt flesh; fell, his knees hitting a surface that gave with his weight as his stomach heaved. Warm liquid, thick and metallic, trickled down his cheeks and dripped into his mouth, gagging him still further. Other sensations returned. His face burned and there was exquisite agony behind his eyes, sharp and stabbing. Nerves screamed and twitched in his right arm, and he reached for the source of the pain. His hand grasped only empty air. It was the slick, hot liquid pouring down over his left hand that led his questing fingers to the stump which was all that remained of his right arm.
A scream shattered the silence.
"Hold still, little brother," a familiar and beloved voice spoke soft in his right ear. "It'll be over soon."
Brother.
The backs of his eyes began to itch. He blinked, and slowly the pitch dark grew fuzzy, then light. Through a white haze, he searched for his brother, found him, then knew they were dead. His older sibling knelt next to him, blood pouring from a gash in his head and into his eyes--
--His eyes! Horror tore at him as he stared at the gaping holes where his brother's eyes should have been. "What...?"
His brother smiled sadly, and laid his right hand on the younger man's ruined shoulder. "You have to live," he said. "Only you can defeat them."
“I don’t understand.”
He only smiled that sad smile.
To his horror, his brother’s right arm began to crumble. It started from his fingers, then the decay swept up his arm, taking the wrist, then the marked forearm, the elbow, the bicep, all into thin flecks and fragments that swept and swirled on a breeze that wasn’t there. Something first tingled, then stung against his raw, exposed nerves. He looked down, startled, as the flecks danced and flowed to his maimed stump. The bone extended without cracks or seams, the white flecks aligning with soft clicks instants before sinew and nerve and muscle wrapped over it. The tattooed skin crawled down over the twitching limb even as he tried to escape it, to pull it away, to give it back. “No... What is this? Stop!”
He would live. His brother’s eyes, his brother’s arm... his brother’s blood. No! But he was helpless to stop it. Blood began to pour from his brother’s right shoulder, splattering and pooling on the featureless plane. Blood poured from the holes where his brother’s wise, teasing eyes should have been. Blood spread across his abdomen.
His brother -- beloved brother with eyes full of life (Gone! His eyes are gone!) -- stood, and smiled down once more. “You have to stop them. Use my research and stop them.”
“Are you ready to pay the toll?”
He startled at the strange anechoic voice, then trembled at the form standing next to his brother. It was featureless, and as white as their surroundings. “What--” he whispered.
His brother -- older brother, firstborn, jhastovar, “Watch, baby brother, you’ve almost learned it”, stumbled toward the form, his intestines slipping past the restraint of his remaining hand. “You’ll do it, right? You won’t go back on your word?”
The featureless form laughed without humor, and he recoiled. Something primeval knew the sound, this place. Something in his soul knew, and knew that God would not retrieve it from this horror.
“I deal justly. I do not deal in lies.”
His bloodied, blinded, maimed brother (Brother!) nodded, then he cast a rueful smile back to the man kneeling in blood. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to go on alone.”
His eyes (Brother's eyes) stung. “No...” he whispered. “Don’t do this.”
“This way my death means something. There will be someone to remember, and to finish what I started. And,” his lip lifted up just a little, “apologize to Ishvarra for me, won’t you?”
“No! No.” He got up, scrambled toward them, nightmare and monster together, fell and caught himself on his brother’s hand. “No. Better we both die in Ishvarra’s hand.”
“You’ll be all right, baby brother.” That voice, the voice he loved and trusted from his first steps. “My death for your life. It’s a pretty good bargain.” His face sobered. “Stop them. It has to stop. Promise me.”
“No! I won’t accept this!”
“It is the toll he chose to pay,” the form purred. “You are the object of the bargain, not a party to it.”
He stared in terror as his brother’s body began to break apart and dissipate into the white void surrounding them.
“Stop!” He reached with the arm that wasn’t his even as the last fragments vanished.
The form without substance was suddenly in front of him. “Who... what are you?” he asked.
“I am glad you asked,” the form said. “I am ‘The World’, and I am the ‘Universe’, and I am ‘All’, and I am ‘One’, and I am ‘Truth’, and I am ‘God’, and...” the form pointed at him, “I am also, You.”
Something loomed behind him, and he unwillingly glanced over his shoulder. Where there had been only empty white void there was now an enormous black gate, massive, ancient carved stone in this place without matter or time. The looping whorls and serpentine arcs were familiar. The ground shook and a rumble more felt than heard drove him to his knees again as the leaves of the Gate ground open.
“What is this?’ He staggered back up as a single eye snapped open, filling the blackness within the Gate. “No... I don’t want this...” He turned to run, but the blackness reached out with a multitude of arms, wrapping around his waist, his arms, clawing at his face, pulling... pulling... pulling him into the darkness. “Let me go! I don’t want this!”
“Would you let your brother’s toll be in vain?” the form mocked as those enormous doors slammed shut...
...The cacophony inside his head began to blur as the last tendrils of a nightmare faded. A sharp staccato of foreign voices snapped orders around him. The stench of sickness and blood and antiseptics assaulted his nose. He caught a glimpse of a tattooed arm and he sighed in relief. "Brother..."
Horror returned in a flood as he realized the arm was attached to him. The nightmare clamor scaled up again, and shattered reality. Names and faces and symbols and formulae exploded behind his eyes... his brother's eyes. Blue eyes and yellow hair swam in his view, and fused to the shred of a memory that defied logic. Names, faces... Amestrian. Alchemists.
“You have to stop them, Brother. Use my research and stop them.”
The din within his head settled down into a cool, blue murmur. With names and faces, and the knowledge of how to destroy each and every one of them with their own weapon.