Fullmetal Alchemist Ficlet: Inseparable
Title: Inseparable
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Shou Tucker, Nina, Alexander
Rating: PG
Setting: Vol. 2, Chapter 5.
Summary: Shou Tucker can’t afford to fail his assessment this time…
Word Count: 333
Written For:
suzume’s prompt ‘Fullmetal Alchemist, any, "A constructive lunatic sneaks",’ at
fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Fullmetal Alchemist, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Hiromu Arakawa.
Shou Tucker, State Alchemist. They called him the “Sewing-Life Alchemist”, but you’re only as good as your last creation, and creating chimeras was hit and miss at the best of times. He could blend two creatures into one, had done so many times, but what use were they? They couldn’t do anything more than the creatures they were created from. Most of the time they couldn’t even do that much.
Still, he kept trying. His first big success has earned him his certification. Creating a chimera that could speak like a human had impressed all the right people; that had been a proud day for him. It had cost him so much, but what he’d gained had been worth it. Progress required a certain amount of sacrifice after all. With his certification had come a research grant, enough money to continue with his experiments, his life’s work. Research was costly; without the grant he would have lost everything he’d worked so hard for; with it, anything was possible.
But now his assessment date was looming and he had nothing to show for a year’s work. Last year had been the same. If he couldn’t come up with something in time, he was really going to lose everything this time. He couldn’t let that happen, so there was no choice but to use what he had available.
Of course he was sad about it, he loved Nina, she was his little girl. But he knew she wanted him to do well, she believed in him just as her mother had. If there’d been time to explain it all to her, he knew she would have understood why her sacrifice was necessary. But time was the one thing he didn’t have; he needed to work fast. This chimera would be better than the last one; the young were always more adaptable and there was just no other way… Nina and her dog had always been inseparable.
Well, now no one would ever separate them again.
The End