FMA BBC: Estvarya, Chapter 1
Title: Estvarya
Author: mfelizandy
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 22,000+
Pairing/Characters: Roy Mustang, Scar. No pairings.
Warnings: Probably some non-explicit nudity at some point or another--Ishbalan mores on nudity don't line up perfectly with western ideas. Likely to be some supporting-OC death. Culture-building. Mild language and some violence.
There's art for this story! Have a look at Rewire's sketches and the WIP of an collaborative painting she and Rufina are doing for an upcoming scene. Art Post!
Summary: Post-manga AU. One of the pieces left behind by the Promised Day is a shard of the legendary Philosopher's Stone. Everyone who knows what it is agrees that it can't be left to cause grief to future generations.
That's about all they agree on.
Against a backdrop of looming war, a blind Roy Mustang rides across the border with the Scar of Ishbal at his side and a Philosopher's Stone in his pocket, on a mission to negotiate an end to the fighting and deliver the Stone to the Ishbalan Elders. Somehow, two of the least likely messengers Ishvarra could have picked must find a way to not only work together but also to save both their people and themselves.
“You're damn cruel, Dr. Marcoh.” Jean Havoc took a long drag on his cigarette, and let the smoke filter out his nose.
“That's a harsh thing to say,” Kain Fury objected.
“True, though,” Jean countered. He draped his forearms between his knees and pinned Tim Marcoh with his eyes. “A week ago I was retired military, busy thinking about ways to rearrange the shop so I could reach to do more of the restocking and taking my girlfriend for a little private picnic by the river. Here I am a week later, and I've got a decision to make, and whatever I decide, I'm gonna wish I did something else for the rest of my life.”
“Colonel Mustang wanted me to offer the Stone to you,” Marcoh said. “He insisted that you need it more than he does.”
“That's not his decision,” Jean answered bluntly. “How many people are there inside that thing?” He waved at Marcoh's breast pocket. “A couple dozen? A hundred? A thousand? Do you even know?”
“...no.” Marcoh lowered his eyes. “Even if I knew how many lives had gone into creating it, there's no way to tell how many of them remain.”
“That's what I thought.” Jean took another slow puff and tapped the ash from his cigarette. “And there's no way to know how many people it would take to get my lower half working right again, is there?”
“It doesn't work that way,” Marcoh admitted.
“Cruel.” Jean sagged a little, watching Marcoh through narrowed eyes. “Damned cruel. I want to take what you're offering-god, I want it.” He shifted his eyes away and put his cigarette back in his mouth, playing it back and forth between his lips for a moment before going on. “But I know that if it worked, if I got anything back, I'd spend the rest of my life trying to do enough to convince myself I'd earned it. Paid off that debt.”
“It has to be used,” Marcoh said quietly. “Before I die, I'm going to see this cursed thing used up, so it can never fall into the wrong hands. I chose to offer Mustang the Stone because he's someone who will spend his life trying to rebuild what was destroyed.”
“Why not take it to Ishbal?” Fury asked. “You could help a lot of people there.”
“Alchemy is taboo in Ishbal,” Marcoh reminded the bespectacled younger man. “No practicing Ishbalan would allow me to so much as draw an array inside the house, much less restore lost limbs or cure illnesses with alchemy.”
“But if it could fix them-or their kids-why would they deny themselves that?”
“As far as they're concerned alchemy's God's power,” Jean answered. “So anyone who uses it is trying to be a god. Guess what they think of that.”
Fury looked baffled. “But if they believe it's God's power, and humans can use it-isn't that evidence their God doesn't mind humans using alchemy?”
“Do I look Ishbalan to you?” Jean shrugged. “It's religion. It doesn't have to make sense.”
“They were some of the first alchemists,” Marcoh said in a regretful tone. “Most of the alchemical disciplines west of Ishbal are rooted in the work of those early scholars.”
“I hadn't heard that before,” Kain commented.
“It's not something many modern scientists care to admit,” Marcoh answered. “We don't like the thought that we're following laws first discovered by people we think of as backward and superstitious.”
“But they gave it all up,” Fury said slowly. “Think about what they'd be if they hadn't.”
“I think that's why they decided to give it up in the first place,” Marcoh told him as he got to his feet. “They saw where alchemy would lead them.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Hey, Boss.” Jean wheeled himself over the doorjamb into his former CO's hospital room. “Did you pass the pop quiz?”
“I don't think it counts as a 'pop quiz' when I'm told about it a day before it happens,” Roy Mustang answered.
“You're welcome,” Jean grinned. “So did you pass?”
“Yes.”
“They gave him partial credit on some of it,” Vato Falman supplied. “He guessed “soup”, and they gave him a point even though he was supposed to say what kind of soup it was.”
“I was not guessing,” Mustang told him. “The label was upside down and misspelled, and the can was on the bottom of the stack.”
“That's a dirty trick,” Jean said, not bothering to keep the humor out of his tone. “They must think you're about ready to go home, if they're pulling stuff like that.”
“I'm glad you're enjoying monitoring my progress,” Mustang said drily. He set down the stylus he'd been using to practice his touchscript and pinned Havoc with his sightless gaze. “I take it you've made your decision?”
Jean sobered. “Yeah.”
“And?”
“I'll only do it if you do.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Jean--”
“Don't even start talking about who's more guilty than whom, Boss,” Havoc growled. “I was in Ishbal, too, remember.”
“You didn't wipe out entire towns in less than an hour.”
“I said don't start, Roy,” Jean snapped. “Make up your mind. Are we going to use that Stone full of Ishbalans to fix ourselves or not?”
Mustang's eyes narrowed. “You're a nasty son of a bitch, Jean Havoc.”
“Leave my mother out of this.” Jean closed in on Roy's bed. “I've thought about it, and the only way I could possibly be worth the human lives in that Stone is if I had a way to influence the whole country, if not the whole world, for the better. Only way I can think of to do that is to get you up on my shoulders so you can see over the craziness-but you need working eyes to do that. So...it's both of us or neither of us.”
“Jean,” Mustang rubbed both hands over his face. “You can't do that. You can't put that decision on me.”
“I just did. Now the question is,” Jean nudged his former commanding officer's knee with one wheel, “what are you going to do about it?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
As far back as records, family history, and local folk memory reached, the lowlands of the southern end of the Orenya river valley had been ruled by tall, broad, and blond dukes, with the occasional tall blond duchess ruling as a regent. Paintings of them marched up and down the long corridors of the family's manor house, long-gone patriarchs and matriarchs watching the current generation with expressions that ranged from gently amused to ruthlessly severe. All of them, though, had an air of complacent arrogance that told the viewer just how high Armstrong standards were...and that he didn't quite measure up yet.
The man who walked along the third-floor corridor was also tall, broad across the chest, and generally stern of expression. There, however, the similarities ended. The stranger's deep brown skin contrasted with the pale faces and hands of the ancestral Armstrongs. His clothes were plain and unadorned against the rich velvets, silks, and embroidery of the dukes. Most startling, however, were his eyes. Most of the Armstrongs had had light blue or green eyes. The stranger's eyes were a deep red, and they looked out from the center of a wide X of stark white scar tissue that stretched from his forehead to his cheeks.
“Mr. Scar?” The maid curtsied as the red-eyed man turned toward her. “Lady Olivia and Lord Alexander sent me for you, sir. They are waiting with guests in the conservatory, sir.”
“Guests?” The man known only by the mark on his face moved with a stride more accustomed to covering miles of open country on foot than treading the thick carpets and parquet floors of a manor house. The maid hurried to follow him.
“Yes, sir. Lady Olivia asked me to tell you they've come to see you specifically, sir.”
“There aren't many who know that I still live,” The Scar of Ishbal paused to look back at the maid. “Fewer still who know where to find me.”
“Would you like me to show you to the conservatory, sir?” The maid lifted her eyebrows and her chin a little.
The Ishbalan's expression lightened just a fraction. “I could find it, but as there are people waiting for me, I will follow you.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Major General Olivia Mila Armstrong should have looked out of place. She was dressed in full military uniform, with a loaded automatic pistol holstered under her starched jacket and a ruthlessly functional saber sheathed on her hip. Major Miles, her aide, stood behind her. He was also fully uniformed and armed, his stance relaxed and his expression calm. They were the picture of perfect military command officers.
The setting was anything but military. What the Armstrongs referred to as the conservatory was more of a glassed-in water garden and aviary, complete with small streams populated by schools of colorful fish and frogs living among greenery collected from every corner of the earth. Bright-colored songbirds fluttered and twittered in large wire-mesh cages tucked artfully among the trees.
The Major General's brother, Lord Alexander Luis Armstrong, fit the surroundings. His “morning suit”, complete with gold cufflinks inlaid with precious stones to form the family crest, wouldn't have been out of place in the previous century. He was a giant of a man, but he was up and pulling out a chair for Riza Hawkeye before she could open her mouth to tell him to keep his seat. “Good morning, Lieutenant Hawkeye,” he rumbled. “You are looking well and lovely.”
“Is she?” Roy Mustang smiled as his aide took his hand from her elbow and set it on the chair beside the one Alex Armstrong courteously held for her. “That's good to hear-I've been getting reports that I've turned her prematurely gray.”
The big man turned to look into the faint gray circles where Mustang had once had sharp black irises, and said in a tone of soft regret, “To my eyes she is the picture of good health, Colonel.”
“I've been telling you I'm fine, sir,” Hawkeye sat, allowing the Armstrong scion to move her chair into place under her. “Thank you, Major.”
“Like he's going to believe you?” Jean Havoc sized up the narrow arched bridge crossing the stream between himself and the table, then backed up and carefully aligned his wheels. “If you lost a finger and he noticed you'd tell him he counted wrong.”
“Do you need help, Lieutenant Havoc?” Alex Armstrong took a step in Havoc's direction.
“Nope, I've got it.” Havoc eased himself over the bridge. “You could move a chair out of the way, though. I brought my own seat.”
“Of course. I apologize, Lieutenant, I should have thought of that.” Armstrong shifted the chair on Mustang's right aside.
“Don't worry about it. And don't call me Lieutenant, I'm retired.” Havoc paused at the foot of the bridge to turn in place and sweep his eyes around the lavish horticultural display. “Impressive place you've got here. I thought the house was gutted in the fighting.”
“The conservatory was protected, as you can see,” General Armstrong said crisply. She pinned the last of the new arrivals with an ice-blue gaze. “I take it you're Tim Marcoh?”
“Yes.” The doctor moved as slowly as a man thirty years his senior.
“Please make yourself comfortable, Doctor,” Alex Armstrong put in. “Would any of you like some tea, or perhaps something more substantial, after your journey?”
“I wouldn't say no to a cup of coffee,” Mustang answered.
“I wouldn't say no to a ham sandwich,” Havoc added lightly.
Armstrong nodded, then made eye contact with the footman standing unobtrusively near the door. “Thomas, please ask Celestine to prepare some coffee and sandwiches for our guests.” The man bowed and vanished without a sound.
“Now that the laws of courtesy have been satisfied, tell me what you're really doing here, Mustang,” Olivia Mila Armstrong flicked her gaze from the Flame Alchemist to his lieutenants, then to Dr. Marcoh's thick-scarred face.
“We're here to see Scar,” Mustang answered.
“Yes, and I've sent for him,” the general replied. “But you're not here just to exchange pleasantries.”
“No, I'm not,” Mustang faced General Armstrong. “I don't want to explain it twice, though. As long as I'm imposing on your gracious hospitality, I'd like to have Major Miles hear this, too.”
“I'm here,” Miles spoke up.
Mustang's eyebrows rose. “I should have guessed you'd be within earshot. Good.”
The door to the rest of the house opened, and the Scar of Ishbal strode through it, trailed by a middle-aged maid.
The big Ishbalan swept the group at the table with his eyes, then said, “Three State Alchemists at one table. What are you planning, I wonder?”
“Yeah, nice to see you again too,” Havoc muttered.
“We have a problem, and we're here to ask for your opinion,” Mustang answered.
“Or my help?” Scar chose a spot on a low wall near the table, and sat, resting his hands on his knees. “In exchange for lifting the price on my head, perhaps?”
“We have no right to ask anything of you or your people,” Alex said soberly.
“No, we don't,” Roy agreed. “That's why we're here. Dr. Marcoh-show him.”
The doctor sighed, and turned in his chair, taking a small clamshell case from his jacket pocket. “This rightfully belongs to your people.” He opened the case and offered it to the Ishbalan.
Scar hissed softly, and took the box from Marcoh's hand. “A Stone of Souls.” He touched the thumb-sized piece of dull red crystal, then closed the case around it. “Why did you bring this to me?” He shot Havoc a penetrating look, then turned his eyes to Dr. Marcoh. “You could save lives with these deaths.”
“Those deaths were Ishbalans,” Dr. Marcoh answered. “I used it the day of the eclipse, and to heal wounds for a few days afterward.”
“Why didn't you continue?” Scar shifted his gaze from Marcoh to Havoc to Mustang. “Doubtless there are many you could restore, with the power of souls in your hand.”
“I'm not a god.” The doctor lowered his face into his hands, hiding his eyes. “I can't make the decisions of a god. Who should I save, the mother of six children or the six-year-old child? The twenty-year-old soldier supporting his mother or the sixty-year-old farmer raising his dead son's children?” Tim Marcoh looked up at the Ishbalan vigilante with despair in his gaze. “I couldn't bear the weight of that responsibility, so I offered the Stone to Colonel Mustang.”
“Then the colonel turned around and offered it to me,” Havoc put in. “I decided I won't take it for my back unless he takes it for his eyes, too.”
Mustang spoke up with his eyes pointed at his hands, tightly folded on the table. “I've made a lot of decisions for my men. Some of those decisions will haunt them, and me, until we're all dead. But this one...I know how I feel about what I did in Ishbal.” He turned toward Scar. “You're the only Ishbalan I know of who understands what the Stone really is and why it must be used up.”
Scar's eyes widened a fraction, then he growled low in his chest. “Did you come here to ask my permission to use my people to restore yourselves?”
“We're here to ask your opinion.” Mustang's face and voice were both nearly expressionless. “We can't leave something with this kind of power lying around. Even if it weren't made of human lives, the Stone is far too dangerous to put into a vault or a museum. No matter how good the security is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to steal it-and that someone probably won't have the best interests of anyone but himself at heart.”
“You--” Scar stopped, then his face twisted into a rictus of mixed rage and grief and he pressed the closed case to his scarred brow.
The silence stretched, and Mustang opened his mouth, then shut it again as Riza Hawkeye put her hand on his wrist and squeezed gently.
General Armstrong broke the silence with a curt question. “I'd like to know who told you Scar was alive, Mustang.”
“And I'd like to know what you look like out of uniform,” Mustang answered calmly.
“This is a matter of military security.”
“I've been medically discharged, Major General.” Roy lounged back in his chair. “You might want to check with your people and see about tightening your internal security.”
“You're not in a position to play this game anymore, Roy,” the general told him in the harsh ice of Briggs.
“Who said I was playing?”
“Enough.” Scar lifted his head, his fingers closed tightly around the case containing the Stone. “It hardly matters how you knew I was here. I'll be leaving in the morning. This,” he lifted the case “is something for the Elders to consider.”
“That thing's a real hot potato.” Jean Havoc followed the case with his eyes as Scar tucked it into a pocket.
“It's going to be harder to convince those from the camps that they're not walking into a trap without you to lead them,” Miles' expression was grave.
“They would have believed me to be bait,” Scar said flatly. “No one would believe that one who'd killed as many military officers as I have would be allowed to live by the military, except as a turncoat to lead more of his people to the slaughter.”
“We can move the people from the camps without his help,” Olivia Armstrong told her aide. “They don't have to trust us-they just have to go.”
“Scar.” Mustang turned back toward the Ishbalan. “I'd like to go with you.”
“What?” The exclamation came from at least four voices.
“I'd like to go with you to Ishbal,” Mustang repeated. “To ask your Elders whether they'd be willing to negotiate peace terms.”
“Trying to commit suicide, Mustang?” The major general cocked an eyebrow.
“I'm sure this will disappoint you, Olivia, but no.” Mustang kept his attention focused on Scar. “Think about it. What would make a stronger statement of sincerity?”
“Or threat.” Hawkeye closed both her hands around Mustang's left one. “I can't protect you against an entire country determined to kill you.”
“I know,” Roy said gently. “That's why I'm not going to ask you to. I'm going alone.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Havoc demanded. “There's taking a risk, and there's risking your life, there's walking up to your worst enemy naked and spitting in his face, then there's this.”
“The Elders won't give you the Stone of Souls and their blessing,” Scar interrupted. “I don't know what they will do, but these are our dead.”
Roy frowned. “Would all of you stop insulting my intelligence? I'm not suicidal, and I'm not expecting anyone to forget the past. This is an opportunity to demonstrate that the new rulers of this country want to end the bloodshed and are willing to back that up with real concessions. A Philosopher's Stone, brought by a former soldier in truly blind trust.” His smile was thin. “If they kill me, they get a moment's revenge, followed by another pile of Ishbalan bodies. We do have roughly twenty thousand of their people locked up in the camps, after all. If they stop to think before they shoot, they'll hold their fire, and at worst send me home with a message to either send someone less blood-spattered or leave them alone.”
“You thought this out ahead of time,” Havoc accused.
“It was one of the options I considered,” Mustang answered.
“Clever,” the general commented. “Very clever, Mustang. If I keep you here, you and your people continue to be thorns in my side. If I let you go, but don't back whatever you say, you'll be interpreted as either an innocent martyr for your cause or a crippled soldier sacrificed by a new regime just as bloodthirsty as the last one. So not only do I have to allow this, I have to support it.” She folded her arms. “Deftly played.”
“You're making some assumptions that aren't necessarily valid,” Roy finally shifted his gaze. “The choice of whether I go or not isn't yours to make, for starters.”
“You're assuming the Ishbalans will stop to think before they shoot,” Riza said tightly. “All it would take is one sentry with a rifle.”
“They are an ancient and wise people,” Alex Armstrong put in. “I've read what I can find of the histories of Ishbal, and what there is of a scientific record of the culture. Many of their central teachings counsel forbearance and forgiveness.”
“They're still human, and there are limits to what a human can bear.” Dr. Marcoh spoke up. “I'm responsible for forging the Stone. I'll go.”
“You're a good doctor and a good man, but you don't have the people or political skills to negotiate on this scale,” Mustang told him.
“I can at least see a gun pointed at me,” Marcoh shot back.
“His blindness might buy him a chance to argue his case,” Miles broke in. He addressed Scar. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but doctrine says that once God has imposed judgement for a crime-like striking a man blind-that's the end of it.”
“That's a child's simplification of the text,” Scar answered. “And there are many who would rather face exile than allow a State Alchemist to live.”
“Huh.” Jean turned from the frowning Ishbalan to his also-frowning former commanding officer. “Guess you'll have to think of something else, Boss.”
Mustang lifted his chin. “Are you refusing to take me with you, Scar?”
Scar's brows lowered, and he didn't answer for a long moment. Finally he sighed. “Your life is yours to risk. I will guide you to the Elders if you insist.” His tone hardened. “But you should understand that I'm in no position to speak on your behalf.”
“I wouldn't ask that of you,” Mustang replied.
“I'm going with you,” Riza said, gripping Roy's hand tightly.
“No, you're not. You're going to stay here and run my intelligence empire.”
“Sir--”
“It's not open to debate, Lieutenant.”
Havoc turned to Alex Armstrong. “So-how long a head start do you think she'll give him? I'm laying odds it's less than an hour.”
“That would be a death sentence for both of them,” Armstrong said gravely.
Havoc blinked. “Run that by me again?”
“Think of how it would appear to the Ishbalan Elders,” the giant alchemist said. “Then help us talk the colonel out of this.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The rural train station was all but deserted at this hour. The sleepy stationmaster had waved the mismatched party through the gates to the platform with barely a glance. Major Alex Luis Armstrong, badly disguised as a local taxidriver, had busied himself with the loading of baggage, trying without success to conceal tears and sniffling as masculine snorts of effort.
“Last chance to change your mind, Boss.” The clipped speed of Jean Havoc's words gave away his tension.
“Are you suggesting there's something wrong with the one I have?” Roy Mustang answered lightly.
“Hell yeah, there's something wrong.” Havoc exchanged a glance with Riza Hawkeye, then a warier look with the Scar of Ishbal. “You're getting onto a train to share a compartment with the Scar, going to Ishbal, without taking so much as Hawkeye or a tank division with you.”
“I'm not going through this again, Jean.” Mustang took a few steps and offered his hand. “I'll talk to you soon.”
Havoc sighed, then gripped the Flame Alchemist's hand. “Don't get yourself killed, or if there is some kind of afterlife I'll hunt you down and kick your ass.”
“You'll have to take a number,” Hawkeye said quietly, without a trace of humor in her tone.
“You two are terrible well-wishers to have at a departure.” Mustang smiled a little. “Put it on my calendar-when I get back I'll have to take a few hours to educate you both on how to do it right.”
Scar moved to Mustang's side, and murmured, “The train will leave soon.”
“Right.” Roy turned his face toward Riza Hawkeye, and for a moment the calm professional mask dropped, and he opened his arms. “Riza-will you indulge me?”
Hawkeye's eyebrows shot up, and she hesitated for just an instant, then stepped into Roy's embrace. He turned his face toward her hair and murmured something too low for other ears to catch, pressed his lips to her cheekbone for just an instant, then stepped away to reach for Scar's arm.
Havoc stared in wide-eyed bewilderment, and watched in silence as the unlikely pair of traveling companions boarded the train. The locomotive let out a shrill whistle, then the train jerked and began to roll. Only after the clack-clack of wheels on rails had faded to nothing did Jean turn his chair to Riza and move closer. He pitched his voice low in deference to the night. “What did he tell you?”
Hawkeye startled a little, then turned to Havoc, taking something finger-sized from between the waistband of her trousers and the small of her back. “He said, 'I'll be back for this.'” She opened her hand and showed her companion the polished ivory chess queen.
Go to Chapter 2.
Author's Notes: A lot of this story grew out of discussions with kashicat about what would have happened if Roy hadn't used Marcoh's Stone to buy back his sight. However, I have added, rewritten, and rearranged so much that whatever faults you may find in this are mine, not hers.
For definitions of and commentary on the Ishvaran words and phrases used in this story, please visit the Ishvaran Glossary. I'm using it for this story, and my co-conspirator fractured_chaos and I are also using it and much of the same cultural worldbuilding in a joint BBC fic that will go up Sunday or so.
Ishvaran Glossary: Introduction and Orthography
Ishvaran Glossary: A - M
Ishvaran Glossary: N - Z
Speaking of fractured_chaos, she did the banner! Isn't that cool?
Author: mfelizandy
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 22,000+
Pairing/Characters: Roy Mustang, Scar. No pairings.
Warnings: Probably some non-explicit nudity at some point or another--Ishbalan mores on nudity don't line up perfectly with western ideas. Likely to be some supporting-OC death. Culture-building. Mild language and some violence.
There's art for this story! Have a look at Rewire's sketches and the WIP of an collaborative painting she and Rufina are doing for an upcoming scene. Art Post!
Summary: Post-manga AU. One of the pieces left behind by the Promised Day is a shard of the legendary Philosopher's Stone. Everyone who knows what it is agrees that it can't be left to cause grief to future generations.
That's about all they agree on.
Against a backdrop of looming war, a blind Roy Mustang rides across the border with the Scar of Ishbal at his side and a Philosopher's Stone in his pocket, on a mission to negotiate an end to the fighting and deliver the Stone to the Ishbalan Elders. Somehow, two of the least likely messengers Ishvarra could have picked must find a way to not only work together but also to save both their people and themselves.
“You're damn cruel, Dr. Marcoh.” Jean Havoc took a long drag on his cigarette, and let the smoke filter out his nose.
“That's a harsh thing to say,” Kain Fury objected.
“True, though,” Jean countered. He draped his forearms between his knees and pinned Tim Marcoh with his eyes. “A week ago I was retired military, busy thinking about ways to rearrange the shop so I could reach to do more of the restocking and taking my girlfriend for a little private picnic by the river. Here I am a week later, and I've got a decision to make, and whatever I decide, I'm gonna wish I did something else for the rest of my life.”
“Colonel Mustang wanted me to offer the Stone to you,” Marcoh said. “He insisted that you need it more than he does.”
“That's not his decision,” Jean answered bluntly. “How many people are there inside that thing?” He waved at Marcoh's breast pocket. “A couple dozen? A hundred? A thousand? Do you even know?”
“...no.” Marcoh lowered his eyes. “Even if I knew how many lives had gone into creating it, there's no way to tell how many of them remain.”
“That's what I thought.” Jean took another slow puff and tapped the ash from his cigarette. “And there's no way to know how many people it would take to get my lower half working right again, is there?”
“It doesn't work that way,” Marcoh admitted.
“Cruel.” Jean sagged a little, watching Marcoh through narrowed eyes. “Damned cruel. I want to take what you're offering-god, I want it.” He shifted his eyes away and put his cigarette back in his mouth, playing it back and forth between his lips for a moment before going on. “But I know that if it worked, if I got anything back, I'd spend the rest of my life trying to do enough to convince myself I'd earned it. Paid off that debt.”
“It has to be used,” Marcoh said quietly. “Before I die, I'm going to see this cursed thing used up, so it can never fall into the wrong hands. I chose to offer Mustang the Stone because he's someone who will spend his life trying to rebuild what was destroyed.”
“Why not take it to Ishbal?” Fury asked. “You could help a lot of people there.”
“Alchemy is taboo in Ishbal,” Marcoh reminded the bespectacled younger man. “No practicing Ishbalan would allow me to so much as draw an array inside the house, much less restore lost limbs or cure illnesses with alchemy.”
“But if it could fix them-or their kids-why would they deny themselves that?”
“As far as they're concerned alchemy's God's power,” Jean answered. “So anyone who uses it is trying to be a god. Guess what they think of that.”
Fury looked baffled. “But if they believe it's God's power, and humans can use it-isn't that evidence their God doesn't mind humans using alchemy?”
“Do I look Ishbalan to you?” Jean shrugged. “It's religion. It doesn't have to make sense.”
“They were some of the first alchemists,” Marcoh said in a regretful tone. “Most of the alchemical disciplines west of Ishbal are rooted in the work of those early scholars.”
“I hadn't heard that before,” Kain commented.
“It's not something many modern scientists care to admit,” Marcoh answered. “We don't like the thought that we're following laws first discovered by people we think of as backward and superstitious.”
“But they gave it all up,” Fury said slowly. “Think about what they'd be if they hadn't.”
“I think that's why they decided to give it up in the first place,” Marcoh told him as he got to his feet. “They saw where alchemy would lead them.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Hey, Boss.” Jean wheeled himself over the doorjamb into his former CO's hospital room. “Did you pass the pop quiz?”
“I don't think it counts as a 'pop quiz' when I'm told about it a day before it happens,” Roy Mustang answered.
“You're welcome,” Jean grinned. “So did you pass?”
“Yes.”
“They gave him partial credit on some of it,” Vato Falman supplied. “He guessed “soup”, and they gave him a point even though he was supposed to say what kind of soup it was.”
“I was not guessing,” Mustang told him. “The label was upside down and misspelled, and the can was on the bottom of the stack.”
“That's a dirty trick,” Jean said, not bothering to keep the humor out of his tone. “They must think you're about ready to go home, if they're pulling stuff like that.”
“I'm glad you're enjoying monitoring my progress,” Mustang said drily. He set down the stylus he'd been using to practice his touchscript and pinned Havoc with his sightless gaze. “I take it you've made your decision?”
Jean sobered. “Yeah.”
“And?”
“I'll only do it if you do.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Jean--”
“Don't even start talking about who's more guilty than whom, Boss,” Havoc growled. “I was in Ishbal, too, remember.”
“You didn't wipe out entire towns in less than an hour.”
“I said don't start, Roy,” Jean snapped. “Make up your mind. Are we going to use that Stone full of Ishbalans to fix ourselves or not?”
Mustang's eyes narrowed. “You're a nasty son of a bitch, Jean Havoc.”
“Leave my mother out of this.” Jean closed in on Roy's bed. “I've thought about it, and the only way I could possibly be worth the human lives in that Stone is if I had a way to influence the whole country, if not the whole world, for the better. Only way I can think of to do that is to get you up on my shoulders so you can see over the craziness-but you need working eyes to do that. So...it's both of us or neither of us.”
“Jean,” Mustang rubbed both hands over his face. “You can't do that. You can't put that decision on me.”
“I just did. Now the question is,” Jean nudged his former commanding officer's knee with one wheel, “what are you going to do about it?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
As far back as records, family history, and local folk memory reached, the lowlands of the southern end of the Orenya river valley had been ruled by tall, broad, and blond dukes, with the occasional tall blond duchess ruling as a regent. Paintings of them marched up and down the long corridors of the family's manor house, long-gone patriarchs and matriarchs watching the current generation with expressions that ranged from gently amused to ruthlessly severe. All of them, though, had an air of complacent arrogance that told the viewer just how high Armstrong standards were...and that he didn't quite measure up yet.
The man who walked along the third-floor corridor was also tall, broad across the chest, and generally stern of expression. There, however, the similarities ended. The stranger's deep brown skin contrasted with the pale faces and hands of the ancestral Armstrongs. His clothes were plain and unadorned against the rich velvets, silks, and embroidery of the dukes. Most startling, however, were his eyes. Most of the Armstrongs had had light blue or green eyes. The stranger's eyes were a deep red, and they looked out from the center of a wide X of stark white scar tissue that stretched from his forehead to his cheeks.
“Mr. Scar?” The maid curtsied as the red-eyed man turned toward her. “Lady Olivia and Lord Alexander sent me for you, sir. They are waiting with guests in the conservatory, sir.”
“Guests?” The man known only by the mark on his face moved with a stride more accustomed to covering miles of open country on foot than treading the thick carpets and parquet floors of a manor house. The maid hurried to follow him.
“Yes, sir. Lady Olivia asked me to tell you they've come to see you specifically, sir.”
“There aren't many who know that I still live,” The Scar of Ishbal paused to look back at the maid. “Fewer still who know where to find me.”
“Would you like me to show you to the conservatory, sir?” The maid lifted her eyebrows and her chin a little.
The Ishbalan's expression lightened just a fraction. “I could find it, but as there are people waiting for me, I will follow you.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Major General Olivia Mila Armstrong should have looked out of place. She was dressed in full military uniform, with a loaded automatic pistol holstered under her starched jacket and a ruthlessly functional saber sheathed on her hip. Major Miles, her aide, stood behind her. He was also fully uniformed and armed, his stance relaxed and his expression calm. They were the picture of perfect military command officers.
The setting was anything but military. What the Armstrongs referred to as the conservatory was more of a glassed-in water garden and aviary, complete with small streams populated by schools of colorful fish and frogs living among greenery collected from every corner of the earth. Bright-colored songbirds fluttered and twittered in large wire-mesh cages tucked artfully among the trees.
The Major General's brother, Lord Alexander Luis Armstrong, fit the surroundings. His “morning suit”, complete with gold cufflinks inlaid with precious stones to form the family crest, wouldn't have been out of place in the previous century. He was a giant of a man, but he was up and pulling out a chair for Riza Hawkeye before she could open her mouth to tell him to keep his seat. “Good morning, Lieutenant Hawkeye,” he rumbled. “You are looking well and lovely.”
“Is she?” Roy Mustang smiled as his aide took his hand from her elbow and set it on the chair beside the one Alex Armstrong courteously held for her. “That's good to hear-I've been getting reports that I've turned her prematurely gray.”
The big man turned to look into the faint gray circles where Mustang had once had sharp black irises, and said in a tone of soft regret, “To my eyes she is the picture of good health, Colonel.”
“I've been telling you I'm fine, sir,” Hawkeye sat, allowing the Armstrong scion to move her chair into place under her. “Thank you, Major.”
“Like he's going to believe you?” Jean Havoc sized up the narrow arched bridge crossing the stream between himself and the table, then backed up and carefully aligned his wheels. “If you lost a finger and he noticed you'd tell him he counted wrong.”
“Do you need help, Lieutenant Havoc?” Alex Armstrong took a step in Havoc's direction.
“Nope, I've got it.” Havoc eased himself over the bridge. “You could move a chair out of the way, though. I brought my own seat.”
“Of course. I apologize, Lieutenant, I should have thought of that.” Armstrong shifted the chair on Mustang's right aside.
“Don't worry about it. And don't call me Lieutenant, I'm retired.” Havoc paused at the foot of the bridge to turn in place and sweep his eyes around the lavish horticultural display. “Impressive place you've got here. I thought the house was gutted in the fighting.”
“The conservatory was protected, as you can see,” General Armstrong said crisply. She pinned the last of the new arrivals with an ice-blue gaze. “I take it you're Tim Marcoh?”
“Yes.” The doctor moved as slowly as a man thirty years his senior.
“Please make yourself comfortable, Doctor,” Alex Armstrong put in. “Would any of you like some tea, or perhaps something more substantial, after your journey?”
“I wouldn't say no to a cup of coffee,” Mustang answered.
“I wouldn't say no to a ham sandwich,” Havoc added lightly.
Armstrong nodded, then made eye contact with the footman standing unobtrusively near the door. “Thomas, please ask Celestine to prepare some coffee and sandwiches for our guests.” The man bowed and vanished without a sound.
“Now that the laws of courtesy have been satisfied, tell me what you're really doing here, Mustang,” Olivia Mila Armstrong flicked her gaze from the Flame Alchemist to his lieutenants, then to Dr. Marcoh's thick-scarred face.
“We're here to see Scar,” Mustang answered.
“Yes, and I've sent for him,” the general replied. “But you're not here just to exchange pleasantries.”
“No, I'm not,” Mustang faced General Armstrong. “I don't want to explain it twice, though. As long as I'm imposing on your gracious hospitality, I'd like to have Major Miles hear this, too.”
“I'm here,” Miles spoke up.
Mustang's eyebrows rose. “I should have guessed you'd be within earshot. Good.”
The door to the rest of the house opened, and the Scar of Ishbal strode through it, trailed by a middle-aged maid.
The big Ishbalan swept the group at the table with his eyes, then said, “Three State Alchemists at one table. What are you planning, I wonder?”
“Yeah, nice to see you again too,” Havoc muttered.
“We have a problem, and we're here to ask for your opinion,” Mustang answered.
“Or my help?” Scar chose a spot on a low wall near the table, and sat, resting his hands on his knees. “In exchange for lifting the price on my head, perhaps?”
“We have no right to ask anything of you or your people,” Alex said soberly.
“No, we don't,” Roy agreed. “That's why we're here. Dr. Marcoh-show him.”
The doctor sighed, and turned in his chair, taking a small clamshell case from his jacket pocket. “This rightfully belongs to your people.” He opened the case and offered it to the Ishbalan.
Scar hissed softly, and took the box from Marcoh's hand. “A Stone of Souls.” He touched the thumb-sized piece of dull red crystal, then closed the case around it. “Why did you bring this to me?” He shot Havoc a penetrating look, then turned his eyes to Dr. Marcoh. “You could save lives with these deaths.”
“Those deaths were Ishbalans,” Dr. Marcoh answered. “I used it the day of the eclipse, and to heal wounds for a few days afterward.”
“Why didn't you continue?” Scar shifted his gaze from Marcoh to Havoc to Mustang. “Doubtless there are many you could restore, with the power of souls in your hand.”
“I'm not a god.” The doctor lowered his face into his hands, hiding his eyes. “I can't make the decisions of a god. Who should I save, the mother of six children or the six-year-old child? The twenty-year-old soldier supporting his mother or the sixty-year-old farmer raising his dead son's children?” Tim Marcoh looked up at the Ishbalan vigilante with despair in his gaze. “I couldn't bear the weight of that responsibility, so I offered the Stone to Colonel Mustang.”
“Then the colonel turned around and offered it to me,” Havoc put in. “I decided I won't take it for my back unless he takes it for his eyes, too.”
Mustang spoke up with his eyes pointed at his hands, tightly folded on the table. “I've made a lot of decisions for my men. Some of those decisions will haunt them, and me, until we're all dead. But this one...I know how I feel about what I did in Ishbal.” He turned toward Scar. “You're the only Ishbalan I know of who understands what the Stone really is and why it must be used up.”
Scar's eyes widened a fraction, then he growled low in his chest. “Did you come here to ask my permission to use my people to restore yourselves?”
“We're here to ask your opinion.” Mustang's face and voice were both nearly expressionless. “We can't leave something with this kind of power lying around. Even if it weren't made of human lives, the Stone is far too dangerous to put into a vault or a museum. No matter how good the security is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to steal it-and that someone probably won't have the best interests of anyone but himself at heart.”
“You--” Scar stopped, then his face twisted into a rictus of mixed rage and grief and he pressed the closed case to his scarred brow.
The silence stretched, and Mustang opened his mouth, then shut it again as Riza Hawkeye put her hand on his wrist and squeezed gently.
General Armstrong broke the silence with a curt question. “I'd like to know who told you Scar was alive, Mustang.”
“And I'd like to know what you look like out of uniform,” Mustang answered calmly.
“This is a matter of military security.”
“I've been medically discharged, Major General.” Roy lounged back in his chair. “You might want to check with your people and see about tightening your internal security.”
“You're not in a position to play this game anymore, Roy,” the general told him in the harsh ice of Briggs.
“Who said I was playing?”
“Enough.” Scar lifted his head, his fingers closed tightly around the case containing the Stone. “It hardly matters how you knew I was here. I'll be leaving in the morning. This,” he lifted the case “is something for the Elders to consider.”
“That thing's a real hot potato.” Jean Havoc followed the case with his eyes as Scar tucked it into a pocket.
“It's going to be harder to convince those from the camps that they're not walking into a trap without you to lead them,” Miles' expression was grave.
“They would have believed me to be bait,” Scar said flatly. “No one would believe that one who'd killed as many military officers as I have would be allowed to live by the military, except as a turncoat to lead more of his people to the slaughter.”
“We can move the people from the camps without his help,” Olivia Armstrong told her aide. “They don't have to trust us-they just have to go.”
“Scar.” Mustang turned back toward the Ishbalan. “I'd like to go with you.”
“What?” The exclamation came from at least four voices.
“I'd like to go with you to Ishbal,” Mustang repeated. “To ask your Elders whether they'd be willing to negotiate peace terms.”
“Trying to commit suicide, Mustang?” The major general cocked an eyebrow.
“I'm sure this will disappoint you, Olivia, but no.” Mustang kept his attention focused on Scar. “Think about it. What would make a stronger statement of sincerity?”
“Or threat.” Hawkeye closed both her hands around Mustang's left one. “I can't protect you against an entire country determined to kill you.”
“I know,” Roy said gently. “That's why I'm not going to ask you to. I'm going alone.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Havoc demanded. “There's taking a risk, and there's risking your life, there's walking up to your worst enemy naked and spitting in his face, then there's this.”
“The Elders won't give you the Stone of Souls and their blessing,” Scar interrupted. “I don't know what they will do, but these are our dead.”
Roy frowned. “Would all of you stop insulting my intelligence? I'm not suicidal, and I'm not expecting anyone to forget the past. This is an opportunity to demonstrate that the new rulers of this country want to end the bloodshed and are willing to back that up with real concessions. A Philosopher's Stone, brought by a former soldier in truly blind trust.” His smile was thin. “If they kill me, they get a moment's revenge, followed by another pile of Ishbalan bodies. We do have roughly twenty thousand of their people locked up in the camps, after all. If they stop to think before they shoot, they'll hold their fire, and at worst send me home with a message to either send someone less blood-spattered or leave them alone.”
“You thought this out ahead of time,” Havoc accused.
“It was one of the options I considered,” Mustang answered.
“Clever,” the general commented. “Very clever, Mustang. If I keep you here, you and your people continue to be thorns in my side. If I let you go, but don't back whatever you say, you'll be interpreted as either an innocent martyr for your cause or a crippled soldier sacrificed by a new regime just as bloodthirsty as the last one. So not only do I have to allow this, I have to support it.” She folded her arms. “Deftly played.”
“You're making some assumptions that aren't necessarily valid,” Roy finally shifted his gaze. “The choice of whether I go or not isn't yours to make, for starters.”
“You're assuming the Ishbalans will stop to think before they shoot,” Riza said tightly. “All it would take is one sentry with a rifle.”
“They are an ancient and wise people,” Alex Armstrong put in. “I've read what I can find of the histories of Ishbal, and what there is of a scientific record of the culture. Many of their central teachings counsel forbearance and forgiveness.”
“They're still human, and there are limits to what a human can bear.” Dr. Marcoh spoke up. “I'm responsible for forging the Stone. I'll go.”
“You're a good doctor and a good man, but you don't have the people or political skills to negotiate on this scale,” Mustang told him.
“I can at least see a gun pointed at me,” Marcoh shot back.
“His blindness might buy him a chance to argue his case,” Miles broke in. He addressed Scar. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but doctrine says that once God has imposed judgement for a crime-like striking a man blind-that's the end of it.”
“That's a child's simplification of the text,” Scar answered. “And there are many who would rather face exile than allow a State Alchemist to live.”
“Huh.” Jean turned from the frowning Ishbalan to his also-frowning former commanding officer. “Guess you'll have to think of something else, Boss.”
Mustang lifted his chin. “Are you refusing to take me with you, Scar?”
Scar's brows lowered, and he didn't answer for a long moment. Finally he sighed. “Your life is yours to risk. I will guide you to the Elders if you insist.” His tone hardened. “But you should understand that I'm in no position to speak on your behalf.”
“I wouldn't ask that of you,” Mustang replied.
“I'm going with you,” Riza said, gripping Roy's hand tightly.
“No, you're not. You're going to stay here and run my intelligence empire.”
“Sir--”
“It's not open to debate, Lieutenant.”
Havoc turned to Alex Armstrong. “So-how long a head start do you think she'll give him? I'm laying odds it's less than an hour.”
“That would be a death sentence for both of them,” Armstrong said gravely.
Havoc blinked. “Run that by me again?”
“Think of how it would appear to the Ishbalan Elders,” the giant alchemist said. “Then help us talk the colonel out of this.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The rural train station was all but deserted at this hour. The sleepy stationmaster had waved the mismatched party through the gates to the platform with barely a glance. Major Alex Luis Armstrong, badly disguised as a local taxidriver, had busied himself with the loading of baggage, trying without success to conceal tears and sniffling as masculine snorts of effort.
“Last chance to change your mind, Boss.” The clipped speed of Jean Havoc's words gave away his tension.
“Are you suggesting there's something wrong with the one I have?” Roy Mustang answered lightly.
“Hell yeah, there's something wrong.” Havoc exchanged a glance with Riza Hawkeye, then a warier look with the Scar of Ishbal. “You're getting onto a train to share a compartment with the Scar, going to Ishbal, without taking so much as Hawkeye or a tank division with you.”
“I'm not going through this again, Jean.” Mustang took a few steps and offered his hand. “I'll talk to you soon.”
Havoc sighed, then gripped the Flame Alchemist's hand. “Don't get yourself killed, or if there is some kind of afterlife I'll hunt you down and kick your ass.”
“You'll have to take a number,” Hawkeye said quietly, without a trace of humor in her tone.
“You two are terrible well-wishers to have at a departure.” Mustang smiled a little. “Put it on my calendar-when I get back I'll have to take a few hours to educate you both on how to do it right.”
Scar moved to Mustang's side, and murmured, “The train will leave soon.”
“Right.” Roy turned his face toward Riza Hawkeye, and for a moment the calm professional mask dropped, and he opened his arms. “Riza-will you indulge me?”
Hawkeye's eyebrows shot up, and she hesitated for just an instant, then stepped into Roy's embrace. He turned his face toward her hair and murmured something too low for other ears to catch, pressed his lips to her cheekbone for just an instant, then stepped away to reach for Scar's arm.
Havoc stared in wide-eyed bewilderment, and watched in silence as the unlikely pair of traveling companions boarded the train. The locomotive let out a shrill whistle, then the train jerked and began to roll. Only after the clack-clack of wheels on rails had faded to nothing did Jean turn his chair to Riza and move closer. He pitched his voice low in deference to the night. “What did he tell you?”
Hawkeye startled a little, then turned to Havoc, taking something finger-sized from between the waistband of her trousers and the small of her back. “He said, 'I'll be back for this.'” She opened her hand and showed her companion the polished ivory chess queen.
Go to Chapter 2.
Author's Notes: A lot of this story grew out of discussions with kashicat about what would have happened if Roy hadn't used Marcoh's Stone to buy back his sight. However, I have added, rewritten, and rearranged so much that whatever faults you may find in this are mine, not hers.
For definitions of and commentary on the Ishvaran words and phrases used in this story, please visit the Ishvaran Glossary. I'm using it for this story, and my co-conspirator fractured_chaos and I are also using it and much of the same cultural worldbuilding in a joint BBC fic that will go up Sunday or so.
Ishvaran Glossary: Introduction and Orthography
Ishvaran Glossary: A - M
Ishvaran Glossary: N - Z
Speaking of fractured_chaos, she did the banner! Isn't that cool?