I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or any of its characters (even though those characters are only very briefly mentioned here). This story is about 2 characters I made up, & is an off-shoot of my story "Painted Truths." It is from a scene I left "on the cutting room floor," so to speak, that would have appeared at the end of chapter 10. I've fleshed out the background and made it a little bigger, and, well, this is the result. . .
A Beautiful Asymmetry
Chapter 1: Blood and Iron
Chiaro
He awoke to a numbing pain.
The last time he had dared to open his eyes, he had been inside the palace and there had been blood everywhere. A deep, rusty vermilion that glistened and ran in the retreating dusk of the sunset. Why, that's almost beautiful, he thought, staring at the beguiling splashes of color on the cold gray stones before him. Then he remembered. It was his blood everywhere, and if he looked--and he absolutely refused to look--he would see that there was only a bloody stump where his left hand had been. Pain, pain was dancing over his nerves, banging on his synapses with the insistence of a drum. The blood, the pain, all of it: it eventually became too much too bear, and Chiaro felt himself sinking again, drawn into a blackened net where regret--regret and remorse and sacrifice--could not touch him. He closed his eyes and fell.
The next time he opened his eyes--blackened and swollen, he knew for sure--he found himself staring at a gleaming pair of black lace-up boots. He could hear, as well as feel the warmth of, a low, crackling fire, and he realized then that he was back in his own studio. So he wasn't dead after all! What a small mercy! He could feel a terrible laughter, hard and edged with hysteria, threatening to bubble up to the surface, but his mouth was dry, too choked with his own regret, to sustain it. So he blinked and said nothing. The black boots shifted in front of him, their noise loud and distracting in the deafening silence of his darkened studio room. Then a voice over him said:
"You don't have the stomach for this kind of sacrifice, dear painter."
Vida, then. The Iron Maiden. He had not spoken to the palace arms master since that time he had asked to paint her and she had thrown a bottle at his head. Why was she here? He didn't have the strength, the will to ask that question. He watched, motionless, as those shiny boots moved from his line of sight, the iron plates on her boot heels loud, clicking, as she retreated toward the direction of his front door. She was leaving him then. But there was a question, a very, very important question that he had to ask, that had to be spoken, before she left. There was broken glass, a grating, rasping sound in his voice as he forced himself to ask:
"Did Edward make it?"
The clicking on the floor promptly stopped. A whispering, a rustle of silken robes. Chiaro waited. Then:
"The blond alchemist is gone."
Relief bloomed through the artist like morning glory: bloomed, flowered, and then promptly wilted, died on the stem. Edward was safe. Everything had went according to plan. Edward was safe, far away, long gone, never to be seen again. So. . .
Where did that leave Chiaro?
The painter felt the first press of tears as Vida's words echoed through the bereft cavern of his pained, overloaded mind. "You don't have the stomach for this kind of sacrifice. . ." The horror of that sentence was that is was true, so completely and utterly true, and Chiaro felt defenseless, unmanned against the onslaught of emotion which now assailed him. Don't cry in front of her. A different kind of relief washed through him as he heard the familiar squeak of his front door open and then close. So, the Maiden had left. Good, thought Chiaro, leave me to the peace of my own sanctified misery. And then another thought occurred to him then as well:
What a terrible, callous woman.
Vida
2 years earlier. . .
What a terrible, callous little man, thought Vida.
She had been walking through the palace entry hall, dressed in the black robes and red, white, and black mask that denoted her as part of the emperor's private, elite guard, when she came upon a strange scene.
Newly crowned Emperor Lee, fancying himself a grand patron of the arts, had commissioned an elaborate mural for the long wall of the Imperial Palace's entry hall. Murals-- indeed, all art--held little fascination for Vida, but once she had heard about the subject for the mural, she had felt driven, compelled to go and have a look at it. Vida was first, and foremost, an alchemist, and if alchemy could be deemed a religion, then Vida could be counted as one of its most fervent worshipers. And like a loyal disciple bent on holy pilgrimage, Vida wanted to see firsthand the not-yet-finished mural: a rendering of the dragon's pulse wrapped around the earth, the great and glorious symbol for all of Xing's alchemy.
But there was a loud--and seemingly terrible--argument currently going on in front of the half-painted mural.
There were two men dressed in beige robes: the one, immaculate, with a sweep of high, white hair, standing on the cold stones of the foyer, the other, paint-splattered and in casual disarray, with a long dark pony-tail and goatee, standing high up on the scaffolding before the mural. They were currently shouting at one another, the sounds of their angry, raised voices reverberating through the open space of the grand hall for all to hear.
"Chiaro," pleaded the man with the white hair, known to one and all as the esteemed muralist Gesso Spresato, "I can't have you driving away my other apprentices with that vile mouth of yours. What you said to make Bianco cry like that, well, I can only imagine--but you cannot continue like this. Why, with your gift for rendering people, it's ridiculous! Why do you hate everyone so? If you could but try to get along--"
"--that man is an incompetent jackass!" roared the other painter, his face crimson with rage, his large black eyes darkened with a righteous fury. "His painting is an abomination and I told him so! And I will not stand here and work along side such a creature! I will not do it!" Chiaro jabbed the air with his paintbrush for emphasis, the motion threatening, as if it were in fact, not a brush, but a knife he was holding. He was visibly shaking with rage.
The muralist merely shook his head in defeat. "I know you will not apologize. I won't even bother to ask." A steely look came over the older man's gaze then: "As punishment, you will do both your's and Bianco's part of the mural, even if it means working by lamplight, into the night. Understand?"
The other painter froze and said nothing. Vida watched, from her spot in the entryway, as Gesso shook his head with what seemed like genuine regret. Her masked eyes followed the older man as he turned to go, his head bowed, shoulders sagged in obvious defeat. Then Vida saw something else, something that she did not at all expect:
The moment the older muralist had turned away, the younger painter's lips lifted in an all-too pleased smirk and a very real, very satisfied brightness came over those dark--no longer angry--eyes. He looked jubilant, triumphant, and in that moment Vida realized: this was not punishment for him; he had wanted to do the work by himself all along. Vida found herself staring at his transformed face with a new-found fascination. She had almost forgotten about the mural behind him entirely, the snaking, slithering splash of green of the half-formed dragon that framed him, the blaze of fire that issued from its nostrils so bright, so real, and so very, very appropriate. . .
"What the hell are you looking at?"
Vida was started out of her reverie, and she realized suddenly that the young painter on the scaffold was looking at her, was in fact, addressing her. And the man was glaring again. "Well?"
Vida found herself rooted into place, and she felt hot, trapped, scorched by the burning flames of that fire-breathing dragon (but which one?). She said nothing. Could, in fact, think of nothing worth saying. She didn't move again until a finely aimed paint brush came flying at her head and she was forced to dodge it. Her mouth fell open in disbelief. She could not believe that the painter had just dared to throw a brush at her! Her--a trained assassin of the imperial guard no less! Vida felt a murderous rage threaten to boil over, and she turned her attention toward the scaffolding, her mind racing, calculating the make-up of the ropes and metal pillars. . .
"Vida, come!"
Vida whirled and found herself face-to-face with Orin, the current palace arms master. She had been so utterly focused on the painter that she had been completely unaware of his silent, stealthy approach. Vida cast one nasty, threatening glance back in the painter's direction, but he did not see it: all his attention, all his being, was focused on the mural. She watched as his paint brush flew across the surface, his movements deft, sure, precise; his eyes narrowed, focused, burning with an unknown intensity. And Vida had but one thought as she followed Orin out of the grand entry hall:
What a terrible, callous little man.
End chapter 1.
This little story is dedicated to Just Funning, who encouraged me to post this here (despite the lack of appearances by FMA characters). Thanks for the encouragement, and I hope that one day we'll be able to write something together again. :)
