Not an OC Romance Fic.
I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist. Hiromu Arakawa does. And that is not my name.
Chapter One: It Begins
They came in the morning, when the people of my village were just beginning to wake up. The bakers and shopkeepers were just beginning to set up for the day. The miners and the men who worked at the mill were just starting to leave for work. Mothers were just beginning to prepare breakfast, or start other morning chores. The children, such as myself, were still asleep at so early an hour.
I was only five years old that summer, and what a dreary summer it was. It did nothing but rain every day. We hardly ever saw the sun. We lived pretty far north, you see. Me and Papa and Mama and Ben. The four of us, all together. I think we were quite happy, but then again, five-year-olds are typically oblivious to hardship, so I'm not sure just how accurate that is. I was no exception, happy and oblivious to hardship. At least, I was until that day.
As I said, they came in the morning. The bandits, I mean. I don't know why they attacked us. We were such a tiny village, young and only just starting to grow because of the discovery of coal and the opening of the coal mine. They couldn't have expected to make much profit off us. Thinking on it, they looked pretty scraggly. They must have been desperate. Whatever their reasons, they came that morning, and my sheltered world was shattered.
Now, my first knowledge of their attack was when I was quite rudely yanked from my nice, warm bed by my older brother Ben, who dumped me unceremoniously on the ground in his haste. It was not a pleasant way to be woken up, and once I had recovered from my surprise, I must admit that I began to cry. Loudly.
Ben, only eight years old and already beginning to think himself rather important, had no patience with my tears. He grabbed me by my wrist, which I was using to wipe my eyes as I sobbed, and hauled me to my feet. "No time for that now, Clara!" He scolded, and the urgency in his voice made me really pay attention to him for the first time. He looked frightened me more than any scary story I'd ever heard. My brother prided himself on his bravery, among other things. If he was scared it was major.
"What's going on?" I asked as he pulled me out my bedroom door. "Ben, wait! My bear… We can't leave Betsy!" I protested, for I went nowhere without my prized teddy bear. I pulled my hand from his grip and rand back to my bed, where I had left her.
"Clara!" My brother yelled at me, not necessarily an uncommon occurrence, as he always was a very bossy person. "We've no time for that!" And once again he grabbed my hand, pulling me along and down the stairs. He was running by the time we made it to the front door, which made it extremely hard for me to keep up. I had been a premature baby, tiny. So tiny I could fit in one of my father's large, coal-miner's hands, and this was a trend that had continued on in my life. I was still a tiny thing, and could not hope to keep up with my brawny brother.
The moment we crossed the threshold of the front door and I could see the familiar outside surroundings, I found that they were no longer as familiar as they once were. There was smoke everywhere, and random articles littered the street. The villagers, whom were all very familiar to me, were running in all directions, yelling and screaming and making a general racket.
I was completely shocked by this sight, and my brother must have been, too,, because he stopped dead in his tracks and my small body slammed into his back. I was too stunned to even care for my sore nose, which had been the point of collision with Ben's back. We both stood there in our pyjamas in the miserable drizzling rain, watching the first steps to the falling apart of our lives.
I am proud to say that it was I who snapped out of our daze first. Horrified by what I was seeing, I released my brother's hand in favour of grabbing onto his arm. "Ben! What's happening? Where's Mama? And Papa? Ben, I'm scared!" I cried all very fast.
This seemed to shake him out of it, and I suppose his protective older brother instincts kicked in when he looked at my frightened face. Without answering any of my questions, he grabbed my hand again and we ran down the street. I had no idea where we were going, and I couldn't care because I was more worried about the fact that it was raining and I was in my pyjamas and I wasn't wearing shoes and I was so very scared. Besides, Ben could take me anywhere and I wouldn't care, so long as I still had him to protect me and keep me safe.
Wherever my brother had intended for us to go, he picked the wrong route to take in order to get there, because he led us straight to the bandits. They were big, and dressed like they came from even farther north than us. Possibly Drachma? No, there's no way such a ragamuffin group of bandits could have gotten past the Northern Fortress Briggs. Not that I was concerned about that right then, or even knew of such things.
These men were HUGE! I don't think a single one of them was under six feet in height. Their hair was long and scraggly, they had rotten and missing teeth, and looked like they had never even learned what a bath was. All in all, they were scary and hideously disgusting to look at.
We stopped, and Ben tried to turn us back around, but they spotted us. Neither of us knew what to do, so we just froze and waited to see what would happen. I clung tighter to Betsy and Ben's hand, thinking that I would never ever let go of either again as long as I lived. So long as I lived.
The bandit that decided that playing with a pair of scared children would be fun was, like his companions, massive. His hair was blonde and wild, with random thin braids strewn about in the overall mess. I remember thinking in giddy fear about how bushy his eyebrows were, a ridiculous thought to have at such a time. His hands and feet were massive, the size of hams, and he was armed with a big long sword. Swords were getting to be more unusual then, but they were still in use. I'd even heard at some point that the Fuhrer himself favoured swords, and was very skilled with them.
As he came toward us, a big menacing grin spread across his ugly mug of a face. "Well, well, what do we have here?" He said, chortling as he went to prod Ben with his sword. Ben stumbled back to avoid the sharp tip, knocking me back with him as I was still cowering against him. The horrible brute threw his head back and let out a loud peal of deep-throated laughter as the two of us stumbled and fell backward together into the mud. By then I'd started to cry again. I still didn't understand what was happening, and why this scary man was being so mean. I wanted my mother.
Ben pulled me up from the mud and against him, wrapping his arms around me protectively as he managed to glare weakly at the man. He told me later he had done it to tell the man that I was his, and he would not permit him to harm me or touch me. Being in his arms made me feel safer to some degree, but I was still terrified and clutched Betsy as though she were my lifeline.
The bandit laughed even more at my brother's display of protection while his buddies continued to destroy our village. "Ah, so the little boy thinks he can protect his baby sister, eh?" He chortled. "Well, let's see how effective that is!" And with one swift motion he'd grabbed me by the arm and ripped me from Ben's protective embrace. "No!" My brother yelled in fury and despair, his hands grasping frantically for me as I was torn from him. I screamed and dropped Betsy in my terror, and she fell into the mud. The bandit brought me close to his face in order to inspect me, and I turned my face away in disgust after catching a whiff of his rancid breath.
"Well, well, you're a tiny little thing, aren't you? Just a little mite of a girl." He said, leering at me and laughing. My brother took a furious swing at him, which did nothing but cause the bandit to give him a hard whack with the back of his hand.
"Ben!" I screamed as the blow turned my brother's head so far sideways so hard it looked like it might snap clean off his neck. The impact quite literally sent him flying, and he tumbled end over end in the mud when he landed. After all, and eight-year-old boy was no match for an enormous, muscled bandit. The bandit kicked him in the side, sending him tumbling again and making him cry out in pain.
"No, no! Please stop it!" I begged as my brother curled around his injured side. The bandit wound up for another kick, ignoring my pleas. "Please don't hurt him! Please!" The second kick knocked my brother even further, and this time he slammed into a rock. He was bleeding, and the blows had hurt him so bad that he couldn't even stand up anymore. I sobbed in fear and rage, powerless to do anything but pound that monster in the face with my tiny fists as he knocked my precious older brother around even more.
One of my blows hit him in the eye, and this seemed to hurt him, because he let out a yell. This distracted him from pounding on my brother, but he unfortunately turned his attention to me. He gave me a fierce glare, and this made me forget about my now unconscious brother. He looked so furious that I immediately felt my insides clench up in terror, fearing what the enraged bandit might do. "I-I'm sorry." I whimpered, shrinking away as much as I could with him still holding on to me. "I-I didn't mean it."
"So, you wanna mess with me, huh, girlie?" He asked menacingly as I shook my head frantically. "How dare you hit me?" I quivered in his hold as he sheathed his sword and pulled out a dagger, and I began to squirm in a terrified bid for freedom when he brought the sharp blade's edge close to my face. "You hurt my face, now I'll hurt yours." He said.
I kicked and cried and screamed as he cut me, the blade digging into the flesh between my left eye and my nose, and travelling down and to the left along my cheek and jaw, stopping at my neck. It hurt, and I wailed at the pain and the warm blood that dripped down my face and neck from the wound. Except for my incessant wailing, I was fairly meek now. I didn't want him to cut me again.
"Not so fiery now, are ya?" He sneered, watching me as I reduced myself to crying and snuffling. He started to walk off with me, and I had no idea where he was taking me. Ben was still a motionless body of the ground- I didn't know whether he was even still alive, or if he'd died from the abuse he'd taken from the bandit. I could say again that I was terrified, but I've said it so many times already that you already know, so it's pointless to say it anymore. I think you get the idea.
He was holding me by the back of my pyjama shirt, and I dangled limply. Watching my brother be beaten and seeing the wrecked remains of my village had taken the fight right out of me. I was resigned to my fate. As far as I was concerned, my life was already over.
We rejoined the rest of the bandits, who had finished with their destruction and plundering. I discovered that I was not the only one who was taken captive. There were other boys and girls from my village, at least ten of them, all ranging in age from four to nineteen. I wondered what they were planning to do with us. I remember looking into the faces of my fellow captives. Some of them were scared, some were crying. Some, like me, had become completely resigned and had no life left in their eyes. They too had seen their loved ones hurt or killed, their homes destroyed. They knew that their fate would be a bad one.
That night, we all lay huddled together, surrounded on all sides by the bandits. That's when the older captives told the rest of us that the bandits were planning to sell us as slaves in another country. Those who couldn't be sold would be killed, and their organs would be sold on the black market. It was scary news, but I hardly cared anymore. All I could think about was whether Ben was all right, and where my parents were, and how I'd left Betsy lying in the mud. After learning about what our fates would be, none of us spoke anymore. I don't think any of us slept, either. I know I didn't.
Alright, my first Fullmetal Alchemist fanfiction on the site. As previously mentioned, this is not an OC romance fic, as I do not intend to pair Clara with any existing canon characters. This fic is essentially about how Clara sees Ed as her hero, and aspires to be like him.
I'd love it if you'd review and tell me what you think of this one. I'm fairly pleased with it. Thank you for reading.